As my daughters and I canvassed the neighborhood trick-or-treating, my 8-year-old dressed as a devil and her 5-year-old sister as a superhero, my frustration was growing. My youngest was refusing to say “thank you” as neighbors dropped handfuls of candy into her bucket, and I felt embarrassed.
“Say ‘thank you,’ or Halloween is cancelled,” I told her.
She stared at me stubbornly while her sister’s face dropped, and I instantly realized my mistake. I was engaging in a power struggle with a kindergartner — exactly the opposite of what I learned in college, where I took multiple early childhood education classes.
I worked my way through school as a nanny and preschool teacher, aiming to counteract my own tumultuous childhood by learning age-appropriate positive parenting skills to help me give my future children the childhood they deserved.
In reality, life took unexpected turns, and I didn’t always handle them well. Today, looking back, I deeply regret the mother I temporarily became during my stressful divorce.
My divorce changed me
After just five years, my marriage imploded, and custody became a question, not a given. I spent the next several years terrified that I would lose my children, making me anxious, depressed, and dysregulated.
I never expected to be a perfect parent, but after working hard to give my daughters a better childhood than mine, I felt like a failure.
At the time, I was physically present but mentally calculating bills, rehearsing court testimony, or wondering how I would pay next month’s rent. Even when we were at the playground or curled up reading books together, part of me was usually somewhere else.
I was terrified
I yelled too much during these years, too. Once, while on a rare-for-us vacation, I let my frustration get the best of me and snapped at one of my daughters when she was just being silly. I feel like the stress I was holding on to ruined our vacation when my kids were 8 and 10.
Sure, we still shared many happy memories over the years — sledding in the winter, and enjoying picnic dinners by the lake on long summer days. But certain images from those years still sting, and I know things would have been different had I not been stuck in survival mode.
For years, I cringed in shame, remembering the night I fell asleep before exchanging the tooth under my oldest daughter’s pillow with a note from the Tooth Fairy. Or the time I ranted about something so insignificant I don’t even remember it now, and she said quietly, “Mom, you don’t have to get so mad.”
As I lay in bed that night, I couldn’t sleep as her words ran through my mind on a loop.
I knew what good parenting looked like. I just couldn’t always access that version of myself. My girls deserved a mom who wasn’t constantly afraid, and I deserved a life that didn’t require me to be.
I am choosing to live differently now
I will always regret how much of my fear and stress they absorbed during those years. But I also remind myself that it’s never too late to be the mom I always dreamed of — calm, present, supportive, and someone whose emotions my daughters don’t feel responsible for.
I still grieve the life we could’ve had even as I’ve watched them grow into smart, capable, and kind young women who I couldn’t be more proud of.
I can’t change who I was then, but I can choose who I am now. I constantly look for ways to make it up to them, knowing that every visit, phone call, and conversation is another opportunity to show up differently than I once did.
Like when my oldest daughter called recently and I told her I wasn’t busy even though I only had five minutes before I needed to rinse the color out of my hair. She immediately launched into a long, heartfelt story that I wasn’t about to interrupt, even as my timer started going off.
Would I do it again? In a heartbeat.
Do you have a parenting regret? Email Jennifer Beck Goldblatt at jgoldblatt@insider.com to share your experience with Business Insider.
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