Nobody tells you this part.
Everyone warns you about the exhaustion. The sleepless nights, the endless snack requests, the school pickups and drop-offs and the constant, constant noise. And yes, all of that is real. But that is not the hardest part.
The hardest part about raising kids is learning how to manage your own emotions while you’re trying to teach them how to manage theirs.
Think about that for a second. You’re supposed to be the calm one. The one who models patience when someone is screaming over the wrong color cup. The one who takes a breath instead of snapping. The one who says “use your words” when you yourself are two seconds from losing it.
And the whole time, you’re basically re-learning yourself. Figuring out where your triggers come from. Realizing that sometimes the reason you react so strongly to something your kid does is because it reminds you of something in you, or something from how you were raised. That is a lot to sit with.
I think about this a lot, especially now that I have four girls at different stages. The oldest is navigating high school and all the feelings that come with that. The middle ones are in that in-between space, not little, not quite teenagers yet, testing everything. And then there’s my youngest, who is three and basically a tiny emotional tornado who I am absolutely obsessed with. Each stage requires a completely different version of me. Patient me, firm me, fun me, the me who can just sit and listen without trying to fix anything.
Some days I get it right. A lot of days I don’t. And I have learned to be okay with that.
What I refuse to do is be a parental hypocrite about the big stuff. I can’t ask my kids to regulate their emotions if I’m throwing my own fit in the car five minutes later. I can’t tell them junk food is bad and then absolutely demolish a bag of chips the second they go to sleep (okay fine, I still do that one, and I know I’m not alone).
But the emotional piece, that one I take seriously. Because I genuinely believe the most important work I can do as a mom isn’t just raising them. It’s re-parenting myself at the same time.
Shoutout to every parent out there who is doing that work right alongside their kids. It is not easy, it is not linear, and it does not come with a gold star. But it matters.