00:00 

Hey there, this is Intentional Living with Tanya Hale and this is episode number 98, "Mom Guilt." Welcome to your place for finding greater happiness through intentional growth, because we don't just fall into the life of our dreams...we choose to create it. This is Tanya Hale and I'm your host for Intentional Living. 

00:21 

Alright there, how are you today? Welcome to the podcast. I hope you're doing well. I hope that you are hitting the stride of resilience with all of this coronavirus stuff and that you are finding your new normal has become a really good thing for you. I hope that you are learning some things about yourself, learning things about your family, just stepping into a better place. 

If you're still struggling, coaching can help with that. Get in touch with me. I love and adore coaching. I work with coaches every week, in fact. I work with a business coach and I also work with another coach, and it makes such a huge difference for me on a regular basis. So coaching is awesome. I love it, and I want you to love it as well. So get in touch with me if you want that. You can do that at tanyahale.com. There's a place where you can just sign up for a free coaching session or you can go on my Facebook page, which is Tanya Hale LDS Life Coaching, and you can contact me there and get on my calendar. So that would be lovely and awesome, and I think it would be great. 

01:30 

So we're gonna jump in today. We're talking about mom guilt. And here's one thing I know: moms and guilt just seem to go together like peanut butter and jelly. Am I right or am I right? I am never shocked by a mom who starts talking about feeling guilty about how they parent presently or how they parented in the past, and I'm not shocked because it seems to be such an important part of our social culture to beat ourselves up for what a horrible parent we are or were. It's just one of those things. Even when our kids are grown and out of the house, so many of us want to blame ourselves for everything going wrong in our children's lives. So say they don't know how to keep a job because we didn't have them do enough chores growing up and learn a strong enough work ethic or we weren't consistent enough with the follow-up with their chores. Maybe they're struggling in their relationship with their spouse because we didn't model a healthy relationship for them. They're floundering in their higher education and life planning because we didn't have enough discussions with them about the importance of planning their lives. And for sure we missed a parent-teacher conference once or twice and that sent the message that we didn't value education. Or maybe we think it's because we didn't read enough to them or sit by their side to do homework every single day. 

02:51 

All of this is just a continuation of the mom guilt that so many of us felt when we were younger. "My kids were fighting because they saw their dad and me fight or because I yelled at them rather than speaking in soft kindly tones where the spirit could abide," right? We weren't a hundred percent consistent with scriptures and Family Home Evening and prayer and that's why they got to where they are now in showing no interest in going to church. Or I was a little lax on curfew and that's why they got pregnant before they were married or they were sexually active. They didn't go on a mission, right? I could go on for the entire 30 minutes of this podcast listing ways that we tend to beat ourselves up and feel guilty. And I'll be honest, even though I've never been one to really beat myself up over things and to have a lot of mom guilt, I also get caught up in the "I should have"s and the "I wish I would have"s, right? It's easy to do, it's so easy to think that we are the cause of all the reasons why our children haven't made every single best choice in the universe. But guess what? Here's a huge secret I'm gonna let you in on: they are not supposed to make every single best choice in the universe and neither are we. 

04:07 

So let's start off with us: the bigger, older, and wiser adult in this situation. Have you ever felt like you were a bad mom? Have you ever felt like you didn't respond as Christlike as you really could have? Have you ever raised your voice or not followed through on consequences or been too tired for family prayer at the end of the day? I'm pretty darn sure you have, and guess what? That is exactly how it should be, because guess what else? You are a human. Now, I know that's a shocking truth. But you are a human and part of The Plan of Salvation is that we come down here to earth to be a, guess what, a human. And being a human means that we're going to suck at it about half the time. In coaching, we call this the "50-50 principle." Half the time we're going to be really horrible at it, and half the time we're going to be doing really great at it. And that is how it's supposed to be. You know the old saying, "you have to know the bad in order to know the good" idea? Who came up with that anyway, right? Who was that? I don't know, somewhere in the scriptures, maybe? I don't know. Alright, how do we know when we're being an amazing parent if we don't ever recognize when we've been a totally crappy parent? It's all part of this Plan of Salvation gig. The light-dark, good-bad, right-wrong stuff that life is all about. 

05:36 

And do we feel bad for our kids? Of course we do. My poor kids had to be raised by a mom who was in a very unhealthy marriage, who overcompensated for that by being too strict sometimes, and not really allowing them to feel many negative emotions. Because hey, you know, we had to pretend that we were happy all of the time. They also grew up with me putting them into time out way too much, according to my 18 year old daughter who says that all she remembers about her younger childhood was sitting in time out. Right? Really? That's all she remembers. That's what her story is this week. They also had a mom who yelled at them when they were younger and made them eat vegetables and wouldn't make them anything else for dinner when they didn't like what I fixed. And then to add insult to injury, I would not let them watch the Disney Channel because I didn't like those little divas on there, right? 

06:31 

And let me tell you how else they were raised. They were raised by a mom who tried really hard to protect them from the dysfunction of my marriage. A mom who worked really hard to not to show them how much I was hurting and how difficult it was because I didn't want their childhood to be all about mom crying all the time and being sad. Until they hit high school, I went to every parent teacher conference. I read so many books to them when they were younger and we always listened to books on CD in the car that all four of my adult children are great, voracious readers. I took them to ward camp outs by myself and often church by myself and I sat through more soccer games and musical concerts than I could ever count. I didn't have a Saturday to myself for probably 15 years because of soccer. I cooked amazing meals for my family. So much so that my nieces once mentioned to me that it was like a Sunday dinner every night of the week at my house. I always was great at having clean clothes for my kids and also, if I might say, looking stylish when I had to pick them up somewhere. And yet, I didn't take a ton of pictures, not really a picture mom. My children didn't get to do sleepovers and I didn't throw elaborate birthday parties. In fact, I only let them have a friend birthday party on their 8th, 12th, and 16th birthdays. 

07:58 

And guess what? Guess what? My kids are really good people. Are they perfect? Absolutely not. But they're not supposed to be. Have they got it all figured out? Nope. But then neither do I. And I'm 52. I've got a good 35 years on my youngest daughter and I'm still a mess in so many ways. Because here's the deal about life: I'm not supposed to be a perfect parent. God knew darn well when He sent these sweet people into my life that He was sending them to me, someone who had some pretty decent flaws and issues going on. He knew I'd be too strict sometimes and not strict enough other times. He knew that I'd yell and give the silent treatment and be manipulative and passive aggressive sometimes. But He also knew that I would love them fiercely, and try to teach them the gospel, and try to set a good example for living the gospel. If God wanted to send His spirit children to perfect homes, He would have looked a little more closely at Satan's plan, because that would have ensured perfect homes for all of these little people. But God didn't even give Satan's plan a second glance, and you know why? Because it is being raised in a crazy, more than somewhat-dysfunctional home that our children are given opportunities to understand that all of us are flawed. That this is The Plan of Salvation. That this is how we come to appreciate The Atonement of Jesus Christ. So let's just own it, and recognize and accept that God knew very well that He was sending His little spirit people to imperfect parents. It was all part of the plan, and we would be both good and bad. 

09:49 

Part of our struggle here on earth is that we can tend to put ourselves in a very black and white world. Either I'm a good mom, or I'm a bad mom. But here's the thing: I'm a good mom, and I'm a bad mom. I'm both. When we can come to embrace the idea that we are both, and that we are supposed to be both, we can let go of the guilt. And here's another piece of the puzzle that can spin us into mom guilt. Our primitive brain, our cerebellum, is programmed to look for the negative. It's part of our survival. That's how it works to keep us safe from hungry wild lions that are chasing us back to our caves. But the vast majority of us no longer live in caves hiding out from the lions. And yet our primitive brain is still seeking to keep us safe, so it's constantly looking for the negative. Because of this, it's so easy to see all of the ways that we have failed our children, and failed at being a great mom. And every single one of us could make a mile long list of ways we are and were a  crappy mom. But if we chose to and if we thought about it, every single one of us could also make a mile long list of ways we are and were an amazing mom. I don't know any mom who was intentionally trying to screw up her kids, right? We were all doing the best we could. So let's not forget to look at the positive side as well and give ourselves grace for the negative. Sure, we were really bad at sometimes at parenting, but if that's all we choose to see, we're missing the other 50% of our parenting experience. 

11:30 

Now all of this doesn't by any means mean that we embrace our flaws and try not to be better at them. A huge part of our experience here on earth is to become aware of our flaws and work to improve, work to be better. For example, I don't remember the last time I yelled at one of my children. I've learned how to not do that anymore, but when I was a young mom, that was a hard thing, right? But even as I've improved in that area, I've also come to realize that I'm also very often very judgmental of what they're doing with their lives and the path that they're on now that they're adults. And so now I have a new focus of self-improvement. And isn't that great? Because I'm never gonna run out of ways to be a better person or a better mom. I will always have new ways to get better. I'll get over yelling and I'll realize I'm judging, right? So there's always gonna be something. And as my children see me striving to be better and grow into a better version of myself, maybe that will show them an example of how to do the same in their own life. And maybe not. 

12:33 

But this is where the ball gets put into their court. And this is another piece of parenting that is so important for us to learn in order to let go of our own guilt. When our children grow up into adults, it is their time and their choice to take over their lives, even if they were raised in a totally dysfunctional home, right? I'm no longer responsible for their decision to attend or not attend church. I'm no longer responsible for whether they choose to be sexually active outside of marriage or not. They become responsible for their own lives. And I become a loving mom, someone who will support them and love them and hopefully set a good example for them. Because when it comes down to it, once my children are older, all I can do is learn to love them unconditionally. And I think we're always learning how to love unconditionally. And I can learn to set an example for them in how I choose to live my own life. If I am seeking to do more than this, I'll tell you, I'm overstepping my boundaries. 

13:38 

Now, I know that many of you don't want to hear this and it's not meant to make you feel more guilt, but we need to shed some light so that we can become aware of what we're doing and how we're doing it. The last two weeks we've talked intensively about the thought model. And if you remember the circumstance is the first line of the thought model. We don't have any control over the circumstances that come into our lives, but we have 100% control over all the rest of it. Our thoughts, feelings, actions, and results. And here's something I want us to be aware of: our actions move into another person's circumstance line. Okay, so whatever I choose to do, my actions, they become someone else's circumstance and then they begin their own model with having their own thoughts and feelings about that circumstance or about my behavior: what I said or what I did. 

14:29 

And here's where we want to start being really aware of what we are doing. What actions are you presenting your adult children with? And are those actions making it easy for them to have loving thoughts and feelings toward you? Or do our actions make them crazy with thoughts that create doubt or anger or frustration. Why do so many people talk about having mommy issues even as adults? It's because so many of us mommies have actions that make it so tough for our adult children to have loving thoughts toward us. Because so often in our parenting of our adult children we are trying to appease our own guilt by continuing to try and parent them from a place that we are no longer supposed to be parenting from. 

15:21 

So let's start with The Plan of Salvation, shall we? The whole premise of the plan is that we come to earth to learn from our own experiences how to align our lives with God and make choices that will take us back into His presence after this life. The plan is that we learn to manage ourselves, that we learn to be loving and kind and accepting of others. One of our responsibilities as mothers is to learn to let go of our children enough to allow them to do this, to learn from their own experiences. This doesn't by any means mean that we stop loving them or we stop caring about them or stop being concerned for their welfare. But what it does mean is that we step out of the daily adult parenting role and step into a supporting, loving, boundary setting role. 

16:11 

So what does this look like? It looks like keeping our opinions to ourselves unless we are asked for them or unless we are a 120% sure that the Spirit is prompting us to say something. It means learning to love unconditionally without expectations that they will behave a certain way. It means not judging them for their choices and giving them the space they need to be a 50-50 human, someone who makes both good and bad choices. It really means giving them the space to be a human who is learning and growing and progressing just as we still are. Even though we're much older than they are, we're still in that process. And sometimes we don't give our children the grace to be in that process as well. Because remember, life is 50-50. We, you and I, are 50-50. We are half great and half not-so-great. And with our children, we can choose to focus on the 50% great or the 50% not-so-great. This is our choice. 

17:19 

And it's important to realize what our choice in this does for them. If I choose to focus on the 50% not so great, then my actions toward them will be negative in some way. I may be manipulative or passive aggressive when they make a decision I don't agree with. I may withhold my love in some manner, or even say the right words with entirely the wrong tone. And those actions move into their circumstance line, or their C line, and then they will have thoughts about us and our actions, and they may think, "Mom never thinks I make the right decisions." That thought then turns into feelings of resentment or anger, and then it plays out in their actions toward us and into the result of our relationship. But when we choose as mothers to focus on the 50% they do that is great, then that plays out in our actions as well, with more positive and accepting words, with holding back our judgment, with statements of support and kindness. Those are the actions then that move into their C line. When their thoughts about our words are something like, "Mom just really loves and trusts me," then that thought will create more feelings of softness, of compassion, of gratitude. 

18:43 

So which of those thoughts we are having of our children creates the kind of relationships we want to have with them? This is where it is so vital that we check our behaviors, that we really look at them closely and see what results they are creating. Are they creating healthy close relationships or are they destroying relationships? Coaching can help you with this if you find yourself struggling to identify and manage what's going on inside of you. So many of us are destroying relationships by having opinions and judgments that we have no right to be having. Even though our children are adults, we are still their parents, although not in the same way that we were when they were younger. If we want to have strong healthy relationships with them, it is so important that we learn to put strong healthy actions into their circumstance line. 

19:46 

But so many of us struggle with this because we're trying to appease our mom guilt from when they were younger by trying to fix it now that they're older. We do this by trying to control them and trying to fix them. And we can get really judge-y about what they're doing and how they're doing it. And when we do this, we are bound to start crossing boundaries of healthy adult parenting. We can start stepping into their space in a way that we have no right to. 

20:17 

But here's some other thoughts I'd like you to consider. Maybe your child was always going to make this decision, regardless of what you did as a parent. And maybe God still put this child in your home because He knew you would just love them regardless of what they chose. Maybe their decisions had absolutely nothing to do with how you did or didn't parent. And they were just always going to make those horrible choices regardless of the home they grew up in. I think we all know amazing people who came from horribly dysfunctional homes and horribly dysfunctional kids who came from amazing homes. Maybe your child is the perfect person for you to be the parent of because if you are open to it, they can teach you how to truly love unconditionally and without guile. Maybe they are the ones here to teach you and not you just teaching them. Maybe they are here to help you see yourself in your own flaws more clearly so you can clean up your own life and become more Christlike. Wouldn't it be fascinating if after this life we learned that our children covenanted before coming to earth to make all of these horrible decisions and have a harder life because they knew it would provide us, their parent, with the perfect circumstance in which we could learn the lessons we need to learn? What if they chose to be a drug addict so that we could learn to love unconditionally and stop judging and trying to fix them? I don't know if that's how it works, but what if it is? What if it's a little more complex than we think it is? And they chose this difficult life in order to help save us, to help us learn to manage our own lives and stop trying to manage theirs and to really move into unconditional love. 

22:09 

As we move into adult parenting, it is so vital that we learn to allow our children to be adults who make their own decisions. Does this mean we agree with every decision that they make? Absolutely not. But we still need to realize that it's not our responsibility to agree or disagree. It's not even our responsibility to have an opinion. It's our responsibility to love and give them the space to learn and grow in the way that their path is offering them. It is our responsibility to care for our part in our relationship with them which is my thoughts and my feelings and my actions. Is this hard? You bet it is. It's hard not to have an opinion, but it's not our job to have an opinion. Now obviously if someone's life is in danger because of choices they make, we may need to take some steps to protect those who can't protect themselves. But I'm not really talking about the extreme situations here. I'm talking about our day-to-day regular mother-child adult relationships. 

23:14 

Now, am I perfect at this? Nope. Absolutely not. But 50% of the time I'm fabulous and 50% of the time I find myself judging and having an opinion I have no right to have. But I'm working at it. I'm aware of it. I'm learning to love unconditionally without any expectations that they have to behave in a certain way, or either earn my love or to keep my love. I see my job at this stage as to just love unconditionally and live my life in a way I feel good about and that I'm proud of. That's it. My learning at this stage in my life is to learn, to step back, give them the space to walk their own path, learn their own lessons, or even not learn their own lessons. And just love them fiercely regardless of what they choose to do. Because my choosing not to love them does absolutely nothing for our relationship except to destroy it. My choosing to love them without conditions gives them a soft place to fall if they need. It gives them a place to turn for counsel and advice if they want. It gives them an example of how to love their own children and their own spouse. And it creates a place where they will want to have a relationship. We don't stop being their parent. We don't stop loving. We don't stop being concerned and wanting the best for our children. But we do step back and let them have their own 50-50 human experience with all of the love and kindness that we can muster. 

25:00 

This is the process of growing up and it is amazing. When we learn to step into these places, our lives change and our relationships change. Love this. I'm so glad that you joined me today. Next week, we are going to delve a little bit more deeply into this "parenting adults" concept because I think it's fascinating and I love it and I want to do some more work on it this week in preparing another podcast for you. So we're gonna do that. Alright, my friends. Thank you for being here. 

25:35 

If this podcast is helping you please share it. Share it with people who you know could benefit from it. There's so much good information here, right? You can leave me a review. Did you know that you can go on to leave me a review and you can subscribe if you haven't so that you can never never ever miss an episode? And you do know that you can go back and listen to previous ones that you haven't listened to. That is always an option. Okay, my friends, that is going to do it. I wish you all the best and I will see you back here next Monday. Enjoy your week. Talk to you later, bye. 

26:11 

Thank you so much for joining me today. If you would love to receive some weekend motivation, be sure to sign up for my free "weekend win" Friday email: a short and quick message to help you have a better weekend and position yourself for a more productive week. Go to tanyahale.com to sign up and learn more about life coaching and how it can help you get to your best self ever. See ya!