None of us are short on reasons to break down these days. But there are moments when I find myself really struggling to define, never mind live into, the expectations of my #1 job.

The Socks

I bought these “I am a great mom” socks for my mother, but at the age of 80, she found them a bit too snug. So they found their way back into my sock drawer. Last week, with no clean alternatives available, I put them on and headed downstairs to shepherd my kids off to school.

The next 48 minutes were peppered with tension. Clothes were wrong, polynomials failed to factor themselves, the bus seemed early, and no, mom couldn’t “just drive today.” My all too familiar, “Why wasn’t this all done last night?” seemed to bounce off my kids, only to leave me frustrated and fearful that I’m raising an entitled trio of malcontents. Ten minutes after they left, I found myself in tears in the supermarket dairy aisle (we were also out of milk for coffee).

Needless to say, I felt far from a great mom.

What was the matter?

Back home and coffee in hand, I tried to figure out why I was so upset. These days, the possibilities feel endless, but I could tell these tears were mom tears.

I reflexively thought: What would I say to a friend in my shoes (or, socks)? I’d probably remind her that her kids are marvelous AND adolescent, then ask questions to help clarify what was really driving her feelings. That quirky reflex made me wonder, Why do I have an easier time helping someone else? Is my need to think well of myself actually making this job harder?

My mind wandered to a book I had read decades ago, called Difficult Conversations, about how to handle challenging negotiations (one way to view interactions with adolescents). The book asserts that, when negotiating, we all wrestle with three identity questions: Am I competent? Am I a good person? Am I worthy of love?

Another sip of coffee, and I decided to explore all three.

Am I competent?

To answer this, I first needed to figure out: what does it even mean to be a great parent these days?

I’ve long held Alison Gopnik’s gardener as a core metaphor:

“Being a parent is like making a garden. It’s about providing a rich, stable, safe environment that allows many different kinds of flowers to bloom.”

I still love this, but feeling like a good gardener was so much easier when my kids were younger, around me more, and less impacted by media (directly or indirectly). Today, it’s hard to discern what’s a noxious weed and what’s just part of an adolescent landscape. Where Gopnik’s words “stable” and “safe” once felt inspiring, striving to provide those today can stir a sense of overwhelm, and even fear.

I find myself wondering: How can I reimagine our family garden to stretch farther and acknowledge the broader wilderness? And how can I give my kids a bigger role in tending it, rather than growing within a garden that I manage for them?

When they were little, I also found the hummingbird analogy helpful: quietly hover nearby, nearly imperceptible, and be ready when truly needed. Today the goal is the same, but the landscape is more complicated. It’s far too easy to let fear take over and slip into less optimal roles: lecturer, protector, nag, enforcer.

It’s clear I need to evolve my metaphors. This tension — how to double down on being a gardener while rebooting our inner hummingbird for a much more complex world — is exactly what I want to keep exploring.

Am I good?

I also think of parenting as my number one teaching job. A forever Reggio Emilia devotee, I see my role as a guide — a sacred chance to support each of my kids in driving their own learning and finding their own way.

Back when I taught in a classroom, I cared deeply about my students. But I felt nowhere near as emotionally attached to them as I do to my three kids. I’m riding this ride with my whole heart buckled in. I feel it deeply when they experience loss or pain—and when they direct some of that tough emotion my way. And yet, I know they need to make their own mistakes and learn from trial and error. It’s just hard, when you are in the passenger seat of your own family’s car, not to grab the wheel when I see a crash coming that they don’t.

Emotional responsiveness is vital. It helps kids feel seen. It supports them in building their own ability to understand, regulate and harness their emotions and to recognize and respond effectively to the emotions in other people. But too much attunement can push kids to over-rotate on their feelings, and can put a parent too much at the center, blocking kids from learning lessons they need to learn. The job, then, becomes judging when and how to actively engage, and when to step back. Hard to do when you’re so invested.

This brought me back to what I’ve learned about early social development from Stanley Greenspan or, more recently, the FIND Program at Stanford. These high impact approaches share an idea of social learning as a series of open and closed circles of interaction, where every social exchange is a kind of mini experiment. Kids say or do something, then they learn from the responses that comes back. We apply this generously to young children. But what if we extended it to our tweens and teens?

What if we reframed difficult interactions not as reflections of our relationship, but as our kids’ experiments? And, what if we expanded our role to include co-researcher, there at the ready to observe and offer useful feedback? That might mean shifting from “You really hurt my feelings — don’t you realize how much I do for you?” to “I know you were trying something out there, but what you said landed pretty harshly. Is that what you were going for?” That reframe doesn’t mean we stop feeling it. It means we use what we feel in service of helping our kids learn. It takes a good bit of the sting out, and would likely help kids more.

I also wonder, what if kids actually got to see themselves as researchers, and the choices they make as chances to learn. That kind of mindset can naturally help kids stay more open, curious and discerning. It may also help kids feel less shame and feel better able to include the people they love, including us, in the experiments they inevitably run.

Am I worthy of love?

This question felt the most tender.

When one of my kids and I are out of sync, or when one lashes out, there’s a part of me that just feels hurt. Enough of those hurts, and I can slip into a kind of mourning — a longing for what once was — even though I love them more every day we live.

Intellectually, I know they’re still developing. But teens can deliver messages in a way that feels grown-up enough to really sting. And that can trigger us to sting back or, perhaps worse, to retreat. Both extremes risk the very safety our kids need so badly.

Jennifer B. Wallace writes about how everyone needs a cornerman — someone who can be there, listen, take a deep interest, and share in both joy and suffering. This role doesn’t ask us to be invulnerable. It asks us to stay in the ring. To absorb the hard rounds, tend to what needs tending, and be ready when our kids come back to the corner. I wonder if this, too, is a metaphor for this moment in my life as a parent?

I love that a good corner-person supports both the hard moments and the joys. Even though, to me, adolescent joys seem less frequent than they did in early childhood, it feels really great to slow down and savor with my kids whenever they have wins.

I’m also pretty sure a good corner-person is also a bucket-filler, actively refueling with as many sweet moments as we can capture. Moves like shifting my schedule to have 15 minutes of breakfast with my oldest. A best-of-five ping pong challenge with my youngest right after dinner. Asking my middle to do homework at the kitchen counter while I cook. Turning dinner into a picnic every once in a while. Singing along to my kids’ new favorite songs in the car until at least a few become our songs. Watching shows I’d never choose — all to savor a few moments under a shared blanket.

The fuller our buckets, the less depleted we feel when there’s an inevitable tipping point.

Bringing it home

These three questions — Am I competent? Am I good? Am I worthy of love? — don’t resolve neatly. For me, they seem to spark even more questions—and some evolving metaphors. But these new directions feel like fruitful ones to explore. I have a hunch that staying open and curious as I wrestle with them is a solid way to keep growing alongside my kids.

And finally: to everyone who could find themselves crying in the dairy aisle in a pair of “You are a great mom (or dad, or caregiver of any kind)” socks, I see you, and I see how much you love your kids. To my mind, that’s true greatness.

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