You are listening to the Less Drama More Mama podcast, episode 425: When Worry About Your Child’s Future Shapes Your Parenting
This is Less Drama More Mama. The podcast for moms who want to feel calm, in control, and confident about how to handle anything life throws their way. If you’re ready to go from feeling frazzled and disrespected to feeling calm and connected, this is the podcast for you. I’m your host, Pam Howard.
Hi Mama, and welcome back to the podcast. I just got back from two trips with my younger daughter, Dalia, to visit colleges. She’s a high school senior and doesn’t know yet where she wants to go next year or what she wants to study. I could make that mean something scary: that she isn’t thinking about this decision enough, that she’ll miss a deadline, choose the wrong school, or never figure out what she wants to do with her life. I don’t believe any of that. She says she wants to go to college, and I trust that she’ll find a school that’s a good fit for her. So I’ve been helping where I can. I set up some tours, I talk through options with her, I ask questions, and I remind her about upcoming deadlines. When she answers questions with “I don’t know,” I reassure her that she’ll figure it out. Big decisions take her time, and I’ve learned that pressure from me doesn’t speed that up. It usually slows things down.
Going through this with Dalia reminded me how quickly a small worry can turn into a scary story about a child’s future. I hear about it from moms of younger kids all the time. An eight-year-old isn’t following directions or keeps talking back, and their mom starts to worry: if they’re acting like this now, what are they going to be like at fifteen or sixteen? I understand why a mom’s mind goes there. She cares about the person her child is becoming, she wants to catch problems early, and she doesn’t want to look back someday wishing she had taken action sooner. The problem is when you’re no longer just responding to your eight-year-old, but also to the teenager you’re afraid they’ll become.
For example, your child lies about something small, and you wonder whether you’ll ever be able to trust them again. They copy what a friend is doing, and suddenly you’re worried about bad influences years from now. They want to quit something, and you’re afraid you’re raising someone who gives up whenever life gets hard. One small moment ends up carrying the weight of your child’s entire future, and your reaction starts carrying that weight, too. Your voice gets sharper, the consequence gets bigger, and a two-minute conversation turns into a long lecture about responsibility, trust, and the kind of person your child needs to become. That reaction makes sense when you’re trying to prevent everything you fear could happen five or ten years from now. Meanwhile, your child is still eight.
You do need to deal with the behavior. If they lie, they need help understanding why honesty matters and how to repair the relationship. If they speak disrespectfully, they might need a limit. If they’re struggling a lot, they may need more support than they’re getting right now. You can take a problem seriously without treating it as a prediction. Kids change so much from year to year. The way they handle frustration at eight doesn’t tell you exactly how they’ll handle it at sixteen. One poor choice is one poor choice, and a hard year at eight is one year out of many. When you lose sight of that, fear makes everything feel urgent. It feels like you have to stop the behavior right now or it’ll become permanent. If your child doesn’t respond to your first correction, the fear gets louder: this is getting worse, I’m losing control, I have to do something now.
It’s hard to be thoughtful and present when your body feels like the future has already arrived. You might notice yourself talking faster, repeating the same point, or feeling like you can’t let the conversation end until your child finally understands what you’re trying to teach. I’ve done this with my own daughters, usually with the things I cared about most. When I believed that understanding something right away would protect them from a mistake later, I’d keep explaining and trying to get them to see my point, long after they’d stopped listening. What helps me now starts in my body, because that’s where the urgency shows up first. When I notice my chest tightening, my words speeding up, or that pull to keep talking until they agree, I take it as a signal that I’ve left the present moment. I slow down my breath, feel my feet on the floor, and tune in to my body. It helps me catch up to the fact that I’m here, in my kitchen, with my daughter, today, and the future I’m bracing for isn’t happening. Once I’ve slowed down, I ask myself three questions: What’s actually happening? What needs to be addressed right now? What am I afraid this means about my child’s future? That third question is usually the most useful one for me. Once I name the fear, even just in my head, it’s easier to deal with what’s actually happening.
With Dalia, what’s actually happening is that she hasn’t decided where she wants to go to school next year or what she wants to study. There are applications to be filled out and deadlines to meet, and I can help her with those. The scary version in my head would be that not knowing yet means something is wrong. I don’t believe that, and I don’t need to solve an imagined problem today. I trust her because I’ve watched her doubt herself so many times and then surprise herself. Before her second summer at sleepaway camp, she didn’t want to go. She had been homesick the first summer and was sure she would be again. I acknowledged that she might feel homesick. We talked through the worst-case and best-case scenarios, and I reminded her of the parts of camp she loved. She went, had a great time, and went back for the next three summers. I see the same pattern with school. She’s often harder on herself before a test than she needs to be, and she usually does better than she expected.
When I say I trust my kids will turn out great, I fully expect them to make mistakes, face disappointments, and go through hard times along the way. What I’m trusting is that they can get through those times, and that they can learn and grow from them. How you see your child also shapes how they see themselves. When they can tell you think of them as someone who’s still learning and capable of doing better, it’s easier for them to believe that too. So when your eight-year-old speaks disrespectfully, you can deal with how they spoke without turning it into a warning about the teenager they’re becoming. When your child lies, you can handle the lie, get curious about what was behind it, and figure out what needs to happen next without deciding they’re a dishonest person. When your high school senior hasn’t figured out what to do after graduation, you can help with the next step without treating their uncertainty like a lack of ambition.
Dalia is still deciding what she wants. I trust her to find her way, and I trust my ability to support her through whatever comes next. That second part matters as much as the first. If you believe one wrong move could damage your child’s future, of course every decision feels enormous. When you trust that you can notice problems, learn, repair, and get help when you need it, you don’t have to prevent every possible problem ahead of time. When moms first start working with me, a lot of them don’t trust that things will change, or that they’ll change. They’ve been stuck in the same patterns long enough that it feels like that’s just who they are. Part of my job is believing they can change before they believe it themselves. This is the kind of work I help moms do every day. If you want support, get on the waitlist for the next Damn Good Mama group at lessdramamoremama.com.
The next time your mind races from one difficult moment to a frightening story about your child five or ten years from now, come back to your body and to your child as they are right now. Take today seriously, and leave room for the future to be different from what fear is predicting. Have a great week, mama, and I’ll talk to you next time. Bye.
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