Fighting Your Inner Parent Voices

I’m not a psychologist, so I can offer advice only from the viewpoint of a parent who has been through it and who has seen his wife go through it. There are ways to fight these inner voices. There are ways to fight the dirty looks of people in the grocery store. There are ways to get through all of these moments.

Let’s start with the worst: “I’m a bad parent.” When you can’t control your child, and you’re exhausted, you feel defeated, and it’s hard to think rationally. So focus on the moment, and fight the inner voices that make you judge yourself. Do you love your child? Do you do everything you can to protect them and nurture them? Those are not the signs of a “bad parent.” And be wary of overall judgments about yourself like good or bad. The truth is you’re having a rough moment, and it’s not a judgment on you as a person or parent. Have you gotten through rough moments in your life? Everybody has, and you will too.

The same goes with “I can’t do this.” This is especially hard when you’re exhausted from a full-time job, duties around the house, and the challenges of child-rearing no matter who your child is. When this voice starts whispering in your head, fight it with: “All evidence to the contrary.” Again, it’s a rough moment, you’ve done this before, and you’ll do it again.

Perhaps the most difficult voice that enters your head is the one put there by the dirty looks, tsk’s, and eyerolls of other people in public settings. Those voices are telling you the same things: you’re a bad parent or you can’t control your kid. First off, let’s start with the fact that you can’t ever know what people are thinking. It may be a momentary eyeroll, but that doesn’t mean they are judging you as a person. They may just be responding to the situation, like “Okay, I’ll skip this grocery aisle for now.” 

But let’s say they are being judgmental of you, your parenting capabilities, or your kid. If that’s the case, you have to lean in with a big case of the “so what’s.” So what if people are judging you or your kid. They have no idea of what you’re going through. They may have no idea of the additional parenting challenges of raising a kid with Autism Spectrum Disorder, ADHD, or some other form of neurodivergence or emotional issue. They haven’t seen you in the far more numerous moments when you’ve managed these situations and gotten through them triumphantly. In short, they don’t know you.

If any of these dirty looks get overwhelming, or worse, if the same disapproving person continues to do it, flip that moment on its head. How horrible it must be for that person to go through life with so little empathy. How arrogant must it be for that person to think they know more about parenting my child than I do. How lucky they must be for never experiencing moments like this, which is probably a lie. Of course, two wrongs don’t make a right, so you don’t want to judge them too harshly. The reality is you want to get through these moments as quickly and effectively as possible, which requires drowning out those voices. The quicker you can get to “so what,” the more you can focus on the real challenge at hand: your child’s needs.

In all of these moments, whether the voices are all internal or internal by way of external, taking a breath is critical. When you take a breath, it’s a momentary pause. It’s a reset. It’s a moment where you fight all these voices and say to yourself, “So what” and “I CAN get through this.” And in that moment, you’re more likely to make the situation about your child than yourself and the voices in you and around you. 

My wife and I have had these moments. We have autism and ADHD in our family, and a child with Disruptive Mood Dysregulation Disorder. We’ve had to deal with plenty of meltdowns, or just embarrassing moments when one of our kids would just sit down on the floor in the public places where people were walking. Our autistic kid once lied down on the stairs in school between classes. 

But you know what? We got through them. Our kids are older now, and these moments are behind us. We got through them with caring, love, and the support of people who were empathetic. And, at the risk of telling you something you already know: you will too.