There are parts of parenting a child who struggles with mental health, sensory issues or emotional regulation that I think we're afraid to talk about.
We talk a lot about supporting our kids.
Understanding their triggers.
Helping them regulate.
Advocating for them.
Finding the right doctors, therapists, school supports and everything else they need.
But we don't talk nearly enough about what happens when the parent is completely worn down.
When you've been yelled at all week.
When you're constantly waiting for the next outburst.
When things are said to you that really hurt.
When you love your child more than anything in the world, but you're also really struggling to parent them.
That's where I was this week.
Further down, I'm sharing a helpful Hard Moment Tracker I made for myself—one I'm hoping will be life-changing for me, too.
The first week of school absolutely wrecked me
This was probably the hardest first week of school we've ever had.
One of my kids started middle school this year.
So we've got a new school, new routines, new expectations, more independence and a completely different schedule.
Then add puberty and preteen hormones into the mix because apparently middle school needed a little extra seasoning.
I don't know exactly what made this week so much harder.
Maybe it was all of it.
But it was awful.
There were huge outbursts. Rage. Aggression. Fighting. Things said to me that really hurt.
And I cried.
A lot.
There were moments this week when I genuinely thought:
I don't know how I'm supposed to keep doing this.
I hate admitting this, but there are times when parenting can feel like you're trapped in a relationship you can't step away from.
If another person repeatedly screamed at you, attacked you or said horrible things to you, everyone would tell you to protect yourself from that person.
But this isn't another adult.
It's my child.
A child I love beyond words.
A child who is struggling.
And I'm their mom.
I'm not going anywhere.
So by Friday, I wasn't looking for another inspirational parenting quote.
I needed actual help figuring out how to keep doing this without letting the hardest moments change how I felt about my own child.
This wasn't about learning how to handle an outburst
I've been doing this for 11 years.
I know about triggers.
I know about dysregulation.
I know not to try to reason with a kid in the middle of an outburst.
I've read the books. I've talked to doctors. I've sat through appointments. I've learned my kids inside and out.
This wasn't a week where I suddenly realized I needed better parenting techniques.
I was just worn down.
There's a difference.
After enough really difficult moments, I could feel something happening inside me.
I was hurt.
I was angry.
I was sad.
And I was starting to brace myself around my own child.
I'd hear a certain tone and my body would tense.
I'd make a simple request already expecting the reaction.
Yesterday's outburst was following me into today's interaction.
And I realized I was starting to see the behavior before I saw my kid.
That scared me.
Because the hardest version of my child is not the whole version of my child.
I knew that.
I just needed to figure out how to feel it again.
Then I read something that completely changed the way I was looking at it
This weekend I went down a serious parenting-support rabbit hole.
I read. I watched. I listened.
And I came across an analogy that stopped me.
The basic idea was this:
Imagine your child had diabetes.
Their blood sugar dropped too low. They were starving, shaky and irritable, and they snapped at you.
Would your first thought be:
“How dare you speak to me that way?”
Probably not.
You'd recognize that something was happening inside their body.
You'd deal with the immediate problem.
You'd get them what they needed.
The behavior might still not be okay.
But you wouldn't suddenly decide that the behavior represented who your child was.
And then came the part that really hit me:
Why is it so much harder for us to do that when the struggle is something we can't see?
I KNOW mental health works this way.
I know my child's brain can affect their ability to regulate emotions and behavior.
None of this information was new to me.
But seeing it explained that way gave me clarity I desperately needed.
Because when someone is raging at you or being aggressive toward you, your brain isn't calmly standing on the sidelines analyzing symptoms.
You're the person being attacked.
Your body reacts too.
You're hurt.
You're angry.
You're defensive.
You're trying to protect yourself emotionally and sometimes physically.
In that moment, it can be incredibly difficult to look at the person in front of you and think:
Something is happening inside my child right now that is making this incredibly hard for them too.
That was the drastic mindset shift I needed.
The hardest moment isn't the whole child
This is what I've been clinging to ever since.
The hardest version of my child is not the whole version of my child.
There's the rage.
There's the aggression.
There are the hurtful words.
There are behaviors that affect our entire family and absolutely need to be addressed.
But then there's also my kid.
The funny kid.
The smart kid.
The kid who can make me laugh when I'm trying very hard not to.
The kid who has things they're incredibly proud of and things they're incredibly insecure about.
The kid who's navigating middle school and puberty and friendships and expectations and a brain that sometimes makes all of those things even harder.
That kid didn't disappear because we had an awful week.
And remembering that doesn't mean the difficult behavior is okay.
It doesn't mean there aren't boundaries or consequences.
It doesn't mean I don't get hurt.
It doesn't mean I have to stand there and happily absorb aggression because my child is struggling.
I think that's really important.
I can have compassion for what's happening inside my child and acknowledge what it's doing to me.
Both can be true.
What I'm trying not to do is let the symptoms become the way I see the person.
Sunday felt different
So today, I tried really hard to hold onto that.
Not a new de-escalation technique.
Not a new script.
I just tried to see the situation differently.
When things started happening, I kept reminding myself:
This is a really hard moment. This is not my whole child.
And something changed.
Mostly in me.
I didn't feel as personally attacked by every single thing because I was able to create a tiny bit of separation between my child and what my child was struggling with in that moment.
And because I wasn't carrying quite as much hurt and anger into every interaction, I stayed calmer.
The outbursts today were noticeably smaller.
A LOT smaller.
Now...
It was one Sunday.
I am not announcing that I have cracked the parenting code because I have been a parent long enough to know that saying “Wow, I think this is working!” is essentially a written invitation for chaos to arrive at your house.
But today felt different.
And after the week we had, I will happily take different.
I don't want to forget this by Tuesday
Here's where I know myself.
Right now, this is fresh in my head.
I've spent the weekend reading and thinking about it.
I'm motivated.
I'm paying attention.
Then real life starts again.
School.
Work.
Homework.
Dinner.
Someone can't find their shoes.
Someone else needs something immediately.
We're late.
And suddenly all the clarity I had Sunday night is somewhere in the same mysterious place where all the missing water bottles live.
So I decided I needed something to help me keep doing this.
Not another parenting worksheet to print out.
I know myself well enough to know exactly how that story ends.
I'd print it, put it somewhere “safe,” and discover it six months from now underneath a stack of school papers.
I needed something I could keep on my phone and actually use.
So I made myself a Hard Moment Tracker.
I'm not tracking my child's “bad behavior”
This part is really important to me.
I don't want to finish the week with a spreadsheet containing seven days of everything my child did wrong.
That's the exact opposite of what I'm trying to accomplish.
I'm trying to create some separation between the symptoms I'm seeing and the child I love.
So after a hard moment, I can quickly write down what happened.
What happened before it?
What might have been going on?
What did I do?
What actually helped?
Is there something I want to try differently next time?
Because right now I remember how these moments felt more than I remember the useful information inside them.
I remember:
Tuesday night was horrible.
But what if I look back and realize Tuesday happened immediately after a difficult school day?
Or that the biggest outbursts consistently happen when they're exhausted?
Or during transitions?
Or when something else is already bothering them?
Or maybe I'll notice something I'm doing that actually helps.
That's information I can use.
And then I added one question that I think might be the most important part of the entire tracker:
Something good about my kid today ❤️
I need that.
Especially after this week.
Because maybe we had two horrible moments today.
What else happened?
Did we laugh?
Did they tell me something funny about school?
Did they do something kind?
Did I watch them accomplish something?
Did they come sit next to me on the couch?
Was there a completely ordinary ten-minute stretch where I got to see my kid instead of everything we're struggling with?
I don't want the worst 20 minutes of our day to erase the other 23 hours and 40 minutes.
The hard moments don't get to become the whole child.
That's really what this tracker is for.
I'm going to use it this week and see what I notice.
And if you're in one of these hard seasons too, I decided to share the exact tracker I made for myself.
USE THE HARD MOMENT TRACKER WITH ME →
Save your own private copy to your phone and use it for a week.
Maybe we'll notice patterns we couldn't see while we were standing in the middle of everything.
Maybe we'll figure out a few things that actually help.
Maybe we'll discover that 4:00–6:00 PM needs to be removed from the day entirely.
I'm willing to consider all findings.
I'm also asking myself one more question
When my kids are already struggling, I keep coming back to:
What can I make easier?
I can't make middle school easy.
I can't stop puberty, although I remain open to suggestions.
I can't remove anxiety, sensory issues, ADHD or mental health struggles from my kids' lives.
But sometimes I can remove one unnecessary thing their body or brain has to fight against.
That's actually how Parker & Talia started.
I've been a fashion designer for more than 20 years, but I wasn't a children's clothing designer.
I started designing for kids because I was desperate to solve problems for my own.
Clothing was something I actually knew how to change.
I could choose a softer fabric.
Remove the tag.
Change the waistband.
Rethink the construction.
Move the sock seam away from the place my daughter couldn't tolerate it.
I couldn't make everything my kids were dealing with disappear.
But I could make one part of their day stop fighting them.
And I think I'm realizing that idea applies to so much more than clothing.
Sometimes I can't fix the big thing.
But I can ask:
Does this little thing really need to be hard too?
And what about us?
This is the part I don't want to leave out.
Because understanding why something is happening doesn't mean it stops hurting.
I can understand that my child is struggling and still be devastated by something they said.
I can know an outburst isn't a reflection of their whole personality and still need to go into my room afterward and cry.
I can love my child more than anything and still sometimes desperately need a break from parenting them.
This week, I needed support.
I needed to admit how hard this had gotten for me.
And I needed to stop expecting myself to somehow be completely unaffected by it simply because I'm the adult.
Parents have nervous systems too.
Mine was pretty fried by Friday.
So here's to week two
I'm writing this Sunday feeling very different than I did a couple of days ago.
Not fixed.
Not suddenly equipped with infinite patience.
And definitely not foolish enough to predict how tomorrow morning is going to go.
Just more hopeful.
Today was better.
For now, that's enough.
This week I'm going to use the tracker.
I'm going to look for patterns.
I'm going to try to notice what's happening underneath the hardest moments instead of only remembering how much they hurt.
And every single day, I'm going to make myself write down something good about my kid.
Because more than anything, I want to keep remembering:
My child is not their hardest moment.
And neither am I.
Here's to week two.
May it require significantly fewer tissues.