What Helped Me Stay Grounded in One of My Hardest Seasons of Parenting
A simple but powerful way to support your kid without losing yourself
The best parenting advice I ever received didn’t come from a parenting book or an Instagram expert. It came from my therapist, during one my hardest seasons of parenting.
Inside This Post:
Why absorbing your kid’s emotions makes it harder for both of you
What I learned during my darkest season of motherhood
The difference between helping your child feel their feelings and taking them on yourself
Specific examples of what being a mirror is and what it’s not
Why “being a mirror” won’t fix things in the moment, but how it can help you stay steady so you can handle it later
It was 2023, and we had recently moved from NJ to MA with a 15-year-old, a 12-year-old, and a 9-year-old. We’d packed up thirteen years of living in New Jersey, close to my family, and moved into my husband’s childhood home near the beach in Massachusetts, where we had no family and very few friends to speak of.
Things started out kind of okayish. The kids were used to MA, as they’d spent all of their childhood summers in this very house, attending day camp on a little island nearby and spending nearly all their time barefoot, tanned, and together.
And then, in what seemed like one fell swoop, my oldest broke his arm, my middle started seeing the red flags that would lead to being bullied at school, and my youngest was diagnosed with ADHD and Dyslexia. In truth, these things didn’t all happen at once, but in my mind and heart, it sure felt like it…
The real shit hit the fan that October.
It was just before Halloween when we abruptly learned that one of my daughters was a victim of both online and in-person bullying at her middle school. I watched my former powerhouse of a child, once so open-hearted, so confident, wilt into a small shadow of her former self.
It was bad, and for privacy’s sake, I will not share the details, but it was “after school special” level of mind-blowing. It led to a serious mental health fallout for my seventh grader, and while I am being honest.. For me as well.
Watching my child go through that was my darkest period of motherhood.
Week after week, sometimes twice a week, I’d sit on a Zoom with my therapist, recounting and spiraling deep into all my fears. She was a grandmotherly woman, and I craved her steady gaze and deeply thoughtful wisdom. She pulled me out of a dark hole when I thought I’d be stuck down there forever.
One week, she let me finish, then said something so simple it stopped me mid-spiral:
“Lizzie, be a mirror, not a sponge.”
I stared at her, waiting for more. Huh?
As she explained what she meant, something deep inside of me shifted. And I’m not exaggerating when I say it changed the way I navigated the hardest season of my life.
What It Means to Be a Sponge
Most of us parent as sponges without even realizing it. I still do it sometimes.
Here’s what it can look like:
Say your four-year-old was refusing to eat their dinner. They were really stuck on the peas touching the pasta. You tried to separate them out, but it made her scream louder and with more intensity. Within seconds, you were not just dealing with her feelings; you were absorbing them, internalizing them, and adding your own catastrophic narrative on top.
Does this sound like a familiar internal narrative?
“Oh my god, she’ll never eat vegetables. I’ve ruined her. I should never have let her have juice so young. My BFF warned me, and I blew her off. I’m failing at the most basic job of feeding my child.”
Or maybe being a sponge is more like this in your home:
Your kids are fighting…again, and it is only 8:47 AM. One is screaming because their sibling “looked at them while they brushed their teeth.”
And your brain goes, “It’s too much. Why are they like this? What did I do wrong? Other siblings don’t fight this much. Are they going to hate each other forever? Am I raising terrible children?”
When you’re a sponge, you absorb everything: their anxiety becomes your anxiety, their anger becomes your shame, their disappointment becomes your failure. You take on not just their emotions, but a whole story about what those emotions mean about you as a parent.
When you’re drowning in their feelings, you can’t help them navigate their own. You’re too overwhelmed, too caught up in your own spiral to be the steady presence they need.
Don’t roll your eyes and stop reading… because the next part will help.