Ever feel like you are a mean mom? The difference between being mean and being firm can be confusing. A lot of moms think that when they are firm with their children, they are being mean.

You’ll Learn:

1. How to tell the difference between firmness and meanness as a mom
2. What to do when you’ve been mean toward your kid
3. Why building firm, strong leadership in your family is so important

Get clear on the difference between being firm and mean and what to do when you’ve actually been mean with your child.

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The Difference Between Being Mean & Firm

I want you to know…

1. Using a firm voice isn’t mean.
2. Keeping people safe isn’t mean.
3. Having limits isn’t mean.
4. Enforcing your boundaries isn’t mean.
5. Following through on consequences isn’t mean.

Being mean is when you hurt your child’s body. It’s when the moment of holding their arm to protect yourself or others becomes you squeezing too hard, or shoving their body away.

Being mean with your mouth is when you personalize your kid’s behavior or mistakes and say something about them as a person.

There might be a moment or many moments when you’ve been physical with your child in a way that crossed a line. Or moments when you’ve called your child a mean name. Or lectured them into shutdown mode. Cornered them with your rage.

1. Lectures are often mean.
2. Insults are mean.
3. Name calling is mean.
4. Physical aggression is mean.
5. Threats are mean.
6. Sometimes rescuing your kid from a mistake is mean.

What To Do When You’ve Been a Mean Mom

As you hear me share examples in this episode, you might be flooded with shame and guilt.

The way to get out of that shame and guilt is to talk about these moments. To find out what was going on for you in that moment. To be tender enough with yourself that you can say what you did, and ALSO explore what led up to that moment. You can’t change something if you won’t look at it.

The best thing you can do is find your firm, strong, leadership voice as a mom. Get clear on what is and what is not allowed in your family. Be firm, without being harsh.

I’ll leave you with this quote from one of my clients who said “Firm limits are the shortcut to the behavior you want without making your kid feel like shit in the process”. Yep. Firm, but not mean. You’ve got this.

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All right, welcome back to another episode of the podcast. I'm Darlin,

I'm your host, and I am going to talk today about

being mean as a mom. And what I have been hearing

from some of my moms, especially moms with like 3

to 6 year olds or 3 to 7 year olds, but even older, is

this thought of like, oh, I'm such a mean mom, like,

oh, I was so mean to them, or I'm so mean, or isn't that mean?

Or do you think I'm mean? And they're asking me if I think that

they're mean. I think that there's this confusion around

being mean and being firm. And I want to talk about that today.

So a lot of moms, they think that when they're being firm with their

children, they are being mean. So let me give you some examples. Like when you

have one kid pulling the other kid's hair, like, you have one kid and they're

like, and they're pulling the other kid's hair, it's not mean to say, stop

that, don't do that. That's not safe. Using that firm voice.

Or when your child is hitting you or spitting on you,

it's not mean to say, no, don't hit me. My body

stays safe. Don't hit. It's even not mean

to grab their hands and hold them

tightly, not squeezing, not hurting them, but to hold them while

you are looking at their face and saying, no, don't hit,

hit. That hurts. That's not okay.

I want you to understand that that's not mean. Moms will say, you

know, oh, I was so mean. I'm such a terrible mom. And I will often

say, okay. Like if someone comes to a coaching call and they say, I was

so mean, I don't assume that they were and I don't assume that they

weren't. I actually want them to tell me the story. And

often as they share the story, they'll tell things like that I've just

described. They've said they've used a firm voice when their

kid has done something unsafe or they've set a boundary with their body,

right? They're like, don't touch me, don't hurt me. That hurts my hair. And

moms will think, oh, I'm being so mean when what they've done is they've just

clearly communicated to their child that their behavior doesn't work.

I'm going to give you some examples of when you need to be firm with

your child. If your 3 year old is screaming in A restaurant.

Not because they like pinch their finger or, you know, have a tummy ache or

something, but they're just kind of like, give me more french fries or

whatever. Or you've told them no, don't you, you can't eat his food.

That's your brother's food. Then it's not mean to take them outside.

And then with a very clear voice say,

screaming in a restaurant isn't okay. We'll go back inside. When

your body is calm, let me help you calm your body. Let's jump up and

down together. Is it mean to take your 3 year old out of a restaurant

when they're screaming and then be firm with them? No, it's not.

When your 8 year old is using swear words, it's not mean to

say, those words are not okay. You can stay here with

us as long as you use kind words. Do you hear? My voice

is very firm. It's very strong. I think of this as

parent leadership, but I'm using a very strong voice

and saying those words are not okay. You can

stay here wherever you are. Like if you're playing in the family room or they're

at their neighbors or wherever they are, you can stay here as long as you

use kind words. And then if they're not able to use kind

words or they want to, you know, see what happens if they, you know, say

the F word or whatever. It's not mean to say. Looks.

Looks like you are using potty words. You can go into

the bathroom and say all those words and then come out when you're ready. We're

taking the charge out of those moments. We're kind of

communicating to our child like, these words aren't okay in this space. If you want

to say them, go in there. I love that for potty talk, by the way.

Like poops. I don't like to say the F

word, you know, but like fart, you know, it's like

whenever your kids are using potty words, you can also say, oh, those words are

not those words. Don't. Those are only potty words. You can go in the bathroom

and say those words. So it's not mean, right? It's not mean

to let your child know that because they made you late for work

four times this week, you aren't willing to drive them to the mall on Saturday.

I hear parents often say, oh, it's so mean. I'm being so mean.

If I say, no, no, you're going to have to hold

boundaries. You're going to have to set limits. In order to teach your kids

how to behave in the world. Like what works? If you're thinking

you're being mean, then you're not going to be able to set those limits. If

you think limits are mean, it's going to be really hard for you to set

limits. And that's why I'm letting you know that setting limits

isn't mean. It's not mean to leave your

7 year old at home with their mom or their dad when you go to

Target. Even if you promised that you would take them to go to Target.

It's not mean to say, actually no, I'm not taking

you to Target because you called me stupid wicked woman

earlier today and I don't want to have to go to Target and have someone

call me names. So you're not coming. Is it mean?

No. It's not mean to hold a four year old's hands when they are

hitting you or their sibling. It's not mean to not give your

teen allowance or not let them drive the car or not buy them a

new dress or tie for homecoming if their room is a mess.

So I want to clarify what mean is and what mean isn't. And I

think a lot of parents confuse being firm with being mean.

So using a firm voice isn't mean. Keeping people

safe isn't mean. Having limits isn't mean.

It's actually mean if you don't. Enforcing your boundaries

isn't mean. Following through on consequences isn't mean.

So I don't want you to confuse being firm with being

mean. This is what being mean actually is. Being

mean is when you hurt your child's

body. And when I say hurt your child's body, what I mean is

there's a moment when, when you are holding someone's hands,

protecting yourself or protecting other children. And

there's a moment when you go from protecting yourself to

actually hurting your child, right? Squeezing too hard or shoving

their body away. There are going to be moments when

you've been physical with your child in a way that crosses the line.

There's going to be moments when you've called your child a mean

name like you've actually name called them. There's going

to be moments when you are meanly lecturing and

pushing your child into shutdown mode. There are going to be

moments where you're mean and you're cornering your children with your

rage. There are moments when we say those

sentences, those things, those insults and we know we're hurting our

kids. You know, when you're being mean truly but

if you convince yourself that you're being mean when you're being

firm, it is going to be get very confusing about how to be

more firm and how to stop being mean. You cannot combine the

two. So we want to separate when you're actually being mean to when

you're being firm. As I say, those examples of, you know, being

too physical with your child, saying something mean,

swearing at them, cornering them, screaming in their

face. I know that if you have done some of these, right

now you're hearing me say these examples, and you're like, yep,

yep, yep, I've. Yep. That I've done that.

And you might be flooded with shame and guilt. So I want you

to just pause and I'm gonna help you move through that shame and guilt because

I don't want you to get stuck there with the meanness,

okay? To get out of shame and

guilt. It is vital, it is so important that you talk about

these moments when you have actually been mean, when

you've actually crossed that line, when you've been too physical or

too harsh. It's important to talk about those moments.

And a lot of times moms will talk about the other

moments where they're like, I was so mean, I had to,

like, pull my child off my other child. And you're

admitting that in order to kind of see if it's safe to

admit the real things. And then the other mom is like, oh, that's.

That's mean. Okay, well, I guess I'm mean, too. And all of a sudden, neither

of you are having a real conversation about times when you lose your shit with

your kids, because that's what I'm actually talking about here.

When we are honest about what happens when we

cross that line, there's a lot of healing that can come.

And I'm going to model, I'm going to share with you a story of myself,

of how I crossed that line, and when I have

been mean and harsh and too physical with my kids.

When you want to take a look at some of these moments, I want you

to be really tender with yourself and being

curious about why you acted that way instead of

judging and being mean to yourself about being mean,

being tender. So I'm going to share with you right now a moment when I

was too physical with my child, a moment when instead of being

firm, I was mean. And, of course, this is hard to admit on a

podcast, right? But I also know that if I keep moments

like this in the dark, or if you keep moments when you have been mean

in the dark. That what happens is that we get strangled by the

shame of those moments. We get stuck in that shame of

feeling like we are bad and that we are wrong. Being stuck in

shame is the opposite of becoming calm. You cannot

become calm until you admit to the moments when you aren't.

So I'm going to admit to a moment when I wasn't. So here's what was

going on. Lincoln, my oldest, who's now 18,

he was around 18 months old. And we were on a camping trip and it

was hot and dusty and I was pretty overwhelmed by

all of it. Like keeping a baby safe around a fire with

dirt. And all of that was hard for me. And I'm an outdoorsy person, but

having a little one on a trip like that, it was so, so hot

and dusty. Dusty campground. And of course, we hadn't

slept much, and it was in the morning and it was just Lincoln and I

in the tent and he needed a diaper change. And while I was changing his

diaper, he kicked me in the stomach. Now, I'm going to be honest, I

have no idea if it was a hard kick or not, but it hurt.

And without a second of pause, I slapped his leg.

I can remember even now, as I talk about it, taking my right hand and

just whack one right on his thigh. And he didn't have any

pants on because I was changing him. And I could see

that red welt on his leg. And it was, without a

second of pause, it just kick, slap. It was like that

fast. When I saw that little red handprint, I was

filled with guilt. Now, guilt is a normal emotion,

and it makes sense to feel it when we do something wrong. When we

hurt someone, we ought to feel some guilt. Or it's normal to feel

some guilt. When we are mean, it's normal to feel some guilt. And I did.

I felt a lot of guilt. I felt very, very bad for him. I felt

very upset that I had done that. And then almost

immediately, I was flooded with shame. So shame

is different from guilt. Guilt says I've done something

wrong. Shame says there's something wrong with me. And in

that moment, I was like, I'm a terrible mom. I shouldn't even be a mom.

If other moms knew I did this, they would hate me. I hate.

And I just felt just so awful and just

like, terrible. Not, oh, I've done something wrong, but,

like, something is wrong with me. That's what shame

is. And then, of course, I catastrophized the

moment, and I made it mean A bunch of things about the future.

Like, oh, my God, I'm gonna mess this kid up. He's gonna be so, you

know, such a disaster. I'm ruining him. So then my

anxiety tapped in and I was definitely, like,

spiraling and just feeling so terrible and

really stuck. So in that moment, I didn't,

I want to say, like, I didn't immediately admit I needed help. I didn't, like,

leave the tent and be like, oh, my gosh, I just hit him. I

feel so bad. Something is happening in me. I probably need some

help. And I'm not saying, like, everybody needs help the first time, or like,

if you hit your kid one time, but if you are

kind of in a pattern of hitting your child or like

noticing that when your stress response gets activated that you

turn mean, then it's important to get some

help. It's important to address your rage and your

reactivity. What was happening for me in that moment is

now that I've admitted it and gone back and talked about it

and, you know, watched the pattern in me for years and years

of like, why was sometimes. Why was I being

activated sometimes? Why. Why did I turn like that with my kids?

And so for me, I was having kind of a trauma

response. I was acting out some old wounds

in my life from my childhood. So for me, as

a child, I experienced a lot of abuse and neglect.

And I don't want to, like, make this all, like a downer

episode, but that was true for me. That's my story

now. One of the coping strategies that I created for

myself in order to deal with all

of that kind of chaos of my childhood is that I became

hyper vigilant. I became on guard. I became really

protective of myself, and I was very,

very strong, right? No one will hurt me. No one will. I will never put

myself in a position where I am victimized. I am not a victim, right?

So I was like, embodying a. A very powerful

sense of being. And that protective strategy

worked for a really long time. It was really healthy

and good for me. But when I became a mom,

that protective strategy, that vigilance and protectiveness

of my body and of me became

a problem. Because here's the thing. Kids hit,

kids kick, kids spit, kids scream. They do all sort

of, sort of out of bounds behavior because they're young, they don't know

what the bounds are. They have to break the bounds. They have to go outside

the bounds in order to learn what's in the bounds, right? That's what we're

doing as parents. Is where we're teaching our children how

to stay within the bounds, how to manage their feelings in

ways that work. They start out by acting out all of their feelings

in ways that don't work for everybody else. And then it's our job

to teach them how to act those feelings out in ways that do work for

everybody. But when my brain was seeing those behaviors,

like kicking me as an actual threat to my safety and

to my core identity, I saw red. I mean,

honestly, I was highly reactive. My stress response was

zero to whatever, a thousand in a split

second. So I would get bigger and louder and stronger and meaner

and colder and hotter. And basically, I did all sorts of mean

things to shut their shit down so I could feel better. That was

my pattern. That's why I was mean. Not because I was

a bad person, not because I'm not a good mom,

not because I am, you know, like, yeah, a

horrible person. There's nothing wrong with me. I just had

maladaptive coping strategies to stress, and I needed

new tools. Is it mean to hit your kid?

Yes. Yes. Is it mean to call

your kid a name? Yes. Is it mean to scream at your

child in their face? Yes. But here's the thing. We have to

talk about the mean things in order to get help to change. If no one

knows you're doing that, then you're going to get stuck. If

shame would have kept me stuck, I would have stayed in that mean mom

story, and I would never have learned how to become a calm mama. And

like I said, I didn't get help with my rage until

Lincoln was four. This happened at 18 months. For two and a

half years, I was sort of stuck in

this very, very hard turmoil place

of shame and also continuing to use

the. These coping strategies that were causing harm for me and for my

kids. This was not me being firm. This was not

me being clear and setting really clear limits. I had no

idea how to do any of that. I would just pop. And

once I did get help, it took me a few years before I was

regularly able to stop being mean with their bodies.

Like, I don't wanna say years. Actually, that happened pretty fast. I learned

like, oh, I gotta pause and reset. And, you know, I have a ton of

episodes on regulating your emotions as the parent. Right.

Pausing, resetting your body, resetting your mind, resetting

your emotions. And I. I talk about it all the time

because I know that that's key. If you want to stop being mean, you have

got to pause and reset. It was pretty quick learning how to not

hurt their bodies. But I do remember even like Sawyer being

four and me getting so angry with him.

And this would have been after two years of being in,

you know, getting some support and some help and still,

like, I remember picking up his body. He was 4, picking up his body and

kind of tossing him on the bed and oh, just

feeling so terrible about it. Less shame

though, to be honest. I was like, oh, okay, what happened there?

Why was I so reactive? What was going on for me? What did I need

to do? When could I have paused, right? Because I'd already had some time, tools.

Now it has taken me longer to stop being mean with my

mouth. Like, I yelled for a lot of years

and, you know, it took me a long time to figure out how to regulate.

Like, I could kind of control my body, but not so much my mouth,

it took longer. So what is it? What do I mean by being mean with

your mouth? Okay, it's when you personalize your kids behavior

or if they make a mistake and you say something about them as a

person. So personalizing as an attack, right?

Like saying, what is wrong with you? You always do this. No one's gonna like

you if you keep doing this. You're so mean. You're a

liar. Do you know what happens to liars?

You never change. You're always like this. Are you ever gonna learn

or keep eating like that and you're gonna be fat or stop being a

crybaby. Your brother's not crying, right? You get the point.

I don't wanna go too far with these because it feels really awful to hear

them and. But that's when you're being mean with your mouth. So

lectures are often mean. Insults are mean. Name calling

is mean. Physical aggression is mean. Threats are mean.

Sometimes even rescuing your child from a mistake is mean because

you're like protecting yourself because you don't want your kid to be in

pain, so you rescue them. So you deprive them of a learning

opportunity. That can be kind of mean. As I talk about this,

you might be like, okay, shit,

I am in a pattern of being mean. Like,

you know the difference between being firm being mean. You know,

if you're being mean and you might be feeling like, okay, so what

do I do about it now? The first thing you want to do, like

I said, is admit it to someone. Go to your partner

and say, say, say, hey, I'm struggling. I don't think I was honest with

Kevin about this for a really long time. It was like I could kind

of keep it together when he was around. Plus, you know, he

is a calming, regulating figure for me.

And so I could, I didn't act like this, like, I almost

had like my social self on, but when I was alone with the kids is

when this kind of behavior came out. And so admitting it to

your partner or to your sister or your

brother or your best friend, that's the whole

reason I started working as a parent coach. I want to, I want to help

you understand why you act the way you do

so that you don't feel shame about it, that you have clarity, that you can

forgive yourself and then get tools to change. And I

also want to help you understand why your kids act the way they do so

that you don't get so stressed by it. And that way you can give that,

give them tools to teach themselves how to

manage their emotions so they don't become so reactive.

But here's your takeaway for the week. When you have the thought

you're gonna have it. Oh my God, that was so mean. Okay.

When you have that thought, I want you to look at what you actually

said or actually did and then look like, okay, were you

being firm or harsh? Were you being clear

with your limit or were you lecturing? Were you setting a

boundary and reinforcing it? Or were you

personalizing their behavior? Were you giving a

consequence or were you giving a threat? Because here's the thing.

If you think that good old fashioned parenting where you teach your kids

how to, you know, change their behavior, we teach our

kids how to understand why they're behaving in a certain way and then

because of their feelings, right? And then giving them new tools to

get those needs met, those emotional needs met, or process those negative

emotions in better ways. But we have to do that with

limits. We have to do that with the connection. We go. It's calm.

Connect. Limit set. Correct. Calm is about you. Connect is about

helping your child process their negative emotion. Limit set

is creating limits and boundaries so your kids know how, what is expected of

them and then consequences. Letting your kids fail and learn from

their mistakes, that's parenting and that's being the

leader in your family. And if you're thinking that parenting is mean,

your kids are definitely going to pick up on that energy. They're going to decide,

looks like there aren't any grownups around here, so maybe I should be in charge.

If you think being a leader is mean, then you're leaving a

leadership vacuum. And guess who is going to fill that vacuum?

Your kids. So they will decide that they should be in charge,

they won't know when your rules matter and when they don't. If you're not

strong enough as a leader, you'll feel super frustrated because they're not

following your rules and keeping within your boundaries. And then you might slip into

meanness in order to get back control. So firmness is

very, very valuable. And viewing yourself as the

leader and thinking, yes, I can be a leader without being a dick.

Right? You don't have to be mean, you don't have to be a dictator. You

can just be a leader in your family and you can be a gentle leader,

but you are still in charge. So the best thing you can

do is to find your firm, strong leadership voice as

a mom. Like finding that voice, that strong

tone where you're not harsh but you're clear.

I think of that as leadership getting clear on what is

allowed and what is not allowed in your family and communicating that

firmly without being harsh. So I'll leave you with this

quote from one of my clients who just said this literally

today. She said, so firm limits are the shortcut

to the behavior you want without making your kid feel like shit in the

process. Yep, that's exactly right. Being firm

but not being mean. So that's what you're working on. And if you're

being mean, get some help. And if you don't know what being firm

is and you don't know how to be a leader in your family, let's talk.

You can always check out calmammacoaching.com youm can find out how to book a

session with me, Discovery call and get all the support, get on the

newsletter if you're not on it, all of that. So calmmamacoaching.com is

the place to go. And in the meantime, I just want you to know

you've got this mamas. You are the leaders in your family and your

kids are lucky to have you. Alright, have a great week.