I’m just gonna say it. Parenting is confusing! There are a lot of decisions to make, and you want to be an amazing mom for your kid. In this episode, I’ll explain why parenting is so confusing and offer some words of encouragement that I hope will make you realize that you’re already doing a great job.

We’ll talk about:

• Why parenting is confusing (it’s not just you!)
• How parenting is like learning to drive
• What it looks like to be a beginner and how to advance your skills in parenting

If you are struggling in your parenting and you are confused and overwhelmed, I want to say that's normal. Nothing's wrong with you. Listen to learn how to embrace being a beginner and build confidence in your parenting skills.

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As a parent, there are a lot of times when you don't know what to do. You think you should know, so then you feel bad because you don't know. You judge your confusion, and it's a whole messy spiral.

Especially in the beginning, you might think, “What is wrong with me? I have no idea how to do this. I'm so overwhelmed.” 

I want you to know nothing is wrong with you.

Why Parenting Is Confusing

The reason parenting is confusing is simply because you have never done this before. It's normal to feel confused in the beginning of doing something new.

Parenting is a long line of decisions and things you need to learn how to do, from when and how to introduce solid foods to signing your kid up for sports to teaching them how to drive.

There are lots of opinions out there, from friends, family and, of course, the internet, but YOU are the one who has to decide. It feels like you're flying blind. 

You make the best decision you can with the information you have and see what happens.

This doesn’t always feel great, but it’s the same with anything new that you’re learning how to do. 

Being a Beginner

I’ve taught three teenagers to drive (both of my sons and my nephew), and I was struck by how little the kids actually knew about how to drive. 

They thought they knew because they'd been in a car a lot. They'd watched their parents drive. But when they got in, they barely knew where the brake was and they had no idea how much pressure to use on the pedals or how far to turn the steering wheel.

Parenting is the same. You had parents or other adults who raised you. You’ve seen other people parent. Maybe you’ve even read books about it. But doing it yourself is a whole other story.

I want to release you from the guilt or the shame around thinking that you should know better and give you permission to be a beginner, especially in the first 7 or 8 years of parenthood. 

This is not something that you should be great at right out of the gate.

You’re already a great parent because you’re a wonderful human, but these unique experiences of parenting are new. You have not dealt with this before. 

For now, I want you to adopt a beginner mindset in parenting like you would with any other skill. 

Right now you’re looking for answers, figuring things out and deciding what areas you should seek out help with. 

Building Your Parenting Skills

Every time we want to we do something new, especially if it matters to us, we learn. We get help, we find a teacher. 

The cool thing is that as you do something, you learn the basics and start to get better at it. Some of those basic things that you used to feel confused about no longer feel so confusing.

You get to know your kid a little bit more. You make some decisions and build up experience and wisdom. You start to realize that you’ve already figured out a bunch of things, and you’re not necessarily a beginner anymore. You’re more of an advanced beginner.

Not everything feels so heavy and hard and weighted, and not everything feels like it's going to matter for the long term.

You realize that parenting is about making choices, and when they don’t work out, it’s not a problem. We can pivot. Not everything you or your child does at 4 years old is what will be happening at 14. 

And as you move into the intermediate stage, you use your beginner skills to problem solve and build even more confidence as a parent. 

An Instruction Manual for Parenting

Parenting isn’t confusing because you don’t have the intuition for it or you're not cut out for it or because something’s wrong with you. It's an actual skill gap.

Just like someone taught you how to drive and to deal with obstacles along the road when they came up, sometimes you need actual teaching in parenting. 

You need new skills and “advanced” level parents who have gone ahead of you, who've seen a lot of obstacles, who've gone through these scenarios and can give you perspective and can tell you what's coming down the road.

People often joke, “I wish this kid came with an instruction manual.” And it's not a joke. It's a legit desire. Because this stuff is hard!

That's why I have spent the last 12 years trying to create the instruction manual for parenting. A big part of what I teach you in my programs is what's developmentally appropriate at every stage, what parenting strategies work and how to implement them.

Your kids think you're an amazing mom. They love you to pieces, and they want you to teach them, guide them and show them how to grow up and be an adult. They need to believe you're capable, because that makes them feel safe. 

If you are struggling in your parenting and you are confused and overwhelmed, I want to say that's normal. Nothing's wrong with you. And I want to invite you to the skills and support you need. Learn more about my upcoming programs or book a free call with me here.

You’ll Learn:

• Why parenting is confusing (it’s not just you!)
• How parenting is like learning to drive
• What it looks like to be a beginner and how to advance your skills in parenting

Free Resources:

Get your copy of the Stop Yelling Cheat Sheet!

In this free guide you’ll discover:

✨ A simple tool to stop yelling once you’ve started (This one thing will get you calm.)

✨ 40 things to do instead of yelling. (You only need to pick one!)

✨ Exactly why you yell. (And how to stop yourself from starting.)

✨A script to say to your kids when you yell. (So they don't follow you around!)

Download the Stop Yelling Cheat Sheet here

Connect With Darlynn: 

• Book a complimentary session with Darlynn
• Learn about the different parenting programs at www.calmmamacoaching.com
• Follow me on Instagram @darlynnchildress for daily tips 
• Rate and review the podcast on Itunes

Welcome back to Become a Calm Mama. I'm your host. I'm Darlyn

Childress, and I am a life and parenting coach. And

I actually typically always have notes prepared when

I do a podcast episode, and I don't today because I just wanna talk

about how come parenting is so confusing.

And I've been thinking about this a lot lately because it's

like, as a parent, you don't know what to

do, and then you feel bad because you don't know

what to do because you're, like, well, I'm a mom. I should know what to

do. And then you start to feel badly about yourself because

of your confusion and you judge your confusion, and it's a whole spiral,

which I understand. I felt it this you know, in the past as

well, and I do still feel it sometimes. But what I wanna offer

to you is kind sort of why you feel confused,

and the reason is because you have never done this

before. Honestly, I think we

think that we're gonna have a kid, and then we're gonna know how

to parent this kid, and the truth is,

we don't know how to do it because we haven't done it

before. I wanna give you some examples of things that you had to learn

how to do. The first one that comes to my mind is driving. I

think about I have taught 2 teenagers how to drive and my

nephew, so I've been through this three times, and how

little the kids know about how to

drive. They think they they know because they've been in a car a lot.

Right? They've watched their parent drive. And they get in, and

they honestly barely know where the break is, the gas

is, the steering wheel. They start to drive and they don't

know that the how, how sensitive

the accelerator is, and so they kinda push the accelerator a little bit

too far far, and then, you know, they're moving the car, they're

accelerating too quickly, and you're like, no, no, no. And then they you say, put

on the brake, and they put on the brake, and they slam on the brake

because they don't really understand what kind of pressure to

put on those pedals because they haven't done it before.

Right? And they go to turn the wheel and both of my kids said,

wow, I didn't know that you didn't have to turn the wheel so much. Right?

They, like, overturned that they think they have to

overturn in order to barely, like, turn left. And

so they have to learn how to do this because they haven't done

it before. And as a parent, I think

about all of the decisions and all of the things

that you need to learn how to do,

for example, when you're a mom, right, and it's time to

introduce solids, say, when when you have a young a young

baby, and you don't know, you're like, well, I

don't know, should I start with rice cereals? Should I start with with,

regular food, like, you know, mushed up peas or something like that.

You ask your mom, and she's like, oh, we always did rice cereal. And then

you look on the Internet, and there's a bunch of different opinions. The Internet

is fantastic, but there's a 100 different opinions, and

so you, as the parent, you are making a

decision, and you're sort of flying blind.

You are like, well, I'm gonna do the best I can. I'm

gonna make the best decision I can with the information I have,

and then I'm gonna see what happens. Right? And

in the beginning of your parenting, I would say from 0 to like

7 or 8, a lot of the decisions you're making, they

are new. Deciding, you

know, where your kids should go to daycare or preschool, or whether they

should do enrichment classes and what kind of enrichment and when you should put them

in sports, and all of those types of decisions,

every time you're making the decision, it's like, oh, you've never you don't

know that much about preschool, you don't know that much about elementary school, you've never

made a decision about which school should be, you know, for your kid or what

kind of sports you should make, and so I want to offer

to you that it's normal to feel

confused in the beginning of doing something.

Now the cool thing is that as you do something, anything,

like as you drive, you get better at it and you

kind of learn the basics of it and you have the mechanics

down. And you are like, okay, you know, I think about my

teenagers and how even, you know, within a couple

of weeks, they were able to stay on the right side of the road, they

were able to stop without slamming on the brakes, they're able to, you

know, know how to turn on the blinker and turn left and, you know,

accelerate appropriately, and that's a little bit

like parenting, when you have some decisions under your

belt, you have some experience, you kind of feel like, okay.

I've got a good rhythm here. I understand the basics of,

like, sleeping and eating and, you know, diapering and

and that kind of thing. Right? And then as you go

along, some of those basic things that you used to feel confused about,

you no longer feel confused about. Now when new things come

up, you're still like, oh, I have

not been faced with this before. Like, say you have a kindergartner

or a 1st grader, and now it's time to figure out what kind of sports

to put them in, or how much sports to put them in, or which

sports, and like, should they do sports and tutoring and

piano and foreign language and religious school, and then

you're like, well, now I feel like my kid is overscheduled. What's right? What's not

right? And then again, you go to the Internet and you try to look it

up. I have been doing some internet searching, you know, every once in

a while on parenting, and I find, you guys, that it

there's not a lot of great information, or there's too much information, or the

information you want isn't quite available.

Like I just wanted to look up something of like, how to help a

kid who like, strategies for ideas if a kid is

highly sensitive to sound. And I'm reading, like, 4,

5, 6, 7 articles, and all of them are not that

helpful. They just keep saying, you know, re remove

the child from the stimulating environment to try to stay calm and,

like, you know, I have a podcast on all about being calm,

so I want I have the same philosophies, but I try to give you the

most practical strategies that I can give you, like actual

ideas, because I can I know that the you

need the ideas, the tools, the strategies? So you go to the

Internet and you try to figure it out, and you're like, I don't,

there's no answer here. You ask your friends. They're also flying blind.

You ask your parents, you know, your mom or your dad or your aunt, and

they are parenting, you know, they parented from a different traditional parenting

model, and it's like, confusing, and so you still

end up confused, and then you feel bad. And

what I want in this podcast episode is to release you from the guilt

or the shame around, like, I should know better,

and just give you the permission to be a beginner.

To go into parenting without some

sort of preconceived idea that you should be great at it,

right out the gate. Like, you're great at it, okay? You're great parents

because you are wonderful humans, But as far as the skills

of, like, actually managing your 3 year old and

getting them to stay in bed after you turn off the light,

or handling a terror, like a, you know, a night

terror with a 4 year old, or dealing with

a 7 year old who's like, I hate you. You're so mean.

Like, you have not dealt with that before, and

it's okay if you're like, what is happening? I don't

understand what to do here. Now the cool thing about

parenting is that as you go through and you have more

experience, you get to know your kid a little bit more, you feel like

you've made some basic decisions and you know what that looks like,

you kinda know when bedtime is, you kinda know your screen time rules,

you have picked your elementary school, they're in some sports,

you start to realize that you can

figure it out, like, you've already figured out a bunch of things and that you

can kind of own that you do know

some stuff, like, you're not necessarily a beginner.

And when I was little and we did, swimming lessons, you would go to,

like, beginner, advanced beginner, and then intermediate, And I feel

like if you have, like, a 7 or 8 year old, you're like advanced beginner

and in parenting. And you not everything feels

so heavy and hard and weighted, and not everything feels like it's gonna

matter for the long term. Once you've made a few decisions and

then you kind of, like, go, well, that didn't work out, like, I

guess I guess my kid's not gonna do karate, because that was a disaster or,

you know, something like that, or like, that preschool was

not for us, and you're like, we had to pull them out, we had to

start over. I had a lot of this, as you know, maybe you don't,

but like, I put Lincoln in kindergarten, at his

traditional age, you know, he was 5 and he went to kindergarten,

and really quickly, I realized that he wasn't ready for

kindergarten. He this was before there were TK programs,

transitional kindergarten programs That's really what he needed.

There wasn't one in our community, and so I pulled him out of

kindergarten in November. I kept him home for a year. I

didn't really do much with him. We just kinda, like,

played, and that was about it.

And I just let him mature, and I put him back

into kindergarten the following year. We were at a traditional

elementary school. I still was like, well, he's fine, but this is

not the right environment for him, and then we found a, like, a

hybrid program that was that fit him better. Hybrid,

meaning it was whole child, like,

focused on not just academics, but also social and emotional, so it's a

hybrid between academic and social emotional program.

Perfect fit for him until 5th grade, and then it wasn't.

But once you have gone through, I chose something, it didn't work

out, no problem, pivot, let's figure it out,

that is how parenting goes. I want you to

know that not everything you do at 4 is

what you're gonna be a kid is gonna be doing at 14.

Like, oh, let's sign them up for, you know, basketball or

baseball or whatever, because then they're gonna be a baseball player in high school, like,

most of the time that doesn't happen, every once in a

while. But for the most part, kids change, parents change, your

situation changes. Things pivot, and as you go

through those beginner stages, you get more confidence.

You get to feel a little bit like an advanced beginner.

You get into becoming, what's next intermediate.

And I think about my kids, and them learning

to drive, and how they got really good at the basics, they could get

themselves back and forth to school, they, you know, could get them back and

forth to work, but then what needed to happen was then there

was all these unusual circumstances, like rain,

right, or, you know, somebody like a

car accident up ahead, right, and you have to or some kind of,

debris on the road, and they have to figure out how to swerve safely.

The the other kinds of obstacles are like heavy traffic, driving on

the freeway, driving downtown, in, you know, in

different kinds of circumstances, and how you use

your basic skills, your beginner skills, to problem

solve. It's not like it's, it's not like you don't have problems

as your kids get older, but when you encounter

them, you've got some experience,

You have some wisdom, you have some, you know,

backstory that you can come back to and go, Oh, yeah, okay. We solved that

problem. So if you are in those beginner

years, and you're feeling, you know,

just like, what the heck? And especially if you have a spirited kid, you have

a neurodivergent kid, you've got a kid who maybe

has, like, they've had some medical trauma in their

background or you have a lot of trauma that you're healing

from and you are dysregulated often, if you've got

kind of anything out, like, like atypical going

on in your family, and you have young kids or you have older

kids, but especially in the beginning, you're like, what is wrong with

me? I have no idea how to do this. I'm

so overwhelmed, and what I see over and over and over is moms

judging themselves, thinking inside something is

wrong with me, and I want you to know nothing

is wrong with you. We don't have

a good way of teaching people

parenting. Well, I do, right? But in general,

there, it's like, you know, people always will joke. They're like, well, I wish this

kid came with an instruction manual. And it's not a

joke. It's like a legit desire. That's why I

have spent the last, whatever, many years, it's been 12 years now, trying

to write, like, the instruction manual for parenting for

myself, and then now I, you know, teach it to, you know, hundreds of parents

around the country, and it would be actually around the world. And so

it's because there was a gap, and it's an

actual skill gap. It's not that you don't

have the intuition for it or you don't have, you know, you're not cut

out for it or like, you know, you're gonna mess up your kids because something's

wrong with you, It's like, no, someone taught

me how to drive, right? Just like I taught my kids how to

drive, and when obstacles come up, I problem solve

with them and we talk through it. We say, oh, it's really rainy out.

How do you think, what do you think's gonna happen on the roads? Or here's

some things that are, you know, gonna come up. Or you're going to trot, you

know, you're gonna drive your car to, you know, to into

Hollywood, like, we live in Los Angeles, they're gonna go into the city, you know,

it's like, okay, we need to talk about parking, we need to talk about, you

know, crowded streets, there's things we need to talk about, and I can talk about

them and then they have to experience them, they have to learn on

their own. And so for you,

parenting sometimes means you need actual

teaching. You need parent educators.

That's my role. I'm ultimately trained as a parent educator.

I wanna educate parents of how to do it. Now, if we think

about the difference in how we're parenting

versus how we were parented, right, how we're trying

to have a paradigm shift in parenting and

focus more on the inner world of the child, less on the

performance of the child, that means that we all

need even more skills. We need people who've gone ahead of us,

who are advanced parents,

who've seen a lot of obstacles, right, who've gone through a lot of,

these scenarios, and can give you perspective and can tell you

what's coming down the road. I think

that in parenting, for so many of us,

we see that we're struggling, we see that we

need help and instead of going to get help,

we secretly like, just Google on the Internet over and over and over again,

or we just like, you know, mom complain to our other

mom friends, who are also just as overwhelmed

for the most part, and we're just, like, blind leading the

blind, we're flying blind, we're asking the Internet for

help and Google and things like that, and we're just getting so

much information that's not useful,

and then we feel bad. So of course, I want you to sign up for

my parenting courses. Of course I want you to book a consultation with

me, not because I want to sell you something, but because I want to help

you. But even if you don't ever do

that, if you don't get help from me, I want

you to know that the reason

that you feel overwhelmed and that you're not quite

sure what to do is because you've never done this

before, and as a parent, the last thing I want you

to do is judge yourself, criticize yourself, beat

yourself up, lay in bed at night just thinking, god, I'm such a

terrible mom. That does not serve you, and it does not serve

your kids. Your kids think you're an amazing mom. They love you

to pieces, and they want you to teach them

and guide them and show them how to grow up and be be an adult.

They're looking at you. And if you're stuck in confusion

and overwhelm, that doesn't serve you or them.

I want you to adopt a beginner mindset in parenting like you

would any other skill. I think about other

things that I have wanted to learn in my life besides

parenting that I have gotten help with, and just so you know, I

did get help with my parenting. In the beginning, before I was a

coach, I needed someone to help me, and I went

to parenting classes. I read parenting books, and

I developed my own sort of approach to parenting in a way

that made sense to me and I started sharing it with my friends and they

were like, this is amazing. Tell us more, and then I would tell them more

and I would learn and then tell them more, and they loved it. And that's,

you know, from there, that's where this, you know, the the whole program has the

Calm Mama coaching program and Calm Mama process and the Become a Calm

Mama podcast. All of this came from my own

beginner mindset trying to get answers, trying to figure things out.

So I was thinking, like, what are the things have I had to seek out

help with? One, having an online business.

Like, to be honest, this is a business. Right? I mean, it's a podcast, but

I also need to figure out how to communicate to you how I help

you, and in the beginning, I don't know how to do that, and so I

had a coach who helped me and she gave me strategies and

tools and like, big picture and like, what's normal and what's

not, and that's a big part of what I teach you in my programs

is, like, what's developmentally appropriate at every stage?

Right? How do you what strategies work, and how

do you implement them, and I give you tools and scripts and all of those

things. I was just thinking about, like, other things that I've had

to learn how to do. My husband and I,

we have taken marriage classes, like, communication classes, and

we've talked to a marriage coach before and figured out

ways to communicate with each other so that we don't, you know, argue and fight

all the time, which we still do, but we are better at it

than we used to be. I've hired people to help me

manage my money and know how to set a budget. I have

hired someone to help me learn how to,

embroider. I didn't know that. I took a sewing class once. So

the thing that I wanna normalize for you, I also take classes at the gym.

Right? Personal trainer, whatever. I don't

have a personal trainer, but I remember, like, when I first went to the gym,

I was like, I don't know how to use any of this equipment. Like, I

have a body, but I don't know what to do with it when I

go inside this this gym. So I learned, like, I didn't know

what a squat was, right? Now I know what a squat is.

So every time we want to we do something, especially if it

matters, we learn. We go and we get

help, and we get a teacher, and they teach us stuff. Your kids,

they go to school, they have a teacher, they learn things. It's like their

most important job, as you say. Right? When they want to,

you know, get better at something, you hire them a coach.

You hire them a tutor. So I wonder,

what prevents you from getting the support you

need for something that you've never done before?

And do you allow yourself the idea

that you are a beginner or an advanced beginner or

an intermediate? Do you say to yourself, I would

love some help here, and do you go get it?

Or do you sit stuck in that confusion and in

that hard, hard spot of, like, I don't know what I'm doing, and something

must be wrong with me? My friend and I

were talking about this, about how hard it is when you have

when you're a young mom, not young, like when your kids are young,

and that you're making all these decisions and you

are feeling overwhelmed because every

gonna And then as you go through, my friends started laughing,

she's like, Yeah, as you go through life, you realize

that not a lot of it matters that much. They your

kids barely remember what they did. I mean, my

kid, I was so worried that Lincoln was

going to be upset that I was missing his basketball championship

game because my husband and I had a little trip planned, just the 2

of us, and I saw, okay, the season ends on March

30th, we'll leave on April 2nd or whatever.

Grandparents will be in town, we're gonna go on this little vacation. And then

I didn't know that there was, like, a tournament and then if you won the

tournament, you were in the championship game and all this all this stuff, that the

season could keep going. And my son's team was really good, and

they won, and they went to the championship game, and

I was gonna be gone. And I felt so nervous about it, like,

is it gonna impact him? Is it gonna be a big deal? Is it gonna

hurt him? Is he gonna be mad at me? Is he gonna feel like I

abandoned him and rejected him and neglected him and all of those feelings?

And the truth is that that's not our kids take on the narrative that we

offer to them, and I just said, hey, buddy, I wish we could be there.

We already had this trip planned. You're gonna be great. Your grandparents will be here,

and I cannot wait to hear about it, and I love you. He had no

issues with us not being there, because he got a clean version of

it. I I dropped all my guilt. I got through it, offered

him, you know, a perspective. He took it, he went to the

game. They won, I wasn't there. Found out all about

it. Wonderful. Wonderful. The reason why I'm telling you this is

because honestly, 10 years later, or however long it's

been, my son does not even remember playing

basketball. Not only does he

not remember winning the championship and me not being there, he

barely remembers ever playing. So the things that we do

when they're little and we think are so important, the things

don't really matter as much as the emotional experience and

the narrative we offer to our kids and our thoughts and feelings about

it. That's why your confusion is

okay, but your thought that something's wrong with me

and I'm not a good mom is not, because that's not the message

we want our kids to have. That's not the message I want your kids to

have. They want to believe that you're amazing, because

they already believe it, so don't argue with them. They want to think you're highly

capable. They need to believe you're capable, because that

makes them feel safe. So if you are struggling in your

parenting and you are confused, I want to say that's normal. Nothing's wrong

with you. And I want to invite you to join the

emotionally healthy kids class or join the emotionally healthy teens

class. Get some tools. Get some parenting

support. If you love this podcast and you listen to it, and you're like, yes,

everything she says is amazing. I love it. It's right exactly where we want. As

a family, this is what we do. This is what I care about. I care

about calm. I care about connection. I care about boundaries. I care

about, you know, helping my kids grow in responsibility without punishment,

like, if these are your values and we are aligned, then

there's and you haven't like, taken my class before, there's no reason for you

not to. So the next round starts March

15th. Actually I'm gonna check real quick. It's March 14th,

okay? It's a Thursday. We meet for 6 weeks. We start

March 14th, 9 am, 6 weeks in a row. It's

$500 for the class, and then you get additional support with

me after that, so that you can learn all the skills and

then get continued support in the course.

You are a great mom. If you have confusion, that's normal. That's

because you've never done it before, and I'm here to help you and guide you.

Please, please, please, I want your takeaway to be:

It's okay to be a beginner at parenting It's

normal to feel confused, and there's nothing

wrong with me. Okay? It's

funny. I feel like saying I love you, but

I do. I do care about you a ton, and, I just

think the world of any mom that listens to this podcast, any dad that listens,

you are incredible. And if you want help, I'm here. You're always

welcome to book a consult with me. 25 minutes, just you and me

on Zoom or sign up for one of the classes. All those links are in

the show notes, and I'm wishing you just the best

week, and I will talk to you next time.