11/20/2025
All moms out there - read this beautiful post by Dr. Melody Aguayo, PhD, Parenting Coach
If I could send a letter back through timeâstraight into that young mamaâs overwhelmed armsâthis is exactly what Iâd tell my 25-year-old self:
Donât tackle a problem after the sun goes down. Everything feels heavier and more impossible in the dark. Let the night pass. Morning always brings a sliver of hope with it.
Appreciate the little hands constantly reaching for you. One dayâfar too soonâyouâll use the bathroom without an audience. Youâll stare at your phone wondering why your kids havenât texted back. Youâll ache for the laughter and the chaos.
Messes are easy to clean. But cleaning too often will stress you out more than the mess itself. If you mop, expect a full cup of chocolate milk to shatter on the floor within minutes. Skip the mop, Mama. Spot clean and move on.
You may carry more than your share of the hard parts of parenting. So much that youâll wonder where the soft parts even are. Look for them anyway. They exist, even if theyâre small and quiet.
Youâll wish your kids were as easy to train as your puppies. Sit, stay, come, leave itâoh, how simple life would be. But kids arenât puppies, and these lessons will require more patience, presence, and endurance than you can imagine.
Dads are not Momsâand thatâs okay. Celebrate their differences. Let them play rougher, laugh louder, use potty humor, make dinner late, and leave a breakfast tornado on the counter.
Make time for your friends. They will remind you of who you are outside motherhood. And your kids need to see you as a whole person, not just a caretaker.
On date nights, do not talk about your kids. Seriously. You talk about them all day, every day. Set a boundary. There will always be plenty to say.
Remember: everyone else is temporary, but your child is forever. You may clash with a teacher for nine months, deal with a rude shopper for five minutes, or navigate Sunday school concerns for a season. But your child? That relationship is lifelong. Choose kindness, patience, and perspective. Your kid always wins.
Being a âbad momâ has nothing to do with how your child behaves. It has everything to do with how you behave. Stay grounded. Take deep breaths. You are doing better than you think.
Kids are vulnerableâfar more than you. Even when they act big, tough, or grown. Iâve never met a three-year-old who wasnât still a baby, and Iâve never met a fifteen-year-old who wasnât just as fragile.
Almost anything is forgivable when you show up with love and good intentions. A childâs capacity to forgive their caregivers will humble you again and again.
Your kids will never care for the pet they begged for. Youâll either take care of it or it wonât make it. But those animals will adore you the most anyway.
If youâre struggling with a childâs behavior, remember this: theyâre struggling even more. Children use every tool they have to please the adults they love. Sometimes those tools feel like a hammerâmeant with good intentions, delivered painfully.
Just when you think youâve figured life out, something new will knock the wind out of you. Peace comes in wavesâbeautiful, fleeting waves. Thereâs no âpeakâ in life, only a mountain range of highs and lows.
And lastly: you will survive the unsurvivable. All the things you feared in this picture? They happen. And stillâyou remain whole. You keep your purpose. You learn compassion for yourself and others in ways your younger heart couldnât have imagined.
