kid blowing bubbles on a mint green background with the words “are parenting influencers a bad influence?”

Do you hate parenting influencers?

Ugh, I’m so done being told that I am doing everything wrong. That I’ve already messed up my kid! These influencers are just praying on parents who are already stressed and giving them a problem to need to solve in order to keep growing!—I’ve thought it too. My anger of choice was directed towards “sleep coaches.”

This kid is just not going to sleep, I haven’t slept for more than 3 hours in 3 days, and I will rock him to sleep if I want to even if you imply that my kid will go to college needing to be rocked if I keep that up! That will show you!

Spoiler he didn’t. He already doesn’t. And the coaches don’t even know I exist. I wouldn’t even comment under their posts. I would just read them angerly.

But what changed isn’t that all the influencers were wrong (idk they could be!) but rather that I learned how to come to terms with my anxiety. The influencers are just there doing their thing. While I would have kept being stressed about them even just existing, if I didn’t come to terms with what was going on with me.

Anti-however I grew up

candy hearts https://www.instagram.com/candyheartscomics
blue heart: we will not mess you up. Yellow heart like our parents messed up. green small heart, a whole new kind of fucked up

I grew up with super mega stressy depressy trauma with a capitol T that therapists and other doctors came to diagnose as Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).

So, I became obsessed with making sure that every interaction with my child was perfect. Not in any way traumatizing or hurtful and just in general, by the book. Who’s book? Well, it depends. I had books and PDFs friends shared to get him to sleep perfectly. I had books, Instagram posts and facebook groups to tell me how to feed him perfectly.

But as you may have guessed, he didn’t read the books (posts, comments, groups), I did. So, he had no idea that he was doing X to get Y. But the assumption was that I would know, so I could regulate myself and help him figure it out. Ok.

If all went according to plan, he would have a perfect childhood and grow up perfectly whole, untraumatized and unscathed. While mom was an anxious wreck and assumed she already did everything to F**ck up and oh jeez, did he just go away for college and tell me he didn’t want to visit this weekend? I KNEW IT. I still f**ked up and he will never want to see me? Because of course I would!

The parenting blogs and posts are there not because they need to fear monger, but because many, like me, have been socially programmed to assume we’re the problem.

It started when ads sold us on the idea that bad breath was the reason no one wanted to date you (but wait, there’s a cure! Listernine!). And today, we’re so used to blaming ads for selling us on a problem and giving us a cure for said problem, that we assumed this trend stayed true.

But most of the parenting blogs and posters were parents just like us. Some so over-occupied with parenting perfectly that they got degrees to answer their questions (sorry PhD friends, but I know you’re not arguing and know I was also in that boat). They’re not “selling us on problems.” The “problems” are there, regardless of a “solution” even existing.

Because you can’t “solve” parenting.

You, a human, are raising another human. You’re both flawed, and the first year of their life, you have to decode what they want and need. So essentially, parenting influencers are just folks who think they have the key to the Morse code of raising a kid.

And some of them have a code that works for you, and others still feel like they’re definitely missing key decryption info. But at the end of the day Morse code is just that, Morse code. And there’s a lot more detail to language that is way too hard to get out is dots and dashes, quickly and flawlessly. The dots and dashes (how your kid communicates their needs to you) might be universal, but how you interpret the words that those dots and dashes put together is never going to be straightforward.

Add to that an assumption that you must be always screwing up, and you have a recipe for nuclear weapons going off when they shouldn’t have.

Are you done with the Morse metaphor? Oh yeah!

Parenthood is hard.

And so often I’d hear: “but it’s amazing, all this information is out there!”

To which I would reply: “Yep. And so are everyone’s opinions. Who do I trust?”

I started parenting already deep in the hole of “I can’t even be pregnant right.” And once I came home with the baby, it didn’t matter that I already did “correctly” what I was most worried I would not be able to do correctly, breastfeeding. But already I moved the goal post. Hurry! There’s still so much to potentially mess up!

[In case it’s not clear. There is no perfect or correct. It’s only what I thought I HAD to do to not break this fragile little person. Nothing is or will be perfect or correct other than taking care of your baby. That means feeding them however you can and they will, eat. Formula, boob, some other thing or whatever else]

And Mess Up I did.

How Did I Mess Up?

Food

I went back and forth about whether my kid had a dairy protein allergy [not the same as lactose intolerance which is an allergy to sugar in milk, not the proteins that make it up].

The fear? That my breastmilk was actually hurting my kid, no matter how often I was told it couldn’t be by my trusted doctor.

I recall a day where, during every newborn nap, instead of resting myself, I was re-reading the same six pages on baby food from the book Baby 411 [good book, link gives me a kickback]. I actually remember thinking Maybe it will say something new? Something I obviously had not thought of but of course the answer existed. It must.

Sleep problems

I tried to be chill about sleep until he was about 4 months old, then I became so regimented, folks in the military might have taken notes from me. I’d yank him from whatever activity we were doing and start the wind down process, which was the same every time, for his nap.

When it was time to drop a nap I would be just as strict on adding those additional 15-30 mins until we changed. At just the smallest hint that he was getting too much sleep, I’d calculate and re-calculate the hours from day to night, using all the apps I had at my disposal. I had a week window schedule on my wall (with cited sources).

And as though having a baby that doesn’t sleep on account of being a baby isn’t enough, I was exhausted. The amount of brain power it took to count, recount (as the world ended if we were late of off schedule)

Yep, It’s Post Partum Anxiety (PPD)

I’m pretty sure it’s clear at this point, but I was not well. I had postpartum anxiety. I talked with my therapist the whole time. I was ready, I knew all about it being a thing and I still burst into tears when my pediatrician asked me the daring question “are you ok?” at one of our appointments. I was quite literal about exemplifying the expression “burst into tears” for her to reply.

I did it all out of love. But if I’m also completely honest, out of punishment for myself. Because of course, I didn’t deserve for a happy and healthy baby to exist. I assumed I deserved bad things. So, around every corner, I expected proof that that’s exactly what was going on.

Then I forgave myself. I don’t recall exactly the day, but I just boiled over. The pressure was too much, the sleeplessness was too much. I decided that I had read enough because everything I read started saying the same thing in more or less terms. And yet the chasm inside of my telling me that I messed up was still not full.

Maybe it wasn’t the info I was getting. Maybe it was me.

You Are Doing Enough, Mom

What if I couldn’t figure out this parenting thing and kept messing it up because it’s not figure-out-able? Because to figure it out is to figure out human-ness. And we’ve been trying to do that since we made cave drawings.

There will be no answers, only best guesses, and that was going to have to be enough.

Which meant I was doing enough.

I cared enough to read. I cared enough to try. I cared enough to worry.

So Much To Be Anxious About, Mama

I am raising the future. Don’t I have the pressure of all of humanity on my shoulders? And what a planet he is inheriting. How unfair of me to put him in this space but not make it perfect and unproblematic for him. School shootings, global warming, homelessness, cancer, viruses. This was not all figured out for him by ME before he came to be. How horrible am I to do this all to him?

Or am I just a person, who made a new person to keep trying at this human-ing thing? The way I was also made a person. Except I know I’m trying to give him more tools to handle it all. Resilience, vigilance, empathy.

That’s why it’s so hard. Parenting, adulting, overthinking, mental illness, ADHD—it’s so impossibly hard.

But oh, it’s so beautiful too. If I stress about the perfect sleep, I will miss that little smile as he falls asleep being held (but NOT every night haha). If I stress about not being mindful enough about missing it all because of how fast it all goes, I’ll still be stressed, yet, it will still go fast.

I’m meeting myself where I am.

Anxious, occupied, trying my best because sometimes when I look at my kid, my heart all but bursts from love.

And the influencers? They’re also trying. Ofcourse some are bad actors, but we will move on and ignore those so the algorithms can eat them away. If I don’t think of the rest as perfect beings that are better than me because they know all the answers, suddenly the info they give me isn’t all good, or fear mongering, it’s just info. I can take it in. Try it. Or not.

Sure sometimes they’re a bit more aggressive than others. DON’T DO THIS! IF YOU WANT ___ DO THIS INSTEAD! But I can filter that out as noise and see if there’s anything that resonates enough with my family and how it works to consider trying.

I am trying. My kid is trying. We’re both going to suck at it sometimes. At this point in his life, probably he’ll suck at it slightly more than me even. But, hopefully, I’ll stay humble enough to learn from him too.

You’re trying too, mom. And I promise, that has to be enough. Because it’s all you’ve got to give.

Parenting & Mental Health

Are parenting influencers a bad influence? And other answers I've gotten after a year of being a mom