#59 What Type Of Mom Are You?

We’re in a big transition when our kids become adults, and it can leave us wondering what our role even is anymore. We name four common “mom modes” that steal peace and share practical mindset shifts that help us show up with more trust, grace, and calm. 

• The shock of moving from active parenting to guiding adults 
• The anxious protector pattern and the love vs fear pause 
• Releasing control through trust and a short prayer of surrender 
• The guilty reflector pattern and choosing grace over rumination 
• Making amends when needed and returning to the present moment 
• The confused caregiver pattern and the pressure to get it right 
• Dropping unsolicited advice and using questions instead 
• The controlling fixer pattern and replacing directives with curiosity 
• Small daily thought shifts that create more peace and hope 

If this has resonated with you, I'd really love for you to share it with another mom who you think might need it. 
If you have any questions or would like to go deeper into this topic or how it affects you in your own life, you can find me at Sharon KCoach.com. 
If you've enjoyed listening, please subscribe and leave a review on your favorite platform. 
And feel free to share with anyone you think might benefit from what you've heard. 

Click the link below to set up a free discovery call to begin your transformation today.  Or email me @ smurph923.sm@gmail.com to find out more about how I can help.  

https://calendly.com/smurph923-sm/discovery-call

https://sharonkcoaching.com/

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Transcript

Welcome And Spring Check-In

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hello and welcome to my podcast. My name is Sharon Murphy, and I'm a certified life and mindset coach and I help women who seek to be happy and holy. Each week I'll bring you tools and insights to help you on your journey to the heights. I'm so glad you're here. Hey everybody, and welcome to the podcast. I hope you're doing well. I am enjoying some warmer weather that we're having here. I talk about the weather a lot, I know. But in Wisconsin, these winters get long. So when we have sunny days, today is in the 70s, it's really a celebration. And the grass is turning green. So all good things happening here in April in Wisconsin.

The Jolt Of Adult Kids

SPEAKER_00 0:39

But today I want to talk about something that it hits home with me personally because it's it's the phase I'm in in my own life right now. But it's something that I notice in circles that I'm in, but also in the women that I work with. And it's something that I hear people say or that I'm noticing basically of women my age, I'm in my low 50s, that are experiencing this transition into being the mothers of adult children. All of a sudden it's like we wake up and we realize, wait, I don't, I don't actually know what my role is anymore. And it's something that doesn't get talked about very often. We talk about it as, you know, we're kind of confused, but I don't know that there's a whole lot of guidance. And so what I see over and over are some typical patterns. And I want to just say that I feel like, to be fair, when I say we don't know our roles, I think the idea is when we start to have children, of course, we there's trans when we go through these transitions. If you're a mother, you went through that transition of having your first child and becoming a parent, which is a huge transition. I still think that was probably one of the biggest leaps I've had to make in my own life is becoming a mom. But then you sort of get used to it, and then you move into toddlers and and you know, adolescents and teenagers. And so with each phase of motherhood, you know, there's a an area of growth or like a transition that we go through. It's, you know, we talk about it amongst ourselves, like, wow, you know, and how we manage that that phase of motherhood. But what I think is that there's so many resources out there for us in books and just materials and courses and things. And there's a lot of talk about those different phases and how we handle it. And I I have to say that for my own kids, that's one thing that I I've been really trying to instill in them. I have, I've told you before that I have a couple of, a couple of my daughters, my daughter and my daughter-in-law, let me just be clear, have our new moms kind of they have young children. And one of the things that I I noticed for them is that they're they're just a little bit uncertain about what's right, what's wrong, how do I handle this, which is very natural. It's very natural for everybody that goes through this next phase, you know, those new phases. But they're inundated with information about what's right, what's wrong, you know, what they shouldn't do. And of course, we're trying to do everything perfectly. I use air quotes there. We're trying to do everything perfectly. So there's a lot of information out there. And I see them, you know, trying to navigate that whole thing of like, how do I handle this? What do I do? And so we're kind of going through those phases in our lives as mothers. But as we move into the next phase, which is the phase of, you know, basically having adult children, I can tell you that for myself, I really I'm embarrassed to admit this, you guys. I really, really am, but I'm gonna just be honest. I really sort of had this idea that once my kids were grown, I and I think I thought this, you know, for years, that that I was gonna be, you know, quote unquote done, or that my job was was done. They were adults. I I did what was I was supposed to do, I launched them into adulthood, they're good to go. And then it was sort of like, you know, I don't know. I was just gonna breeze through the rest of my life. I know that sounds silly, but I think there was a an element of that that I thought was gonna be the case. And I'm now in the phase of having adult children, and I realize I couldn't be further from the truth. That was a really silly thing to think. And I know that in my own life, I mean, I still turned to my own mom. She's in her 80s. I turned to her for things, so I'm not sure why I thought that, but I'm just being completely transparent. I kind of did. And so anyway, this new role that we're taking on as moms of adult children, it it is, it's challenging because it's not something that it I feel like there's a whole lot of direction or guidance or preparation for. I think it kind of can just sneak up on us and hit us. I see some patterns amongst us as moms, among women who are mothers of adult children that we tend to fall into. And it's not because we're doing anything wrong or intentionally trying to do anything wrong. It's just because we were moms and we've spent our life caring for and loving our children. And so we we just tend to fall into these certain habits or patterns of being or how we show up to our kids as adults. And I want to just touch on each of them. Some are healthy and helpful and some are not.

Four Common Mom Patterns

SPEAKER_00 5:10

So I want to walk through what I see as four of the most common types of moms. And I'm just gonna say I don't like to give labels, but it's the way we show up as moms to our children, adult children. And so as you listen to these, as I go through these today, I just want you to notice which ones feel some familiar to you, which ones feel familiar. And don't judge yourself, but just to understand yourself a little bit better. And I also I'm gonna give you some practical tools for each one, something that you can try and use or apply for each of these if you find yourself in these situations. So the first type of mom I see is the anxious protector.

The Anxious Protector Mindset

SPEAKER_00 5:52

The anxious protector. And this is the mom who is constantly thinking about her child. She's thinking, you know, what if something goes wrong? Should I be doing more? What if they make choices that are, you know, that they they can't change? What if they get hurt? And and this can start when they're our kids are younger, but it just becomes really, really obvious when our kids are older because now they are their own adults. When they're younger, actually, we probably have applied this for them for a lot of their lives, and it appeared very natural and very healthy. But when they're adults is when it can start to look a little off. And so if this is you, I get it. I really, really do. But what can happen is that this love starts getting filtered, it's through fear. Really, there's what's underneath this is fear. We feel like we have to stay, we have to be on as parents. So if you're if you're in this situation and you find yourself as the anxious protector, you feel like you're still always, and again, I'm using quotes, on with your child. Like you need to always be watchful. And so here's some some simple things that you can practice if this is you. Before you reach out, I want you to pause and ask yourself, is is what I'm thinking or what I'm doing, is this coming from love or is it from fear? Because even the idea of being an anxious protector, anxiousness is not stemming. I mean, we we may feel like it's the motivation is love, but underneath it all is fear. There's a fear of something because otherwise there wouldn't be anxiety. We know in scripture when the Lord says, you know, have no anxiety about anything, because if we have anxiety, there's fear somewhere in there, somewhere laying underneath there. And the tough thing about this, you know, it it's as an anxious protector, you feel like it's your job to protect your child, is really what this is all about. And the reality is, is when they're adults, you don't have the ability to protect them anymore. That's something we need to release. And this is it really stems from a place of of a lack of trust. And I again, I hope that this doesn't come across as sounding sounding harsh or judgmental. I just want to share these with you so that you can kind of become aware. But that is the that is where this one comes from, is really a lack of trust because when we we still believe that we are the protector and it's up to us, that's where the anxiety comes from. Because honestly, we don't have the ability to do that for another adult, even if it is your child. If you are, if you can stop and reflect and say, and you're feeling anxious, is this coming from love or from fear? And if you're noticing that there's a fear in there, which there likely is, you can identify what that fear is. What am I afraid of? And you can kind of dissect that in in your daily thought work. But also then just really taking a deep breath and offering a short prayer, like, God, I trust in you. God, I trust them, I entrust them to you, right? Just surrendering. We've talked about this before, just surrendering them to you. You don't have to, you don't have to act on every anxious thought. You don't have to feel like you're the one that has to protect them. Even if you desire this out of love, it's really not your role anymore. So the second type that I see is the guilty reflector. And

The Guilty Reflector Trap

SPEAKER_00 9:19

by this, this is reflecting back on your life and feeling guilt about things. And this is the mom who tends to look back and feels responsibility for things or the way their child is showing up. And this is obviously if your child is making choices that you love and things are going well in their life, this doesn't come into play. But as we all know, our kids are going to make decisions that we don't love. They're going to make mistakes, being that they're human like we all are. That's just the natural, natural way of being. And so when they make mistakes and do things or make choices that we don't like, we go to this place of, is this all my fault? Or I should have, or what should I have done differently, or did I miss something? It's it starts to reflect back on your whole life and the areas where, and some of it you may have evidence where you did make mistakes. The reality is, is at this point in your life, it's not going to help you to reflect back and to place guilt on yourself. Because what you're doing is you're spending your time in, you know, things like, it's all my fault. This is my fault. You're not alone if this is the way you think, because so many moms are carrying guilt about it. Could be, you know, over the span of their whole lives or a certain situation where they know they maybe didn't handle it like they wanted to. And they're just living in this place of guilt. And so here's just a small, a small shift. And I know that this seems fairly obvious, but when you notice yourself going to these places, it's super important that you just take some time and offer yourself some grace. You're not perfect. You were never intended to be perfect. You're just a human being. We all are. We didn't have perfect parents, we weren't perfect parents. Our children, should they become parents, will not become perfect parents. That's just the reality. We hold ourselves to a standard that's it's just too high sometimes. And so just even offering yourself this is I did the best I could with what I knew at the time. And this is all we can do as parents. We're learning as we go. So just releasing the guilt, offering yourself some grace, because nobody is a perfect parent. But the fact that you're showing up and and trying to trying to become a better, a better parent and trying to learn and grow, that speaks volumes. And just remember, a lot of times your kids, they will, they will remember some of the things that happened. I'm not going to say that they don't ever remember some of the negative things, but there's so many great things that you did do right in your parenting. There's so many things that you did amazingly well. And you can't hang on to your child's choices as a reason to blame yourself. That's only a small part of the reason they're making the choices that they are or the way they're living. They have a lot that they need to own in that. So I it's not about just deflecting and never taking responsibility. If there's a if there's a situation where you feel like an apology is necessary, then by all means, then go ahead and do that, then make amends, but then move on. So then it's always important to bring yourself back to the present moment because the part of this, the mom who's always reflecting and feeling guilt is you're living in the past. And so what I would just suggest is bringing yourself back to the present moment because we can't change the past. We know this. But we can change the present moment and we can change how we show up moving forward. And that's what matters. So asking yourself something like, what kind of mom do I want to be today? Who do I want to be moving forward? If nothing else, just learn from the past, learn from the experience and change it and let it go. Let the past be in the past. Because if you want to be a person of influence in their life, the only place you can influence is from the here on out. So the next one, the next type I see is the confused caregiver. And obviously,

The Confused Caregiver Shift

SPEAKER_00 13:07

this is grounded in confusion. This is the mom who feels unsure. She feels unsure of herself. For some reason, her confidence has been shaken. And they're not sure about how to handle things. Is it do I say something? Do I stay quiet? Am I helping, or is if I do something, is that going to make it worse? They're just really unsure about things. A lot of times, this is the mom who growing up, they've fallen into patterns of people pleasing. Right? And you are a caregiver by nature. That's that's where your strength is. But as they get older, then we become confused. We're not sure what the role is anymore. And underlying this thought is also a thought that somehow you need to just you need to get things just right. And so with that thought of that you need to get things just right, there's a lot of pressure. Pressure to do or to say just the right thing. Like there's so much weighing on on you. And again, it's a lack of maybe a lack of confidence. But I think a big part of that does stem again from the misunderstanding of your new role. Maybe it's something you've carried with you throughout your parenting years, and now it's magnified as your child is older and now tends to resist things. I'm not sure. That's different in each situation as to what the actual cause is. But either way, if you're finding yourself in a situ in a in the state of being more often than not confused about what do I say? Should I say something? You know, a lot of times you have fallen into roles of you're, first of all, A, you're a great caregiver. That's that's your primary, primary uh point of strength is to be a caregiver. You're wanting to make sure that they're happy, basically. You're wanting to make sure that they feel good. And that and that you think it's up to you to make sure that that happens. It's a lot of pressure and it can feel exhausting. So here's a really simple guideline that you can start using if you find yourself in that situation is don't give advice unless it's invited, right? Because it's likely that you've given advice or you've given help in the past and it's been resisted. Because as we've talked about in other episodes, and I talked about this is the number one thing that number one mistake that moms make is giving unsolicited advice. It's offering advice when it wasn't asked for. That is, it's often rejected, actually, almost always it's rejected. And when that happens and you experience that rejection, immediately then you're confused about how to handle it in the future. You're not, you're not sure. So instead of offering advice, just ask questions. Ask questions. That's always the remedy or the antidote to giving to not giving advice. If you're if you're someone who's going to struggle with this and say, well, I don't know how to not give advice. I have great ideas and I know that I can help them, then then just proceed with caution and instead try asking something like, Do you want my thoughts on this? Do you want to know what my my thoughts are on this right now? And let them answer. And if they say no, okay. And just be okay with that. And they might say, Yeah, I would. Or just even this is a little bit more reserved, is just how can I best support you right now? And if that doesn't sound like your language, if that sounds a little too formal, just say, hey, you know, what do you need from me? Is there anything I can do? And just putting yourself there as being available to them, but not overstepping. So what that does is it's does two things that respects their basically the fact that they're an adult. That respects you're respecting their free will and that they are capable adults of making decisions. And it also keeps your relationship open and they feel safe. They feel safe to come to you. You're still there, but you're there in a different role. Now the next one is the controlling fixer.

The Controlling Fixer Habit

SPEAKER_00 17:02

And again, this is fear-based, like the first one that we talked about, the anxious protector, which is that anxiousness is uh from coming from a place, actually, most of these are from a place of fear, to be honest, because they're not necessarily healthy ways of showing up. And usually there's an underlying fear there. But these two are primarily fear-based, and that that is a controlling fixer. And this is the mom who wants to help solve the problems. You want to you want to help solve all the problems. And again, it comes from a place of love. Each of these, I mean, it's good intentions. So again, I hope that I hope that you're understanding that I'm not trying to make you feel bad or put you in a difficult place by pointing these out. You don't need any more guilt. We don't need any more labels, we don't need to feel worse about our situation. But I just want you to understand, again, this comes from a place of love, the desire to try and help or to control or fix. But if you notice yourself wanting to step in and to fix things, just try this. Just replace this desire to fix and to control things with curiosity. So instead of things like you should do this or you need to, those phrases right there, you should, you need to. I hate to say it, but if you're somebody who finds yourself saying them, those phrases are almost always not received well. Those are those are very intimidating, forceful, powerful statements when you make them to somebody else. Now I'm referring here specifically to your children, but in truth, if you speak those things to other to somebody else, like you need to this, the reality is another person doesn't need to do anything. They really don't need to. Now, unless you're in it at work and you're the boss and you're, you know, kind of in an authoritative position, that's fine. But as moms with our kids, you need to or you should is never, is never really an appropriate statement. Instead of that, try what do you think you're gonna do? And that's what curiosity looks like is inviting your child to share their thoughts about how they're gonna handle the situation, how they're gonna fix it. I another word, another thing that you can go with is how are you feeling about it? How do you feel about this? And I'm gonna give you an example for my own life. Right now I have a child who is unsure about their, I'm gonna try and keep this as anonymous as possible. I don't know if they listen anyway, but they are in the midst of trying to figure out their summer plans for work. They're they're younger, they're not married or launched yet, they're still in college, and they're trying to figure out their summer plans. And there's some some questionable, let's just say that my husband and I are questioning the summer plans. This child has has an idea of what they're gonna do for work for the summer, and my husband and I see some some potential some potential problems with that. So I know I'm trying to be very, very high level here, which is difficult, but we see some problems with it for this child. And this child doesn't necessarily see it. So my husband and I have kind of said, hey, I don't think, you know, we've we've probably done the things we shouldn't do, is we've kind of just pointed out things that we see as red flags or that might pose a problem with this person getting as many hours as they would like or making the the money that they desire to make. And instead, the better option, and my husband and I have talked about this, is just inviting this child into and saying, So what is the plan? If, you know, how do you plan to make this much, you know, this much money, X amount of money? And how many hours do you think you're gonna need to work? It's just inviting this child into helping them come to the conclusion that yes, I think I maybe need to find a better answer to that. Instead of just directing that child to go find other work, it's asking the questions so that they come to the conclusion on their own. And it's not necessarily steering them because maybe they'll come back with some responses or some ways to solve the problem that my husband and I weren't aware of. But again, it's us getting curious with them, is really the way that we need to move forward with this. So this is something that if you're a parent of older children, you can apply this all the time. It's just getting curious and inviting them into this and then let them answer. But that is the hard part, is to just let it be enough and let them figure it out, right? Because that's the whole point of the controlling fixer, is we want to fix it for them. We want to give them the solution, we want to help them, we want to be the one that just takes care of it, not because we're trying to control, but because we we feel like we can see the answer. And so this is this is where I remind myself too that I am not God and I can't control the outcomes. That's not our role as parents. So we need to stay present, we need to stay loving, and we need to stay grounded.

Choose Peace Through New Thoughts

SPEAKER_00 21:46

As you think about these four patterns, and I'm just gonna repeat them again, and I'm sure you find yourself the anxious protector, which is the mom who's constantly thinking about her child, and that's the whole the word there, the key word there is constantly. Constantly. And then you have the guilty reflectors, the one who's always looking back and feeling guilt and blaming themselves for their role in their child's life. Then there's the confused caregiver. It's the one who is a uh takes their role as care caregiver to kind of to the next level, and then is confused about how to handle that. And the reason, like I said, the confusion comes in is because you're now dealing with another adult and it's really not your role. And then finally the controlled fixer who wants to help solve every problem. So as you think about these, you might see yourself in one, but it's more likely that you might see yourself in all of them in different situations. I know that I can. I can find myself, I there's dominant area, dominant ones that I fall into, but I can fall into each of these at different points and in different areas of my kids' lives. It's okay because it isn't about getting it, it isn't about getting it right. We're not going to perfect this, but it's about becoming more aware of how you're showing up in that relationship with your child and just making small shifts that can help bring more peace into your relationship. And I can't stress this enough, but it isn't, again, it's not about judging, it's about awareness. And so I just want you to recognize how you might be showing up in your relationships. Where are the areas that I need more peace? That's what I want you to ask yourself. Where are the areas where you you feel you need more peace? Where do you feel anxious? Where are you feeling guilty? Where are you trying to fix or control? Where are you feeling confused or unsure about how to handle things? Each of these modes of motherhood are not coming from a place of peace. Each of these represents some lack of trust or a lack of hope. Peace in this phase of motherhood, it is possible. And I talk about this phase of motherhood, we talked about it earlier, but each phase brings something different. It does present opportunities for us to grow and to mature. That's probably the phase that you find yourself in if you're relating to any of this, is this phase of transitioning to your new role as being a mom of adult children. But I want again, I want to stress that peace is available, but you you need to first become aware of what's underneath each of those patterns that I talked about. What are the thoughts that are driving those patterns? Because as we know, our thoughts are what create our emotions. And when I talked about fear and confusion, those are all emotions. What are the thoughts that you're having that are leading to those? Where are you lacking trust? Where are you lacking hope? Remember, you don't have to carry fear about your child's future. You don't have to, that's a choice. Because that fear is coming from your thoughts, and our thoughts are our choice. You don't have to stay stuck in guilt about the past. That's not helping you. That's not serving you in any way. And you don't have to live in confusion about your role now as a mom of adult children. You don't need to, you don't need to live in confusion. You could just take one small step today. Just move in the right direction. Just make the small steps that we talked about, and that's enough. So if this has resonated with you, I'd really love for you to share it with another mom who you think might need it. If you know someone in your family or you come across someone, just feed please share this information with with someone that you know who it could who could help. And if you're walking through this season and you want more support, that's exactly what we talk about here in this podcast. And that's what I do in my work. Just know that you're not alone in this. You're not alone. And until next time, onward and upward, my friends, to the heights. Thanks so much for listening today.

Support Links And Final Ask

SPEAKER_00 25:33

If you have any questions or would like to go deeper into this topic or how it affects you in your own life, you can find me at Sharon KCoach.com. That's Sharon the Letterk Coaching.com. If you've enjoyed listening, please subscribe and leave a review on your favorite platform. And feel free to share with anyone you think might benefit from what you've heard.