Hey moms, you might not know this, but there’s one person in your community in desperate need of a hug right now: a toddler’s mom.
I don’t care what her life looks like — whether she’s squeezed back into her high school jeans, always has the perfect hair, seems to have the most connected and involved spouse, or has an enviable amount of household help — toddler moms are in the trenches and rarely get the support they need from friends, family, or strangers.
If your kiddos are a bit bigger, you may have forgotten, but let me remind you that toddlers are tiny terrorists whose sole goal in life is to mess with their parent’s lives.
Oh, they’re chubby and cute
They like to snuggle. They still have those delicious baby voices. And they ever-so-sweetly can barely pronounce basic words. But toddlers are made cute because they are highly destructive little warriors who, unlike their infant counterparts, can actually walk, talk, and express free will.
In other words, toddlers have the ability to do some serious damage.
Being their parent can be draining, exhausting, and can feel like a relentless grind that will never end. Just the other day, I was thinking back to my toddler mom days. I was rigid about my kids' sleep, fearful of whatever they ate, always stressed, usually exhausted, and probably not in the best mood all the time. Looking back, my kids were pretty easy. But my kids were the first kids I’d ever really spent time around, meaning I was doing some serious on-the-job training.
So many moms are
And the constant stress of just keeping up with them, coupled with the anxiety they feel, wondering if they're getting motherhood right, means toddler moms are not always their best selves.
They are so overwhelmed with worry that it's hard to ever really relax. Adding insult to lack of sleep is the constant judgment from strangers, relatives, and other parents in the form of eye rolls, unsolicited advice, and scowls they face when their toddler does toddler things like throw food, melts down in public, or decides sitting down is not an option.
Not only are toddler moms just trying to keep up with their very busy children, they face a relentless amount of pressure from friends and family to “get back to normal.”
Friends without kids will ask, “You’re not going to be one of those parents who totally changes just because she had a kid, right?” Relatives might say, “You just don’t seem like yourself these days.” Other mom friends might even say, “She just seems so stressed all the time,” even if they themselves are stressed all the time.
Well, the truth is, life with a toddler is the new normal
And, yes, toddler moms are probably stressed all the time because being a toddler’s mom is highly stressful. And yes, they are going to change when they have a child because a human being came out of their body and they're one of about two people who are responsible for keeping that human being alive.
Every mom of a little one is dealing with a lot of stress, whether she works or not, has help or not, has a kid meeting all the milestones or not. The last thing they need is judgment or "advice."
What they really need is a big, giant hug. They need kindness, compassion, and other parents to remember they were once toddler parents too.
So, the next time you see a toddler giving their mom a really hard time, give her a hug, not an eye roll.
(Just don’t forget to ask first. Things could get weird if you don’t.)
