I should be better at this by now

It’s early evening.

Your teen has gone to their room and shut the door.
The house is quiet again, but not peaceful.

You’re standing in the kitchen, replaying the conversation you just had.

Maybe you raised your voice.
Maybe you lectured longer than you meant to.
Maybe the consequence felt right in the moment… and wrong five minutes later.

This is the moment most parents don’t think,
What’s really happening here?

They think,
How do I stop this from happening again?

We were taught an old rule:
If something goes wrong, you need to come down harder.

That rule kicks in fast, especially when you’re scared.

But once the moment passes, it doesn’t sit right.

Not because you did something terrible,
but because that rule doesn’t actually fit what teenagers need.

When that doubt builds, it quietly erodes your confidence.
You start second-guessing every decision before you even talk to them again.

What hurts isn’t the mistake itself.

It’s the quiet thought that follows:
I should be better at this by now.

But this isn’t a character flaw.
It’s a hard stage, and no one showed you how to do this.

That heavy feeling afterward doesn’t mean you failed.

It means you were asked to handle a hard moment without enough support. And you felt it.

This stage takes more out of you than most people realize.
And I see this most often in parents who are thoughtful and hard on themselves.

If this sounds familiar, you don’t have to hold it on your own.

You can email me what that moment looked like in your house. jeanine@jeaninemouchawar.com

Sometimes talking it through with someone who understands is enough to change how the next conversation begins.

🧡 Jeanine