Super Common Parenting Triggers (Let Them Guide Your Healing)

There are some super common parenting triggers that affect most moms. There are things like whining, lying, super loud noises, and more. And these are ones that affect most moms, there are more personal ones as well if they remind you of any childhood trauma, etc. The key in dealing with your parenting triggers is to dig deeper and let them guide you so you can eliminate them.

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There’s an interesting phenomenon that happens with moms.

We assume everyone else is doing amazing and we are doing horrible.

I hear from moms every day who feel super triggered by their child’s behavior and they also feel guilty they feel triggered. It’s a shame spiral, essentially, and triggers end up doing this to mom.

• getting super frustrated “out of the blue”
• struggles to keep cool and usually ends up yelling
• or blaming kids, accuse them, says things they don’t mean
• then cools down, waits a bit, and is flooded with guilt
• apologies to the kids, ditches boundaries because of guilt…

Rinse and repeat. Let’s do it a different way.

Common Parenting Triggers

Here are some common triggers and how to cope. And, I have a free printable below that will help you dive into your triggers, journal them out, and find some freedom. I highly encourage you to check it out.

Please print out a few, stick them in your journal or on your bedside table, and watch the transformation.

Loud noises

Many mothers can’t stand loud noises. At least, not after a while. Noises amp up our nervous systems. If you are already a “highly sensitive” person then a loud noise will make you feel frustrated and even angry.

Usually, moms will feel guilty for feeling so chaotic about the noise. Just stop. If you can’t cope with the noise, don’t try to cope. Instead, get the noise levels lower. Take kids outside. Put on earphones.

Overtime, nervous system healing will help you have a higher capacity for noise. But the goal isn’t to train your nervous system to handle chaos. It’s to lessen the chaos to reflect a normal human’s noise levels.

Lying / deceiving

Boy howdy, moms hate lying. I have a post on a great strategy to take the joy out of saying bad words, and I won’t repeat myself here.

But what I will say is that it’s normal to hate lying. Here are a few reasons why.

• we think they’ll grow up liars
• we know you can’t trust a liar
• we don’t want untrustworthy kids
• it feels cowardly
• we blame ourselves for raising kids who lie

Those are just a few.

Now, for a re-framing and a tip. First, assume your kids don’t WANT to lie. Come from “my child doesn’t want to lie, so there’s some reason why they’d lie instead of tell me the truth here.” It doesn’t make lying okay, obviously, but calms you down.

• Don’t entrap kids who you know will lie. It’s unfair.
• Observe whether your child is actually triggered when you’re asking them questions, and know that lying is a trauma response for many kids even though they know it won’t work and isn’t good.
• Say, “You wish you had xyz, but you didn’t, am I right?” So “did you brush your teeth?” And your child says “Yes!” but they’re lying. You can say, “You wish you’d brushed them, but you didn’t. Go now.”
• Don’t extend trust to kids in areas where you know they’re likely to lie. It makes it worse ,more pressure, more anger, then they resort to lying even more.

They feel icky, you feel mad, break the cycle.

Whining and self-pity

Whining is maybe the thing that bothers parents the most. Well, aside from super extreme things. It is so grating and annoying. This is why whining bothers moms so much.

• it feels pathetic and pitiful
• we think they’re acting like victims, not victors
• it seems so exaggerated and unnecessary

Actually, those are reasons why whining works. We hate it so bad we respond nearly immediately to our children. And thus the cycle keeps going!

Instead, focus on the skills your child needs so they don’t resort to whining. Do they feel unheard? Are they escalating since you aren’t seeming to hear their request? Are they used to you boundary bending?

Instead, validate what they want, state the boundary, and have faith they can adapt.

Sadness / suffering

If there’s something that makes a mom on high alert, it’s feeling her child is suffering. And some moms have leftover rules from childhood that say:

• sad = suffering (this can be true or not true)
• not giving someone what they want means they suffer
• not being happy = suffering

It could play out a myriad of ways. The main point is that if your child feels or acts sad or as though they are suffering and that’s a trigger for you, you’ll come running. Which will result in them acting sad quite a lot.

Dig into what suffering is and what it isn’t. And evaluate whether your child is actually suffering. This will help you validate their sadness without jumping into rescuing.

Not listening / disobedience / defiance

It’s one thing for a child to resist a bit and eventually do what we want. But a child who is outright defiant or constantly refusing to do what we ask… is triggering as hades.

It brings up a lot of feelings in us:

• helplessness
• powerlessness
• anger
• emotional flashbacks
• hard done by

On and on. The fact is: we know kids are supposed to follow our leads. We know that we are supposed to have healthy authority over our kids and that they’re supposed to trust us and listen. And when they don’t, it feels off.

How to deal with your parenting triggers

Now that we’ve labeled a few super common triggers, let’s talk about how to use our triggers to get some internal breakthroughs.

Again, download this cheat sheet below for free. You’ll get some major Ah-Ha’s.

Dig deeper into the trigger

If you get triggered and feel triggered, don’t try and stay out of it. Don’t try and feel better. Instead, take a minute and sit in it. Stay with it.

• what led to the trigger?
• why did it trigger you?
• dig a layer deeper, why does that bother you so much? (i.e. child said something mean to me, it triggered me because it hurt my feelings, why does it bother me so much? because I hate when people think little of me)
• what memory or group of memories or pattern does this bring up that fits in with a larger narrative about my life?
• zoom out and see where your child’s behavior fits into this pattern and whether or not you’re okay with it.

This may seem laborious at first, but if you get into the habit of this it becomes a fairly quick process.

Determining where your boundary is and if you’re holding the line

After you’ve felt triggered and figured out why that bothers you, locate your boundary.

I wrote a whole book about boundaries I encourage you to get from the link below, or wherever books are sold.

But while you’re here, figure out where your line is.

• what you can’t stand is a boundary.
• what makes you feel crazy is a boundary.
• what you don’t like is a boundary.

Locate these boundaries and what you are okay with or not okay with. Own it. Accept it. Stop denying it. Let it be.

This will give you the resolution to stop taking the crap in your home that you can’t stand. I can’t say it any other way, mama. Be loving, be hurting, be kind, show God’s love to your kids, and stop taking crap that you hate.

In the home that you pay for.

Change your environment if necessary

If you can tell your child isn’t set up to succeed in the way things are now, make some changes. Don’t expect kids who have failed 234,342 times to rock up and do it right.

You need to zoom out.

For example, if your child has proven for months they go wild at bedtime and won’t go to sleep easily, something needs to change.

• start bedtime earlier
• remove all screens for 2 hours before bed
• don’t allow wild play before bed
• create a good wind-down routine that prevents a second wind from happening
• set up your expectations and boundaries
• enforce them

Set your family up for success

Lastly, if you find yourself very triggered often, zoom out. Think about what parts of family life aren’t working.

This is a really easy exercise.

Literally, take a sheet of paper and write “things that aren’t working.” I guarantee whatever it is that you’re annoyed by will come up.

Tackle whichever may be easiest. The truth is that you have the power to change your family life. You can decide what you’re not okay with, and you can make some changes!