Your Children Don't Need a Perfect Mother, They Need a Present One

In this episode of The Pink Cloud Frequency, we're exploring how alcohol affects parenting far beyond the moments we drink. From emotional availability and patience to memory-making, nervous system regulation, and the emotional safety children experience in our homes, alcohol often impacts our caregiving in subtle ways we don't immediately recognize.

If you've ever wondered how alcohol affects your parenting, your emotional availability, or your ability to fully experience your children's lives as they're happening, this episode is for you.

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Transcript

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Hello everyone. Welcome to the Pink Cloud Frequency. I am your host, Brianna Wynne. Thank you for tuning in to today's episode, which is all about motherhood and caregiving in general. Whether you're a parent, grandparent, stepparent, aunt, older sibling, or another important adult in a child's life, this episode is for you. As caregivers, we want to become the best versions of ourselves, not just for our own well-being, but so we can create the best possible environment for the children in our lives to thrive. Children need emotional safety, consistency, presence, trust, and connection. And the foundation of our children's emotional safety and stability lies in our own emotional well-being as caregivers. It's on us to become more emotionally available, more regulated, more grounded, more responsive, and more present for the life that we're already living. But alcohol quietly interferes with all of those things. Caregiving is more an emotional responsibility than a physical one. And the thing with alcohol is that it reduces your emotional availability even when you are physically present, whether it's through irritability, mental exhaustion, impatience, checking out emotionally, overstimulation. When alcohol is involved, you have reduced capacity for connection. And I don't only mean during the hours in which you're intoxicated. I'm talking about two or three days from the last time you drank. When alcohol is in your system, it is harder to show up emotionally for yourself and for your children. This might look like distracted bedtime routines, rushing through conversations, counting down time for yourself after you put your kids to bed, being emotionally withdrawn, shorter patience thresholds. You may very well be in the same room as the children you're caring for, but still emotionally absent from the moments that you're sharing with them. This is in part due to your emotional regulation capacity. When your emotional regulation capacity is low, small stressors can feel overwhelming. Alcohol disrupts or lowers, I should say, this capacity because it disrupts your sleep, it increases your anxiety, it increases your cortisol, so you have less tolerance to stress, it dysregulates your nervous system, and it weakens your emotional resilience over time. So parenting stress and everyday responsibilities then start to feel heavier and harder to manage. Trivial matters begin feeling enormous. All of those little occurrences that happen when you're caring for children start to feel overwhelming. Whether it's a call from the school, an email from a teacher, maybe your child lost money on a field trip, forgetting a piece of sports equipment before a game, running late because your children wait until last minute to get ready. It could be a minor incident at recess, a forgotten permission slip, your child telling you the night before a big school project is due. These are ordinary childhood moments. They're the kinds of things that you probably deal with on a daily basis, if not weekly. But when your nervous system is already depleted, dysregulated, exhausted, anxious, and affected by alcohol, those everyday situations, they don't feel ordinary. They feel catastrophic. What may have been or should have been a manageable inconvenience suddenly feels like a crisis. And it's not even just the things that our children do. It's not just our kids forgetting their stuff before a game. It's that constant stream of small, unpredictable moments that just occur within a household. A couple weeks ago, I was driving my son to his hockey game, and I drove to the wrong hockey rink. I just, I didn't even check my calendar. I don't know why. I assumed it was one place. I drove there, no one was there. So then I input, I well, I look up, I see, oh, okay, crap, it's over here. I put it in my GPS and then I put the wrong address in the GPS. So I drove to two incorrect rinks before we got to the right one. So I tried to play it off, I tried to play it cool. But it's that type of situation that can push an already stressed system into overdrive. And that happens in the matter of minutes. Your body reacts to that overwhelm. Your heart races, your stress spikes, your mind spirals, and you become emotionally reactive. You think through hundreds of worst-case scenarios, most of which are unlikely. But you do this because your capacity to cope has been eroded. Your nervous system is depleted and exhausted, and you're probably running on poor sleep from drinking. So even those small situations feel catastrophic. Somewhere between overwhelm and reaction, you lose perspective. You lose the ability to see situations for what they really are, which could just be a normal childhood mistake. Kids can be impulsive at times. It might be just a small inconvenience. And if it's a bigger problem, it's a problem that can be worked through nonetheless. But you lose the ability to see things for what they are. And you also lose the ability to view those moments as teachable opportunities. And that's what low emotional regulation capacity does. It reduces your ability to calmly process normal life stressors. In an alcohol-free life, your kids still have moments. Life can still be stressful, but you become capable capable of handling those moments without unraveling. As a regulated parent who doesn't drink, you have a greater ability to pause, to assess situations for what they are and not catastrophize them. You're able to respond calmly. You're able to ground yourself and lead the situation rather than escalating it. And you're better able to find the lesson within the moment. So when you respond appropriately and you repair difficult moments when necessary, not only does it build trust within yourself and your relationship with your children, but you also are able to move forward without carrying lingering frustration or guilt or emotional chaos long after the situation is done and over with. Instead of numbing, avoiding, and escaping difficult emotions, you begin learning how to experience them and process them better. You learn new coping strategies. You learn what peace feels like. You learn that quiet time isn't boredom. And you're able to recover faster emotionally. You don't stay stuck in irritation. You don't spiral as easily. You process emotions without amplifying them. So alcohol may feel like a coping mechanism in the moment, but it actually lowers your stress tolerance. It shortens that emotional fuse, and it makes it more challenging for you to cope over time. And those effects spill over into your household, your parenting role, and the emotional environment that your children experience. And one of the places this becomes most noticeable is in your mornings. Because motherhood already requires an enormous amount of emotional energy and patience and regulation before the day is even begun. But when your nervous system is depleted from alcohol, mornings start to feel chaotic before you even get up and out of bed. But in an alcohol-free life, mornings start to feel completely different. They're calmer, they're steadier, and they aren't so overwhelming. And I know we reference morning routines a lot on here, but that's because mornings are incredibly significant in setting the emotional tone for your entire day. When your day starts from a grounded place, instead of waking up and feeling behind, waking up feeling anxious or trying to recover from the drinks you had the night before, you are able to give so much more of yourself to your life and to your children's lives. You're not immediately playing catch up emotionally or physically. When you wake up free from the effects of alcohol, you begin your day with routines that actually support you and regulate you. You might start with quiet time or meditation or movement, journaling, prayer, coffee, tea, hot lemon water, simply waking up without dread. That's going to set a calmer, more present, and more invested tone for your day. Those morning routines don't just help you feel better, but they change the energy you bring into your home and the energy you give off to your children. You're capable of responding thoughtfully to your children instead of reacting from exhaustion and overstimulation. So when everyone's getting ready in the morning, do your children have time to eat breakfast at home? Do they have time to find and put on their favorite outfit? Do you have time to pack their lunch and the snacks that they enjoy? Do you have time to have conversations about friends, teachers, school? Does the drive to school feel heavy and burdensome, or does it feel light and uplifting? Oftentimes, when you drink, you're running around feeling rushed and feeling pressure and creating this chaotic situation for yourself and for your children when there is really nothing actually truly significant that warrants that response. But you're just so used to opening up your eyes, feet hitting the ground, feeling anxious and you know, trying to get your day started, and you're bringing that energy into your interactions with your children. So how you show up, particularly in the morning, affects the energy that everyone else is carrying into the day as well. And those little small moments matter because they help you become a more present and grounded mother throughout the rest of your day. And that's something I in particular cherish in my alcohol-free life is just starting the day with positive, uplifting, calm, and steady energy. I can do that now because I give myself the time in the morning. Well, first and foremost, I get a great quality sleep. So I'm rested and rejuvenated when I open my eyes. I'm not feeling anxious. I don't feel regret. I feel motivated, optimistic, energized, calm, grounded. And I'm able to start my day with that energy. I have quiet time with myself. I drink my coffee slowly and journal, walk a couple miles, get organized for the day, shower. And when you have that space to wake up slowly, wake up peacefully, not wake up sick or feeling heavy or anxious or have brain fog. Now you're able to wake up your children calmly as well. I think back to my own childhood mornings and when my brother and I were in high school, those mornings felt rushed and overstimulated, to say the least. My mom would yell up the stairs trying to wake us up so that she could get out of the house. She was, you know, drop us off at school. She had to go to work. And it's, I'm not even faulting her. She was doing what she had to do. She did the best she could. And we would just yell down and we would swear that we were awake, but we were really still laying in bed. So this isn't necessarily in reference to her parenting. It's just that I remember mornings feeling chaotic and stressful. And those high stress mornings affected the way that I went into school, how I felt going into school. So children are constantly absorbing the emotional energy around them, even when nothing is being said directly. Children feel what's going on within you before they even process your words. They learn how to regulate their emotions through your emotional state. So if you're rushed, overwhelmed, reactive, dysregulated, if you're constantly overstimulated, they're going to absorb that and they're going to mirror that stress. But when you're grounded and calm and steady, they feel safer emotionally. So this is not to say that things don't happen or won't happen that may send you into a little bit of a tailspin. It's not to say that you're going to become a perfectly calm parent. That's unrealistic. Just the other day, it was like 10:30 at night. I had my nephew sleeping over, and my son is on his PlayStation and he's screaming, playing a game. And I had to go in there and be like, tell him to be quiet, not in those same words. And I didn't. The difference is though, it wasn't truly a big deal. I was annoyed, but I told him to stop. He looked at me and he smiled because he knew. And that was it. There wasn't any lingering frustration. I wasn't mean or nasty. Like it's just like it's shut this off, cut it out. We're trying to sleep, and that's it. And the moment's over. And it's as simple as that. So one of the biggest gifts of alcohol-free living is that you are capable of creating that steadiness, that safety, and you're able to do so consistently. And that emotional presence matters because childhood is built through all of those moments. The breakfast at home before school, the conversations in the car on the drive to sports practice, the bedtime routines, the ordinary evenings at home, the feeling children carry when they remember being around you. Because they're not going to remember every single detail of their childhood, but they're absolutely going to remember how they felt growing up, how you made them feel. Because their childhood is happening for us too. The years move quickly, the routines become memories. Those ordinary moments, those drives to school, those are the moments that we are going to miss. And that's what brings me to memory making and presence. I don't want to dig too deeply into the science because we did explore it a bit further in the episode on is alcohol stealing your memories? But from a caregiving perspective, alcohol pulls you away emotionally from those moments that you want to remember most. It becomes more difficult to fully absorb moments while they're happening when alcohol is in your system. Let's say that you're spending a summer day at the beach with your family. Your kids are in and out of the water. And everything looks calm and connected and joyful. But as the day goes on, your attention starts to shift. And instead of being fully immersed in the beach day with your children, part of your mind starts to think about alcohol. You're starting to wonder whether or not you packed enough seltzers. Maybe you're thinking about when you should grab one from the cooler, when is a good time to pull away from the kids. You're wondering whether you're stopping somewhere for lunch and drinks after the beach. You're thinking about your nighttime plans that include alcohol. And without realizing it, the day that you're having with your children, it starts. Stops being fully about that experience. And the emotional center of the day starts to revolve around alcohol instead. And that's what alcohol does. It competes for your mental attention, it competes with your own children for your presence, your energy, and your emotional availability. And the painful part is that these moments are supposed to become the foundation of your life and of your family's memories. But when alcohol is involved, you're only partially there for them. And even, let's say you do remember that one particular beach day, the memory may still feel fragmented and blurry and a bit disconnected, maybe even incomplete because alcohol interferes with your ability to encode memories. But one of the most beautiful parts of alcohol-free mothering is realizing you don't have to split your presence between your parenting and your next drink. You get to fully experience moments while they're happening. You savor ordinary moments. Without alcohol, life really has a way of slowing down. Your patience expands. You do find joy in those little moments. You create memories that you can recall. Your connections with your children feel deeper. Your routines with them are easier. And your role as a parent just becomes more manageable. And your home feels safer emotionally for your children. It's not that motherhood itself suddenly becomes effortless or stress-free or perfect. But you definitely do become more capable of meeting experiences fully and giving them the attention and energy that they deserve and acting accordingly. Now, rather than trying to find the shortest bedtime story, you read the book that your child wants to read, regardless of how long it is. Rather than uh-huhing your way through conversations with your teenagers, you actually listen when they open up to you. You ask follow-up questions. You engage until the conversation comes to a meaningful conclusion. Your kids are able to trust you more in conversation when they know that you're not going to overreact. You're more apt to help with homework and help with school projects and help them look up information that they need. You are available for car rides no matter the day, no matter the time. You're patient through challenges and you're not flying off the handle anytime one little thing happens. So again, I've said this before: your children don't need a perfect mother. They need a present one. They need you to be grounded and regulated and sit in difficult moments without trying to escape them. Becoming the kind of mother your children feel safe being fully themselves around, that takes emotional availability and presence. It takes the ability for you to see yourself fully and to be in tune with the areas that you can improve on. It's not about laughing or reflecting back on moments where you overreacted because we don't get any redoos. And we only have so many opportunities. And your children remember how you made them feel. Matter of fact, everyone remembers how you made them feel. It doesn't matter what you say, it's how you say the things that you say. You wouldn't want to be around an adult who has a low tolerance threshold, who has minimal patience, who's not engaged fully in conversation, who's rushing moments along. So why would your child want to be a parent want to be around a parent who's like that? So a lot of that awareness and patience and emotional regulation and the ability to live a low-level stress life, that starts from being alcohol-free and from showing up for yourself in the ways that you need to so that you can better show up for the children you're caring for. So, for your reflection today, ask yourself what changes in your child's world when you become more emotionally present within your own? If this episode resonated with you, please share it with a friend. Consider supporting the show, which helps more women like yourself find it. Whether that's through a Cash App donation to TPC Frequency, you can click on the support link in the show notes. You can leave a five star written review or a five star rating. Any of those things would help. So thank you all so much. I will talk to you next Wednesday.