Good Mums Get It Wrong Too (And That Might Be the Whole Point)

A bit of real talk on what being a good mum actually means, the guilt we quietly carry, and why the getting-it-wrong might just be part of the getting-it-right.

Fifteen years into this motherhood gig, I've changed my mind about a lot of things. But the biggest one is this: I used to think being a good mum meant getting it right. Now I reckon being a good mum means getting it wrong — over and over — and letting all that wrong slowly teach you how to get it right.

Stay with me here, because I promise this is the least depressing thing you'll read all day.

When I first became a mum, I had a very clear picture of what “good” looked like. A good mum got her kids to school every single day. She had firm boundaries. She dished out consequences when things went pear-shaped. She fed her children nothing but nutritious, lovingly prepared food, and if a packet of anything beige made it onto the plate, well, that was a personal failing. That's the blueprint I inherited. It's the one a lot of us inherited.

And then real life — my actual, specific kids — turned that blueprint into confetti.

I'm a neurodivergent mum raising two neurodivergent teens. My daughter is autistic and has ADHD — brilliant, funny, and so good at masking that her autism wasn't picked up until year eight (her ADHD came in year five). For years I was parenting a child I didn't fully understand yet, using a rulebook that was never written for her.

Here's what I learned the hard way: the more control I tried to grip onto, the more everything fell apart. It was only when I loosened my grip — when I stopped trying to force and started trying to understand — that things got gentler for all of us. When I stopped punishing my kids for their mistakes and started making room for them, we all breathed easier. That's not the parenting I was raised with. It's the parenting my kids needed me to learn.

Because that's the thing nobody tells you: every generation gets to parent a little better. We've got more information, more research, more understanding of the beautiful variety of ways little brains are wired. We're not failing our parents' version of “good.” We're rewriting it.

This has all been front of mind lately because I keep seeing mums out there quietly breaking my heart in the best way.

There was the mum who got an entire typewriter keyboard tattooed down the inside of her arms — so her non-verbal child would always, anywhere, have a way to communicate with her. No device to charge. No app to lose. Just Mum's own skin, always there.

And Rosie O'Donnell, who had her child's pronoun — “they” — tattooed on her wrist in her kid's own handwriting, so she'd never forget. Not because she gets it right every time (she's the first to admit she still slips up), but because she loved her child enough to permanently remind herself to keep trying.

That's it. That's the whole job, isn't it? Loving them enough to keep learning. To keep adapting. To let them change what “good mum” means to you.

And here's the part we don't talk about enough: to adapt like that, you first have to admit the old way wasn't working. Which means quietly reckoning with all the times you got it wrong before you knew better.

I've got a hundred of those memories. But there's one that still makes my stomach drop.

Before either of us was diagnosed, my daughter went through a stretch — a good year — where she would only wear one particular pair of long trousers. Summer, winter, didn't matter. Birthday parties, didn't matter. Just those pants. I washed them on high rotation while they got older and more worn and picked up a paint stain I could never shift.

I didn't understand yet that those pants were the one thing that made her feel safe. That the sameness was the point. All I saw was a kid being “difficult.” And one day, trying to wrestle her into a different pair, I was not my best self. I remember saying it — over and over — “What is wrong with you?”

What is wrong with you.

To a little girl whose only crime was needing to feel safe in a world that felt too loud.

I know now what I didn't know then. And people tell me, kindly, “You couldn't have known, love.” And they're right. But knowing that has never once dissolved the ick I feel when that memory floats up. It just sits there.

Here's what I've come to believe about that ick, though — and I want you to really hear this if you're carrying your own version of it:

The ick is not proof that you failed. The ick is proof that you grew.

You only feel that pang because you can now see what you couldn't see then. The very fact that it stings means you're aware, you've learned, you've become the kind of parent who would do it differently now. That's not failure. Zoom out far enough and that's the whole shape of good parenting — a person who got it wrong, felt it, and changed.

The ick gets softer with time. We get less brutal with ourselves. But even when it lingers, it's okay to let it. It's part of us now. Yes, we may have fucked up. And also — look at everything we've done since to make it right. Both things are true. Both things live inside a good mum.

The other blueprint I had to burn was around food.

I genuinely believed that feeding my kids well was the whole measure of my success as a mother. Nutritious everything. No compromises. And then we walked through an eating disorder with my daughter, and my kids became teenagers I can no longer micromanage, and I learned that sometimes the “good mum” move is buying the packaged thing — the safe, known, same thing — because that's what means my sensory-sensitive girl actually eats dinner at all.

The version of me from ten years ago would've called that a failure. The version of me now knows it's love. It's meeting my child where she actually is, not where a wellness blog said she should be.

So if you take one thing from me today, let it be this: your yardstick for “good mum” is allowed to change. It's meant to change. No matter how strong your principles are, the measure was never supposed to be set in stone.

The only question that's held up for me, through every reinvention, is this one: Is my child safe, content, and connected?

Not — how many A's did they get. Not — how many friends do they have. Not — how much do they help around the house. Those were the gold stars of my own childhood, and I've quietly let go of every one of them. Because a kid can tick all those boxes and be falling apart, and a kid can tick none of them and be thriving.

Is my child okay? And when they're not — because mine certainly aren't okay all the time; life still rocks them and knocks them back a few steps — the question just becomes: what can I do, right now, to help them feel a bit safer and a bit happier? What does that ask of me today?

That's it. That's the job. Not perfection. Presence. Connection. A safe home base to come back to in a world that feels more bonkers by the week.

One day the up-close part of this will be over. Our kids will grow up and move on and out, the way they're meant to. And when that day comes, I won't be tallying grades or trophies or how tidy their rooms were. I'll be asking one thing: are they okay? Are they mentally well, as healthy as they can be, happy, safe?

That's the goal. That's always been the goal. It's just terribly easy to forget it in the chaos of a Tuesday.

So wherever you are on your own messy, magnificent mothering road — if you're still asking “is this right for my child?” instead of “is this what everyone else is doing?” — you're doing it. You're doing the good-mum thing. Even on the days it doesn't feel like it. Especially on those days.

You haven't failed. You've evolved. And the getting-it-wrong? Turns out that was never the opposite of good mothering.

It was part of it all along.

Alisha x