Not just mad at her—mad at traffic, mad at work emails, mad at Dan for leaving his socks on the floor. I realized I was angry a lot. And I didn’t hide it well.
Then I started writing down every time Lily got upset. There were patterns. If I came home late from work, she’d throw a fit.
If I was distracted on my phone, she’d act out. If I cried in the bathroom, she’d bang on the door screaming. She was reacting.
She wasn’t just difficult. She was mirroring. I started researching more on emotional mirroring in children.
How they pick up on stress, how they absorb the tone of the house. I cried reading stories from other parents—how often they’d blamed their kids before looking inward. I found a new therapist—this time for me.
A woman named Vera who met with me weekly. I told her everything. How I loved my daughter but sometimes felt trapped.
How I hated how I yelled but couldn’t seem to stop. How I sometimes imagined what life would be like if Lily were just… easier. And Vera didn’t judge.
She just listened. And slowly, she helped me unpack years of anxiety, perfectionism, grief. Things I didn’t even know were connected.
I had buried my feelings so deep, they came out sideways—through tone, sarcasm, impatience. Meanwhile, Lily’s behavior started to shift. Not overnight.
She still had her moments. But they were different now. Shorter.
Less venomous. She was drawing more—pictures of “our house” with everyone smiling. She started sleeping with her bedroom door open.
One evening, a month later, she came into the kitchen while I was chopping carrots and said, “Mommy, I like when you smile.”
I knelt down. “I like when you smile too.”
Then, the twist. Two months into my therapy, we got a call from the school.
Lily had hit another student. Again. The other child was okay, just a bruise.
But the principal wanted a meeting. We went the next day. Her teacher, Ms.
Ellis, sat with us in the small conference room. “She told me something that… well, I feel like you need to know,” Ms. Ellis said.
“After the incident, I asked her why she did it. She said, ‘Because I saw him push her, and I wanted to stop him.’”
“Push who?” I asked. “Another little girl.
A kindergartner. She saw a third grader shove her on the playground.”
Dan and I looked at each other. “She told me she used to feel like that,” Ms.
Ellis continued. “Like people were mean, and no one helped. So she helped.”
It hit me like a wave.
Lily hadn’t lashed out just to lash out. She’d felt something. She saw someone in pain and didn’t know how to respond gently—but the intent came from a place of defense.
Protection. After we left the meeting, we sat in the car. Dan reached over and took my hand.
“She’s not broken,” he whispered. “She’s just… learning how to be in the world.”
That night, I talked to Lily again. We made a deal.
Whenever she felt like she wanted to scream or hit, she’d draw it instead. And she did. Every time.
Crayon scribbles of dragons and tornados and sad-faced suns. Sometimes she’d hand them to me wordlessly, and I’d hang them on the fridge like art. Then one day, she brought me a drawing of two people holding hands under a big tree.
One had yellow hair like hers. The other had a ponytail like mine. “This is you,” she said.
“And me. We’re not mad.”
I cried. Right there on the floor, holding that picture.
The real change came when we decided to take a weekend trip. Just the two of us. A cheap little cabin upstate.
No Wi-Fi, no screens. We went on hikes, picked flowers, and talked about clouds. At night, we made shadow puppets on the wall.
It was during one of those nights that she said, “Mommy, do you like being my mom now?”
It gutted me. Because I realized—she’d felt that I hadn’t. And I had never said it outright, but kids know.
They feel it in how you talk, how you look at them, how quickly you sigh. I hugged her and whispered, “I’ve always liked being your mom. I just didn’t always know how to show it.”
Since then, I’ve changed.
Not just how I parent, but how I exist. I’ve slowed down. I listen more.
I hug her longer. I let her speak, even if it’s messy and loud and not what I want to hear. Dr.
Harper was right—she couldn’t help us. But she started something. She forced me to look inward instead of always pointing outward.
And in doing so, she saved not just Lily, but me too. The words Lily whispered that day? They were born out of pain.
But they became the seed of our healing. Now, when she throws a tantrum, I don’t see a bad child. I see a child learning.
And when I lose my temper, I don’t spiral into shame—I apologize, we repair, and we move on. And maybe, just maybe, that’s what she needed all along—not a perfect mom, but one who grows with her. So, to anyone reading this—if your child says something that scares you, don’t just fear it.
Listen. Look deeper. Sometimes the ugliest words come from the deepest wounds.
And sometimes, they’re really just saying, “Please see me.”
