I ditched the gentle parenting scripts, and my relationship with my kids has never been better

• I followed all the advice online and in books to be the calm parent my kids supposedly needed.
• But the reality is that sometimes empathy can run out quickly.

For years, I've tried to be someone I thought my kids needed — an unruffled, calm, confident leader whose compassion knows no limits.

Fueled by the advice and suggested scripts of experts like Janet Lansbury, Dr. Becky, and Big Little Feelings, I was determined to do it right, to adhere perfectly to the rules of gentle parenting to raise my boys into trauma-free adults.

The minute my oldest started exploding and melting down as a toddler, I started panicking — and like any good millennial mom, I turned to the internet for answers. Desperate for guidance on how to handle the psychopathic behavior of small children, I pored over books like "The Whole Brain Child," I joined gentle parenting Facebook groups; I amassed a massive screenshot collection of Instagram posts telling me how the words "be careful" and "good job" were ruining my children; I purchased online courses that promised to help me "feel confident in exactly what to say (and do) in the middle of a tantrum;" and I listened to Lansbury's "Unruffled" podcast with a fervor that bordered on religiosity.

"We can do this," Lansbury would say at the end of each episode, an incantation that I hoped would somehow transform me from my old irritable self into a serene fountain of maternal bliss and empathy.

Empathy can run out quickly

But let me tell you, and I speak from experience here: When it is 10 p.m. on the Fourth of July, and your 6-year-old desperately wants to see fireworks, but your 4-year-old very adamantly does not want to see fireworks, and you are solo parenting away from home, and you're trying to be the confident leader that takes charge, so you calmly pick up your 4-year-old to put them in the car because they can just sleep in the car while we drive up the hill to see the fireworks, and that 4-year-old yanks a fistful of your hair and spits in your face before you even have a chance to catch your breath — that fountain of empathy runs dry.

You can give me all the tips and tricks and rules and best practices and scripts and phrases to say or never say, but ultimately, I'm still just myself, and my relationship with my children is just that: a relationship.

That's where I've recently found a bit of relief from the relentless panic of raising kids — relationships I can do. I can't cook, craft, or sew, I'm not great at staying calm under pressure, and I don't always say the right thing, but you know what I can do well? Know my kids. I can listen to their problems without diminishing them or automatically trying to fix them; I can light up when I see them after a day apart; I can notice the things that they love to do and help them do more of that; I can let them be themselves, no performance necessary.

I've been conditioned to feel like I'm always failing

I've been so conditioned to see myself as a horrible mother, always to feel like I'm failing my kids in one way or another, that even typing the words above feels slightly scandalous. Like I'm breaking some sort of social contract in trying to acknowledge the ways I am a good mom, rather than engaging in the constant self-flagellation that is modern-day motherhood.

It also feels like another delusion of mine, in a way, because if you entered my home any day last week, you would've found one kid with a broken arm, courtesy of me not paying attention to him at the playground, and another kid enraged with jealousy because his brother has a cast, and he doesn't. But, if you lingered for a while and followed us into their room for bedtime, you'd see little snippets of something else, something that just might look like gentle parenting.

The other night, I said something unkind to my oldest about him needing to get over his jealousy and move on.

"It makes it harder to stop feeling like this when you say that," he replied, and it stopped me in my tracks. I couldn't have been prouder of this little guy advocating for himself and his feelings. I apologized and told him he was absolutely right, and my heart just about burst with empathy for how hard it is to be a kid.

There was no script for this moment, no parenting philosophy at play. It wasn't me masquerading as Janet Lansbury or Dr. Becky — it was just us being ourselves, telling the truth, and loving each other. It was a relationship.