Ep. 40 Perfectionism in Parenting: Letting Go to Lead with Love
When Parenting Feels Like a Performance
I used to think I had to get parenting just right. That if I could do all the things “perfectly”—bedtime routines, screen time limits, homework supervision—then I’d feel like I was doing a good job. But somewhere along the way, I started to realize that this pressure to be perfect was stealing something really important: my peace, my presence, and my joy.
This week, I had a moment (okay, a full-on coughing fit during a live video) that brought all my perfectionist habits into the spotlight. And instead of spiraling—like I used to—I did something different. I sat in it. I let myself feel the emotions without judgment, and it reminded me of a powerful truth I want to share with you.
Why perfectionism in parenting is making everything harder
Here’s what I’ve learned: trying to be the perfect parent doesn’t actually make me a better one. It makes me more anxious, more reactive, and more exhausted.
So when that coughing fit hit during my live, I instantly felt embarrassed. My mind went into overdrive:
π£ “Why didn’t you mute yourself?”
π£ “Everyone’s going to think you’re unprofessional.”
π£ “You should probably just re-record it.”
It wasn’t just the moment that got to me—it was the story I started telling myself afterward. That’s the thing about perfectionism in parenting: it creates this constant loop of pressure, shame, and self-judgment. And that’s not helping anyone—especially not our kids.
How to stop ruminating after parenting mistakes
There’s this really interesting concept I’ve been learning about—emotions actually only last about 90 seconds in the body. That initial surge of embarrassment, frustration, or sadness is just your nervous system reacting.
But here’s the key:
I didn’t get stuck because I coughed. I got stuck because I kept reliving it in my head. I started beating myself up, imagining how people would judge me, and telling myself I “should’ve known better.” That loop? It went on far longer than 90 seconds.
That’s why recognizing the difference between an emotion and the feeling behind the emotion is so important in learning how to stop being a perfectionist parent.
How to stop being a perfectionist parent: 3 real-life tools I use
1. Use the Breathe LOVE mantra to deal with mom guilt and perfectionism
I created this mantra years ago while running my in-home daycare, and I still use it today—especially when perfectionism shows up loud and uninvited.
Here’s how you can try it the next time you're stuck in a shame spiral:
π£ Breathe
Pause and take a slow, grounding breath. It signals to your nervous system that you’re safe.
π£ L – Listen
What story are you telling yourself right now? “I failed.” “They’re judging me.” “I’m not good enough.” Acknowledge it.
π£ O – Observe
Where is that emotion in your body? Maybe your chest feels tight or your jaw clenches. Just notice without trying to fix.
π£ V – Validate
Remind yourself: This emotion is valid. It doesn’t make me a bad parent.
π£ E – Empower and Embrace
With each breath, let go of the pressure to be perfect. Give yourself space to be human and make a mistake.
This is one of my favorite ways to release mom guilt and perfectionism in the moment.
2. Give yourself permission to practice parenting without being perfect
This right here? It’s where the healing begins.
I used to think every moment had to be done “right.” Now, I’m learning that progress over perfection. Parenting is a long game. You’re going to mess up—and that’s not just okay, it’s expected.
So when I watched my kindergartener meltdown over a coloring assignment, refusing to quit until it was “perfect,” I saw a mirror. He learned that from watching me. And that broke my heart a little. It reminded me that if I want my kids to let go of the need to be perfect, I have to show them how.
So now, I say things like:
π£ “I made a mistake, and that’s okay.”
π£ “We can try again tomorrow.”
π£ “It doesn’t have to be perfect—done is better than perfect.”
3. Reach out for support instead of staying stuck in your thoughts
This one is still hard for me, but it’s made the biggest difference.
I used to keep everything inside. I’d replay the story and dwell on the guilt, self-doubt, and shame until it spilled over. Now, I’ve learned that talking it out is what brings relief.
After that tech fail and coughing episode, I messaged my coach and the women in my mastermind group. I said, “I messed up. It felt terrible and I was so embarrassed.” And you know what happened? They reminded me it was no big deal. That it was human. That it didn’t define me.
Sometimes, just saying it out loud is enough to break the shame cycle.
If you’re learning how to let go of guilt in motherhood, this is a big one. Don’t go through it alone. Find your people—whether it’s a friend, coach, or online group. You deserve that support.
The parenting mindset shift that changed everything for me
The biggest lesson I’ve learned is this:
Your kids don’t need a perfect parent. Be a real person who learns to recover from mistakes.
When we learn how to release perfectionism in motherhood, we start showing up more present. We become more patient. We model grace and growth.
Perfectionism makes parenting harder, heavier, and lonelier. But releasing it? That’s where the connection lives. That’s where we find rest. That’s where we remember that being calm, confident, and rested isn’t just possible—it’s necessary.
Want to practice this right now? Start with the Breathe LOVE mantra
The next time something triggers you and your perfectionism starts to creep in
π£ Pause and Breathe. Come back to your body. Three deep breaths can ground you.
π£Use the Breathe LOVE mantra. It’s my go-to practice for calming the chaos and resetting with intention.
π£ Ask yourself a better question: Am I breathing LOVE or Fear in this moment? Am I learning or bringing in judgment?
π£ Reach out to someone you trust. Share what happened to help you get support and move on.
π Want a simple visual guide to help you remember the Breathe LOVE steps?
Grab the free Breathe LOVE Guide I created to walk you through it.
This small shift—this Mindset Moment Reset—can bring big peace, especially on the hard days. Parenting without the pressure of being perfect is possible. You’ve got this.
Ready to help your BABY sleep through the night and settle into a NAP SCHEDULE that works for you and your family? Contact Loving Lessons Sleep Solutions for your postpartum doula support/ baby & toddler sleep coaching needs. Set up a time to connect here on my calendar.
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Irene Gouge – Loving Lessons Sleep Solutions: [00:00:00] In our most sleep-deprived moments, our children will teach us exactly what we need in order to learn and grow into who we were created to be. These are the loving lessons we will learn, whether we want to or not. I'm Irene Gouge, your sleep coach, and I'm on a mission to educate parents on how to help their young children sleep. Welcome to the journey. Irene Gouge – Loving Lessons Sleep Solutions: Welcome to Revive at Five, where we're going to talk about how to rest and reset to get the sleep that your family needs. And this is actually a perfect setup for what we're talking about today when we think about perfectionism, because I want to share with you that I've been running into some tech issues. This has been really frustrating because it's one of the reasons why sometimes I choose not to go live. If I have these issues, then I can get flustered and annoyed [00:01:00], and it really kicks in my perfectionism. Also, that uncertainty of like, is it going to work? Is it not going to work? Because I don't love to be late like this. But again, like I said, better late than never. And last week when we were talking about getting outside, working on things that we could do to get in that fresh air and fresh light, I ended up having a coughing fit in the middle of the Revive. Irene Gouge – Loving Lessons Sleep Solutions: And I just want to share with you that it was a really hard thing for me not to want to go in and re-record the session because my perfectionism was kicking in. The story I started to tell myself in that moment was, what will people think? How could I not know to mute the mic? Then I started to shame myself for the things that I didn't maybe [00:02:00] do, or also feeling kind of embarrassed in that moment. Irene Gouge – Loving Lessons Sleep Solutions: And I think a lot of times when I think about what happens to us in our parenting journey, we can get to this place where sometimes we're like, tell me the strategy or the tool of what we want to be happening. What ends up happening, the reality of it in that moment, is that we start telling ourselves a story, and that story then ends up creating this state of being and this state of mind. Irene Gouge – Loving Lessons Sleep Solutions: And one of the things we talk about is being rested, being calm and confident, and it's really hard to feel that and show up in a way that we are being rested when we are feeling judged or maybe afraid, or maybe feeling shameful. And a lot of times that's what happens. Because I like my videos to be perfect. Irene Gouge – Loving Lessons Sleep Solutions: I want things to just work out and look really good. And I get [00:03:00] nervous going live because I'm like, what if I forget to say something? Then I’ll have to re-record it. Sometimes realizing that done is better than perfect is part of the process and one of the mantras that I need to embrace because sometimes that is what actually needs to happen in order to take imperfect action. Irene Gouge – Loving Lessons Sleep Solutions: The other thing too is that if I want to teach my boys, which I've been trying to do since my son's kindergarten homework experience—because let me just share with you that when my son was in kindergarten, he had this homework assignment and he was coloring, and I said, "Connor, don't worry about it. Just let it go. It's okay. We'll just tell the teacher we didn't have time to do it." Here I saw my five-year-old son. He's just beating himself up and he's so upset. He’s like, "No, I can't." He was just so frustrated and determined to [00:04:00] do it right, even though it was hard in that moment. And I really had to pause and reflect and I was like, why can't he just let it go? Irene Gouge – Loving Lessons Sleep Solutions: And the question was really geared towards me. Why can't I just let things go? You know what? He had only watched me and observed me for so many years of not being able to let things go. And so when he was stuck in this place where he didn't know how to take that next step, he was stuck dealing with these big emotions because he was trying to be a perfectionist too. He wanted to get it done even though there were some big emotions coming up for him and he didn't know what to do with them. Irene Gouge – Loving Lessons Sleep Solutions: And so today I want to share three things that have helped me be able to overcome some of this perfectionism, especially when there's uncertainty in parenting. Because again, remember what ends up happening is we're telling ourselves this story that's putting us in this state that's really taking us away and robbing us from being present in the moment. [00:05:00] And so one of the first things that I've had to learn is to learn to sit in the discomfort. And part of that process for me is using the Breathe Love mantra. Irene Gouge – Loving Lessons Sleep Solutions: Now I have a free guide where you can download the Breathe Love mantra and learn about this framework, but I've been using this since I had my home daycare because it is a process for me to notice the things that are triggering me. And in this moment, and last week when I was having this coughing fit and I was having this urge of like, okay, no one saw the live, it's okay, like just getting started, I could just redo this. Irene Gouge – Loving Lessons Sleep Solutions: I had to sit in the discomfort of it not being perfect. Embracing that done is better than perfect. Like I would have told my son with that kindergarten homework—let it go. Move on and take the next action. So I had to recognize, and so in the Breathe Love [00:06:00] mantra, we're going to listen and notice what we are observing in our body. Irene Gouge – Loving Lessons Sleep Solutions: What are those emotions coming up? And for me, I was definitely in a place where I was judging myself. I was thinking about the quality that I was putting out there. I was afraid. I was having this fear of, what if people don't like it? What if they are listening to it and they're annoyed that I was coughing, even though I have watched other podcasts or been in my group coaching sessions and the mentor coach is having a cough or a sneeze and it's okay, and I don't bring any judgment—but I was really judging myself harshly in those moments. Irene Gouge – Loving Lessons Sleep Solutions: So sitting in that discomfort, recognizing that one of the things we don't realize is that sometimes those emotions as they're coming up for us—where I was having this grief and this judgment and all these things coming up, this human experience—it really usually only lasts 90 seconds if we can give ourselves permission to embrace that. [00:07:00] Irene Gouge – Loving Lessons Sleep Solutions: And so I was observing those emotions that I had and that I was working to sit in the discomfort, which of course then allowed me to have the scheduled pity party. And the reason why I bring that up is that sometimes I would allow these emotions to run rampant for many days and then it would suck all the joy out of my day and week. Irene Gouge – Loving Lessons Sleep Solutions: And so I recognized I had made the decision that I'm going to feel these emotions, and I didn't realize there was also a current of some underlying grief. Because my dad's birthday was actually yesterday. A couple of weeks ago, I had already been thinking about it, like, I can't send him a text. Irene Gouge – Loving Lessons Sleep Solutions: So even though we had a strained relationship, one of the things that I found comfort in is that every year I still texted him on his birthday, even if I didn't get a response. But right now, if I text him, it's only going to go to whoever has my dad's phone—that's my brother. And so just realizing that in this moment, that is a grief that I have. [00:08:00] It is something that I need to allow myself permission to practice being in that moment. Irene Gouge – Loving Lessons Sleep Solutions: Feeling that discomfort. And so that's my second point, where sometimes we need permission to practice dealing with some of the emotions. Because that is something that I did not do really well. And these are the things that take us away from having that rest and that calm confidence when we are in our parenting journeys. Irene Gouge – Loving Lessons Sleep Solutions: And the same thing was happening for me when I was hopping onto this live, which was not working out for me, but I was like, you know what? I'm going to do it anyway, even if it's late. And so learning to practice that is part of the skill. And I just want to thank you for your patience—those of you who are in the group—just knowing that like, hey, she said she was going to be on at 11, she's running late. Irene Gouge – Loving Lessons Sleep Solutions: Having some tech [00:09:00] issues, but if you're listening to the replay, then I just want you to realize that sometimes these things happen and it is not the end of the world. And that is actually my third point: sometimes working to overcome that perfectionism and that uncertainty means that we need to reach out to others. Irene Gouge – Loving Lessons Sleep Solutions: And so by reaching out to my business coach and to the women who are in my mastermind, and just being able to say, "Hey, I was having some tech issues. I went live, but then I had a coughing fit," just being able to say it out loud and then being able to remind myself that done is better than perfect was the relief. Because what I would find for myself is that in my perfectionism, I would be trying to tell myself a story and beating myself up and getting into a shame spiral, which would then keep me stuck and keep me in a long-term pity party. Irene Gouge – Loving Lessons Sleep Solutions: Which is what I had practiced for so many years. And so [00:10:00] being able to work towards overcoming some perfectionism and uncertainty doesn't mean I have it perfect. It means I'm still going to have relapses. I'm going to have moments where I want to go back to the old way and be comfortable in that shame, but realizing I don't want to. I'm choosing not to. Irene Gouge – Loving Lessons Sleep Solutions: And so part of that process is taking the time to sit in the discomfort, taking that moment to Breathe Love, then being able to give myself permission to practice what it is like to feel and deal with those emotions. And then being able to reach out to others and communicate that. And really just having a community and a mentor or coach to be able to talk through and process this is so beneficial. Irene Gouge – Loving Lessons Sleep Solutions: And literally, I just got done in our sleep coaching community. Just being able to talk through and process the things that we're dealing with day to day. Having a place and a [00:11:00] space where you can talk to someone and work through things can help us get to that place of rest and comfort and help us feel calm and confident in the decisions we're making in our parenting. Irene Gouge – Loving Lessons Sleep Solutions: So I hope that helps you as you are navigating your next week. I hope that you can take some time to notice and observe the feelings you're feeling. Sit in that discomfort and give yourself permission to practice. And then, of course, reach out and share with someone because again, that's going to help you continue to take action and take those next steps. Irene Gouge – Loving Lessons Sleep Solutions: So thank you so much for joining me here in Revive at Five, where we're going to be able to rest and reset to get the sleep we need. Thank you so much for being here. And let me know which part of these three steps might be the one you need to practice. Let me know down in the comments what makes the most sense for you to practice in this upcoming [00:12:00] week to get the rest you need. Thanks for tuning into today's show. You can see all of the details and show notes below, and as you go out into your day, I hope that you'll make it your mission to be calm, confident, and rested as you lead today. Sweet dreams. Transcript βΆ
