“I’m Not This Kind of Parent”: Why Perimenopause Changes How You Show Up with Your Teen
Parenting is hard. The brutal truth is that it’s not something we ever fully master, and yet we still find ways to beat ourselves up for not doing it better, for not being more patient, more consistent, more in control.
Just when we start to feel like we’ve figured something out, our kids change, and what worked before no longer applies. And as they get older, our worries often grow alongside them, especially as we begin to feel the weight of their eventual independence.
All of this is happening while you’re navigating your own life stages, stressors, and internal shifts, often with less energy, less patience, and sleep that doesn’t restore the way it used to.
Consider a moment that might feel familiar. You leave work after a long, draining day, already aware of how depleted you feel. On the drive home, you make a quiet promise to yourself: you’re not going to bring that energy into the house. You take deep breaths and play your “feel good” playlist. You work to reset.
You walk into the kitchen and see your teen’s dishes still sitting in the sink. Immediately, you’re faced with the internal question: do you let it go, or do you, once again, insist they come back and take care of it themselves?
You pause. You breathe. You remind yourself they’ve been stressed about midterms. This is not the hill you want to die on today. So you clean up, breathing deeply, choosing calm, choosing to let it go this time.
Then your teen walks in and casually asks, “What’s for dinner? I have practice in an hour and need to study.”
And you snap.
What follows escalates quickly, faster than you expected.
Voices rise, frustration builds, and eventually your teen storms off. You’re left standing there feeling flooded, irritated, and completely depleted. And almost immediately, the guilt sets in.
This isn’t who I am. Or worse: I’m not this kind of parent.
For many women, this is the hardest part, not the moment itself, but what it seems to say about you. The guilt lingers, and self-doubt creeps in. You find yourself comparing who you are now to who you used to be, more patient, more steady, more in control.
We begin to doubt our abilities and worry about what these moments might mean for our kids. As they move closer to adulthood, that fear can feel even more urgent: “What if we’re getting this wrong at a time that really matters?”
And it doesn’t always end when the house gets quiet.
Sometimes you wake in the middle of the night. You are wide awake, even though exhausted. In that space, with no distractions and no buffer, the thoughts come rushing in. The guilt, the doubt, the second-guessing. You replay the day, the moment, the reaction.
And once again, you’re left lying there, wondering why this all feels so much harder than it used to.
This, however, is where we need to pause and widen the lens. This isn’t happening in a vacuum.
This is what I call the Double Transition, a period when your body and brain are shifting during perimenopause, while your child is going through their own emotional and developmental changes. You’re both navigating significant internal changes at the same time, and that has a real impact on how these moments unfold.
This isn’t about becoming a different kind of parent. It’s about trying to parent with a nervous system that has less bandwidth than it used to.
During perimenopause, many women notice that their emotional reactivity is higher, their tolerance is lower, and it takes longer to recover after something upsetting. Sleep is often more disrupted as well, waking in the night, unable to settle, which can leave you more depleted and make everything feel harder to manage the next day.
At the same time, your tween or teen is also experiencing heightened emotions, unpredictability, and rapid shifts in mood. When these two experiences meet, it can feel like everything escalates faster than you expect. When your reactions change in this way, it’s easy to assume that something more fundamental has changed, that you’ve lost your patience, your capability, or even the version of yourself you trusted as a parent.
But that’s not what’s happening.
You haven’t lost who you are. You are navigating a phase where access to that version of you is simply less consistent. And when you understand that, it opens up a different way of responding.
Instead of asking, “What’s wrong with me?” you can begin to ask, “What’s happening, and what do I need right now?”
This isn’t about becoming a better parent. It’s about having the capacity to respond the way you want to.
That might mean noticing earlier when you’re reaching your limit, giving yourself more space before reacting, or letting go of the expectation that you should handle everything perfectly. It might also mean returning to repair after a difficult moment, recognizing that connection is built not through perfection, but through consistency over time.
When you are raising a tween or teen, someone whose emotions can be intense, unpredictable, and fast-moving, these moments can feel constant. It’s not just you. It’s the combination. The goal is not to go back to who you were. It’s to understand what’s changing and learn how to work with it, so that even in difficult moments, you can recognize yourself again.
This is the work I do with women navigating perimenopause while parenting, helping them feel more steady, less reactive, and more like themselves again.
If this feels familiar, you don’t have to figure it out alone.