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Mom shares the frustrating difference between stay-at-home and working parents

"It is interesting to notice how tied we are to corporate-style success."

via EclecticHomeSchooling/TikTok (used with permission)

Syd explains one of the most frustrating parts of being a stay-at-home-mom.

We all need a pat on the back every once in a while, someone to let us know we're doing a good job. There are many ways for people with careers to feel validated. You can get a raise, a promotion, a great review from your manager, or a professional award. You can also be someone respected in your profession and a mentor to younger people entering your field. These forms of validation help someone feel valuable and accomplished and are all tangible in some way. You can say, "I’m now the vice president of manufacturing," "I won the Excellence in Sales Award," or "I have a larger number on my paycheck."

Syd, a stay-at-home mom named @eclectichomeschooling on TikTok, shared that, unfortunately, moms who work in the home have a hard time finding that same feeling of validation.

stay-at-home mom, motherhood How do you measure success as a stay-at-home mom?Giphy

“Something that I think that a lot of people don’t realize about being a stay-at-home mom, whether you are a homeschool mom or your kids are young and you’re staying home with them during those years, is that there’s no measurement of success. There’s no metric,” she begins her video.

“There’s no one saying, ‘Congratulations, you have been promoted; you are the top of the top of this skill.’ None of that,” she continued. There is no award for an outstanding stay-at-home mom, and there is no manager to give her a review or promotion.

She says that being a good mother to her kids “feels good” and “makes us happy” but argues that it isn’t something you can “hold” or “write down.”

@eclectichomeschooling

It’s everyone’s favorite time of the month! Where I post insane, 3-5 minute, PMS ramblings about motherhood! Okay love you, bye! 😎


“We’re going on eight years of not being able to measure [success],” she continued. “I think that that’s a thing that nobody really talks about or that we don’t really get to talk about with each other. Your partner goes to work: they get promoted, they get raises, they complete their work for the day and they ... get to be like, ‘OK, I succeeded.’ But my [work] is just constant, all of the time, and there’s no metric for it.”

The dishes that Syd cleans will be dirty the next day. The laundry she folds on Monday will be worn on Tuesday and rewashed on Friday.

motherhood, homemaking, stay-at-home mom, laundry Work done in the home is never "done" and often goes unrecognized. Photo credit: Canva

Although Syd has yet to find a solution to this problem, she sees other ways to get the validation she craves. “It’s hard, especially because a lot of us don’t prioritize hobbies for ourselves. That’s a great place for us to find success or a feeling of accomplishment,” she said.

Syd’s video struck a chord with many stay-at-home mothers feeling the same way.

A commenter named Leigh noted that the need for external validation comes from the corporate culture in which Americans are raised. “On my best days, it is interesting to notice how tied we are to corporate-style success. On my worst, it is inescapably crushing,” she wrote in the most popular comment.

“It's the neverending loops that are never complete. We never get the satisfaction of a ‘job well done’ because nothing is ever really done,” Hazel added. “Once I started focusing on my own happiness, it got better.”

According to Love, the lack of praise for a job well done also means that it’s easy to be criticized. “When you’re doing everything right, there’s no praise, etc., but if you do anything wrong or are not perfect, then the issue gets thrown in your face in every way. So you end up feeling like a failure,” she wrote.

Syd told Upworthy that her followers have tried to help her recontextualize her feelings of worth. “Since the video, I’ve had a lot of conversations with moms about how we measure worth by being very wrapped up in productivity through a capitalist lens. It can be tough to divest from that, but it is also so important. Like, what’s a safe and secure childhood worth? Nothing technically, but also the entire world. We do that!” she told Upworthy.

motherhood, stay-at-home mom Validation comes in different ways for stay-at-home moms.Photo credit: Canva

She adds that a few of her followers suggested she should take up martial arts as a hobby. “I’m still pondering that one,” she told Upworthy.

Ultimately, Syd’s realization could have caused her to feel down about herself or resign to a never-ending feeling of being unfulfilled. However, she’s seen it as an opportunity to reevaluate her sense of self-worth and possibly as a reason to branch off into new and exciting hobbies outside her family.

This article originally appeared last year. It has been updated.

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Psychotherapist explains a possible childhood reason you always procrastinate—and how to fix it

"Procrastination is often not the root problem; it's a symptom."

Image via Canva/Anna Tarazevich

Psychotherapist explains childhood connection to procrastinating.

Procrastination is a tough habit to break. If you find yourself procrastinating (delaying accomplishing tasks or duties), you probably understand how it can mount into crushing anxiety—and you may be looking for advice on how to stop procrastinating all together.

In an online discussion on procrastination, psychotherapist Marco Sander offered his insight into why you may find yourself procrastinating—and it all relates to your childhood. He beings by explaining that he has spent years working with people who struggle with procrastination.

During that time with his patients, he has recognized a a common thread between them all. "Most people think they need to just 'push harder,' 'set more goals,' or 'finally get disciplined,' but procrastination is often not the root problem; it's a symptom."

procrastinate, procrastination, procrastinating, procrastinate gif, how to stop procrastinating Bored To Death Waiting GIF by Travis Giphy

"The underlying issue is stress," he shared, adding that specifically it is internal emotional stress. He offers three examples of this:

  • Perfectionism: "If it's not 100%, it’s worthless."
  • Fear of failure or criticism: "If I don’t start, I can’t fail."
  • Lack of clarity: When the task feels like a huge, undefined mountain.
Sander notes that the link between internal emotional stress and procrastination is rooted in early childhood experiences and wounds. "For instance, if you had a hypercritical parent, you might have internalized the belief that 'I’m not good enough, yet.' So now, as an adult, you’re putting pressure on yourself before anyone else can—trying to finally do everything correctly," he explains. "This perfectionism or fear becomes your attempt to avoid the emotional pain of being criticized again. But eventually, your system says, 'I can’t do this anymore,' and so, you procrastinate."

procrastinate, the procrastinator, always procrastinating, stop procrastinating, procrastination procrastinate the amanda show GIF by NickSplat Giphy

While willpower and establishing productivity systems and habits can help people overcome procrastination, he notes that 90% of the procrastination "equation" is "understanding and healing the root of that inner pressure you put on yourself every day. And often, the fastest path forward is counterintuitive: less pressure, more compassion. It´s about healing your childhood wound."
The solution? To first acknowledge and recognize your childhood wound.
"First, you gotta figure out the specific kind of wound that is holding you back. Then you can start healing it. If I had to generally summarize the healing then it would be: 'Healing comes when we meet our wounded places with compassion.'" This includes inner child work, inner family systems, and chair work. He adds, "Going through those experiences while adding a new layer of emotion which is more compassionate will slowly heal the wound and potentially, you will feel less stressed and ultimately procrastinate less."

identity, healing, inner child, heal inner child, healing work Lilly Singh Oops GIF by A Little Late With Lilly Singh Giphy

In another comment, Sander added: "Most of the time it is not one traumatic event that happened which makes the link so clear. Most of the time it is just a general atmosphere throughout your childhood. Nobody intended harm but nevertheless you somehow got the feeling that you have to do something more to be truly accepted."
His insightful observations were praised by people struggling with procrastination. "This is one of the most insightful explanations of procrastination I’ve read. Framing it as a symptom of internal stress rather than laziness or lack of discipline is so important especially for people who’ve been hard on themselves for years," one wrote. "What really resonated with me was the part about perfectionism and early childhood experiences. That fear of 'not doing it right' or 'not being good enough' can silently run the show without us even realizing it."

perfect, perfection, perfectionist, perfectionism, being perfect do better paul hollywood GIF by PBS Giphy

Another added, "I am like this but my parents were always super supportive. These are the exact reasons why I procrastinate though. I also suffer from depression."
Others who struggle with procrastination were somewhat skeptical, but offered advice that worked for them.
"For chronic procrastinators, even attempting to 'heal' your childhood wound is a form of procrastination. There is never a point where it gets healed and then you are free of procrastination," one procrastinator shared.
"First, start—(hardest part) Second, gain momentum. Third, keep going. Your mind is a sneaky b*stard who will come up with 99 seemingly legitimate reasons to NOT do that one thing which has been eating away at you. But you just gotta do it anyway. Reflect on your life and goals in your free time. Purpose is what drives us all. But do the damn work. Do it scared. Do it unsure. Do it ugly. Do it broke. Do it tired. Do it anyway. Do it. The only way out is through."
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Adults share the 11 money-free ways their parents infused a pure magic into their childhood

Proof that it often costs nothing to create core memories.

Photo credit: Canva

Magic doesn't cost much to create. Just a little imagination.

One of my personal favorite memories from childhood—which was upper lower class, at best— is the afternoon that my mother and I were traipsing through a woodsy area to have a picnic. And by picnic, I mean a couple of servings of grilled cheeses and potato chips.

It began to rain, so we set up shop quickly and covered ourselves with a clear plastic tarp, which was soon covered in snails. Because of her ingenuity, I experienced something that felt straight out of a fairy tale, something I will cherish forever.

My story, however personal, is not all that unique. Parents everywhere are not letting financial obstacles prevent them from adding a bit of magic into their kid’s lives. And the truth is, many important core memories just like this one don’t really require that much money at all. What they ask for is a parent's presence.

childhood, core memories, frugal, money, money free activities, parenting, kids I've loved snails and rain ever since. Photo credit: Canva

What a lovely reminder in an age where parents are pressured to buy more and more lavish things in order to prove…well, we’re really not sure what there is to prove here. But society sure makes us feel the need to prove something, doesn't it?

In a since-deleted Reddit post, someone recalled that their own parents couldn’t afford baseball game tickets and created their own makeshift stadium at home (complete with little paper tickets) and in the process created something much more impactful than going to a game.

This inspired a whole slew of adults sharing equally magical childhood memories that came from their parent’s creativity, not from money. There were also a few parents themselves who shared the money-free ways they added whimsy.

Here are some of our favorites:

1. Unicorn Walks

“My mom told me that unicorns only come out at dusk. So naturally, I wanted to go out for walks to search for unicorns almost every day. It was decades before I realized that my single mother just wanted to go out for walks with me and that was her way of convincing me to go outside.”

2. Fairy Hunts

“Told them any time they saw glitter out in nature it was because a fairy had been there. If they were lucky it might still be there but they had to look for us bc grown-ups couldn't see them anymore. I would sneakily drop glitter near the knobby roots of trees, puddles in stones, or anyplace that seemed ‘magical’ as we walked for them to find. They happily walked and searched for fairies and enjoyed nature and still as teenagers will say something is the ‘perfect fairy spot.’”

3. Magic Rocks

“I had a geology phase when I was a kid. Used to go outside in the back yard and on walks with the parents looking for semi precious stones…with my magnifying glasses and a book to identify them. I found a lot of cool stuff…It was literally decades later when I realized you don't just ‘find’ things like quartz, amethyst, topaz, whatever lying around in the suburbs. My parents had bought a bag of random assorted stones and hid them around the yard and neighborhood for me to find, to encourage my hobby.We were pretty broke, so the ~$20-$50 they spent on that went a really long way.”

childhood, core memories, frugal, money, money free activities, parenting, kids It's actually really easy to create magic. Photo credit: Canva

4. Wintertime Wolf Patrol

“We did something we called wolf patrol with our kids. Through the winter when we had less outdoor time we would give them [flashlights] and they’d creep around the garden with them for about 10 minutes before going up for bathtime/bedtime. It seemed to help them to have some fresh air before bedtime.”

5. Magic Mardis Gras Tube

“During Mardi Gras my wife would let her daughter and step son watch the parades on tv. While they watched she would sit behind them and occasionally throw candy or whatever up around them and they thought it was coming out of the tv. They told the kids it was a magic tube in the TV that allowed this to happen only during Mardi Gras so they didn’t always expect it to happen.”

6. Senior Baseball

“I didn't grow up particularly poor but we did have one summer where we were broke and my dad would take me to watch senior baseball down at the park.These guys in their 50s all playing ball once a week at an intensity level someplace between a beer league and Game 7 of the World Series absolutely loved having a kid there cheering them on like they were big leaguers.I knew all their names, knew how they'd been doing at bat because I kept score. Someplace at my parents house there's a signed ball from everybody on that team.”

7. Camping During Power Outages

“I didn’t realize my family was poor until a lot later in my life because my mom made things like our power getting shut off magical. Our power got shut off once so we ‘went camping.’ We got our sleeping bags and lit candles. We used some tea lights to roast weenies and played board games. I had to have been like four, maybe five, and I didn’t learn until I was like 16 that it was because the power was out. I just remember it as a fun night with my mom and brothers.”

childhood, core memories, frugal, money, money free activities, parenting, kids " I just remember it as a fun night with my mom and brothers.”Photo credit: Canva

8. Toilet Paper Ninja Turtle

“My dad used to make nunchucks out of string and toilet paper tubes, and then cut eye masks out of old red t-shirts so that I could be [Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles’] Rafael on Saturday mornings while cartoons were on. At that point I didn’t even know poor was a thing, so I just thought it was bad ass that I had a Rafael costume. There’s some beauty in not knowing there are options besides being poor.”

9. Disney Riddle Easter Egg Hunt

“One Easter in the early 90s my younger brothers and I woke up excited to see the haul the Easter bunny had left us .We went to the living room -nothing :(.Needless to say we thought we were bad and he didn’t come. Then on top of our TV set in a vase we saw a little baggie with 3 foiled eggs in it with a small computer printed out slip with a riddle on it. We lived on an acreage and this was our ‘Easter egg hunt.’ My parents wrote Disney riddles that took us on an adventure all around the property! They stayed up all night printing and coming up with these 12+ riddles out and placing them all over the property just to surprise us that morning.One of my best childhood memories! They were always magic!”

childhood, core memories, frugal, money, money free activities, parenting, kids Everybody knows the hunts is more fun than the eggs. Photo credit: Canva

10. Bathtub Ball Pit

“I was a large child in the '80s, 99th percentile for both height and weight at six years old. Because of this, I was not allowed in any ball pits at Chuck E. Cheese…One day in particular, I was attending a birthday party…[and I ] had to sit there on the sidelines as my friends got to have fun… I told my mom about it afterwards and she could tell how disappointed and sad I was…Later that week…bath time rolled around and my mom got me as usual, but that night she covered my eyes with her hands as she steered me into the bathroom. When she let me look, I was greeted with my very own ball pit. She had gotten a bag of water balloons and had blown them all up so that I had a floating ball pool in the tub. It was so pretty with all the bright colors AND it involved water (I would have lived in water if I had the ability), so it was the most amazing thing to six-year-old me. She turned a point of sadness and exclusion into one of my most cherished memories.”

childhood, core memories, frugal, money, money free activities, parenting, kids Honestly an at home ball pit is probably wayyyy more hygienic anyway. Photo credit: Canva

11. Handmade Treasure Map

“My dad drew a treasure map using our apartment complex roads and we went on this adventure with my little binoculars and his old school digital camera to find the ‘treasure.’ I picked up a lot of flowers growing on the road along the way and seeing new things to add to my treasure collection. I still remember it as a core memory of my childhood and genuinely thought it was a magical treasure quest in the moment 🥲. I will be carrying on this activity when I have kids in the future for sure.”

Creating amazing memories doesn’t need to be lavish. So often, kids respond more when we meet them at their level, using nothing but love and pure imagination.

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Touching video shows a young boy saying goodbye to the garbage man he's greeted for 4 years

What started as a love of big trucks became a friendship.

via Canva/Photos

A sanitation worker taking a garbage can to the truck.

There are many wonderful reasons why little kids are fascinated, and at the same time, perhaps a little scared of garbage trucks. They have bright colors, flashing lights, and have massive moving parts that shriek and moan as they lift the garbage bins and throw them in the back of the truck. They are also impressed by the operator who pulls the levers and makes the massive machine lift and dump.

Little kids have this fascination until they are around five or six, until one day when the garbage man comes by they no longer feel the need to run out and watch. However, a touching story out of Florida shows that nine-year-old Noah Carrigan never lost his love for the garbage man, and that’s because they forged a sweet relationship. But unfortunately, after the city changed its waste management contracts, the garbage collector will no longer stop by Noah’s house.

“It started out as something so simple—he was just fascinated by the garbage truck,” Noah’s mom, Catherine Carrigan, told SWNS. “For years, every Tuesday, he would run outside to wave, and the garbage man always waved back, honked the horn, and acknowledged him.” She filmed the garbage man’s last pickup at his house, and it marked the end of an era.

- YouTube www.youtube.com

On the garbage man’s final visit, Noah handed him a bottle of water, a handwritten note, and some gifts to express his gratitude and appreciation for the kindness and years of friendship. "He wanted to write him a thank you note with garbage truck toys he used to play with," the mother wrote on a social media post. “This farewell hit hard,” she admitted.



One of the unique aspects of being a parent is that there are many last moments you have with your child, although you never know it at the time. Whether it’s the last time you pick up your child, the final time that you read The Little Engine That Could, or the last time that you put a Band-Aid on their knee after a fall, these final moments go without fanfare, but if you knew at the time that you’d never have that moment again, you’d cherish every second.

garbage man, sanitation worker, thumbs up, trash, garbage truck, orange jacket A sanitation worker giving the big thumbs up.via Canva/Photos

That's why parents need to take a moment to realize that they are in the midst of something beautiful that is fleeting. So, when there are those nights when you're tired and don’t feel like reading them a book before bed, or getting off the couch to play catch, knowing you only have so many of these moments is a great way to enjoy them. Because one day, when they’re gone, you’ll wish you could have read one more book or spent that nice spring day on the lawn throwing a ball around.

That’s why the story about young Noah and the garbage man is wonderful. On one level, it's a touching story about the friendship between a man and a young boy, highlighting the importance of the people who work in our communities. On the other hand, it’s a reminder that some of these simple joys in life we share with children will one day end—and you can’t turn back the clock.

This article originally appeared in April.

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