Ever feel anxious about making a parenting decision? Maybe you’ve made a decision that felt completely right, only to see another mum doing things differently and suddenly wonder whether you’ve got it wrong. Or perhaps you’ve found yourself Googling something you were already pretty sure about, only to end up down a rabbit hole of conflicting advice and even more questions.

If that sounds familiar, you’re definitely not on your own.

There is so much parenting advice available to us now. We have parenting books, podcasts, social media, experts, family members, friends, and other mums sharing what worked for them. A lot of this information can be incredibly useful, and I’m certainly not suggesting that we should ignore advice or stop learning. The problem comes when we start relying so heavily on other people’s opinions that we lose confidence in our own judgement.

Why do we second-guess ourselves as mums?

I think one of the reasons we second-guess ourselves so much is because we genuinely want to get it right. We love our children, we want the best for them, and we don’t want to make decisions that might negatively affect them. So when someone appears to know more than us, it’s very tempting to hand over that responsibility and think, they probably know better than I do.

And sometimes they will know more about a particular subject. That’s absolutely fine. But nobody knows your children, your circumstances, your family dynamic, and what works for you in quite the same way that you do.

You are the expert on your own family.

The more we look outside ourselves for the “right” answer to every parenting question, though, the less we practise using our own judgement. And just like any other skill, self-trust can become weaker when we don’t use it.

The pressure to do motherhood “right”

There also seems to be this enormous pressure to do motherhood correctly. There’s a right amount of screen time, a right way to feed your children, a right bedtime, a right way to discipline them, a right way to keep your house, and even a right way to be present with your children.

Then, on top of all of that, we have the pressure we put on ourselves.

Am I doing enough? Am I being too strict? Am I being too lenient? Should I be doing what she’s doing? Am I getting this right?

But who actually decided what the “right” way to mother is?

Of course, there are important things we need to consider when it comes to keeping our children safe and well, but outside of those things there is a huge amount of grey area. What works brilliantly for one family might be completely unsuitable for another, and that doesn’t mean either family is doing motherhood incorrectly.

Motherhood isn’t one-size-fits-all. Your family doesn’t need to look like anyone else’s family for you to be doing a good job.

How social media can chip away at your confidence

Social media can make this particularly difficult because comparison is now quite literally in our pockets. You can be perfectly happy with how you’re doing something and then spend ten minutes scrolling through Instagram or TikTok, and suddenly you’re questioning everything.

You see a mum doing something differently and think, Should I be doing that too? You read a post about something you hadn’t even considered, and suddenly you’re wondering whether you’ve been getting it wrong all along.

And this is why I think we need to become much more intentional about whose voices we allow into our heads. Other people’s experiences can be useful, but their experience is still just that, theirs.

You can take the information that is helpful to you and leave the rest. You don’t have to adopt somebody else’s way of doing things simply because it works for them.

How do you learn to trust yourself again?

The slightly annoying thing about self-trust is that you can’t simply decide one morning that you’re going to have loads of it. You build it through practice.

You make a decision, you try something, you see what happens, and you learn from the experience. Sometimes it will work brilliantly, and sometimes it won’t. Neither outcome makes you a good or bad mum.

If something doesn’t work, it doesn’t mean you’ve failed. It gives you information. You can think, OK, that didn’t work for us. What could we try instead?

That’s why I think confidence and self-trust are so closely linked. Confidence isn’t knowing you’ll always get it right. It’s trusting yourself to handle it when you don’t.

That is a very different kind of confidence.

Trusting your intuition doesn’t mean ignoring advice

Learning to listen to your intuition can feel uncomfortable when you’ve spent years looking outside yourself for answers. And trusting your intuition doesn’t mean ignoring experts, evidence or advice. There are plenty of situations where getting professional advice is exactly the right thing to do.

It’s about learning to take that information and then check back in with yourself. What do I think? What feels right for my family? What do I actually want? Does this advice make sense for our circumstances?

Then you get to make the decision.  And yes, you might get it wrong. That’s just part of being human, but you can also trust that if you do, you’ll figure it out.

I think that’s where so much of our confidence actually comes from. Not from knowing that every decision we make will be the perfect one, but from knowing that we can cope when things don’t go to plan.

Listen to [Episode 72] Trusting your intuition in motherhood for more practical tips and tools on how you can have more confidence in your intuition if you’re struggling with this. 

A little less looking sideways

I wonder how much lighter motherhood would feel if we spent a little less time looking sideways at what everyone else is doing.

That doesn’t mean shutting ourselves off from other mums or deciding that we have nothing left to learn. It’s about remembering that other people’s choices don’t have to become our choices.

You are allowed to do things differently, change your mind, try something and decide it doesn’t work for you, listen to advice, and then decide not to take it.

Most importantly, you are allowed to trust yourself because you don’t need to become the mum who has all the answers. You need to become the mum who trusts herself to work things out.

Feeling overwhelmed by all the noise?

If the constant mental load, expectations, and pressure to get everything right are leaving you feeling overwhelmed, I’m hosting a free From Overwhelmed to Clear workshop on Thursday 15th October, from 12–1pm online.

We’ll be looking at what’s really underneath overwhelm, including mental load, guilt, people-pleasing, and the pressure to do everything, and how you can start creating more clarity without simply adding another list of things to your already-full plate.

It’s completely free, and there’s a replay available if you can’t make it live.

👉 Grab your free spot for From Overwhelmed to Clear here.

And if this topic resonated with you, I talk about it in much more detail in the latest episode of my podcast, Reclaiming Mum, where we explore mum confidence, self-doubt, intuition, and learning to trust yourself as a mum.

 Listen to the Reclaiming MUM podcast on AppleiTunes or on  Spotify.

Because maybe you don’t need another person telling you what to do maybe you just need to start listening to yourself again.

Want a little more support, encouragement, and behind-the-scenes mum chaos? Find me on Instagram!

I share a mix of real-life mum moments, simple self-care tips, and little nuggets of coaching wisdom on my Instagram every day. Think behind-the-scenes of life with four spirited kids, practical ways to feel calmer, and gentle reminders to prioritise you without guilt. If you’d like a daily dose of inspiration, laughter, and encouragement for navigating this messy, beautiful mum life, come and join me over on Instagram.  I’d love to connect with you there!