An influencer has made a candid confession about “mom rage” and the guilt she felt after screaming at her son during bedtime.
Steph Claire Smith took to social media about something she was “not proud of.”
She said she screamed at her son, Harvey, aged 3.
She clarified that it wasn’t just raising her voice but what she did made her feel “disgusting” in the moment. That feeling had followed her the next day.
“Harvey sleeps by himself upstairs. He woke up, came downstairs to our room and I woke up to him next to our bed asking to get in,” she said.
Smith said she didn’t normally allow him into her and her husband Josh Miller’s bed because he would often kick and scream after 15 minutes.
Instead, she offered to come upstairs and sleep in his bed. However, she doesn’t always stay the whole night. Harvey knew this, and even though she assured him she’d be with him all night, he had a “massive meltdown.”
“He and I both became incredibly dysregulated. It escalated so much,” she said.
“I was so tired. I just kept thinking ‘of course this is happening the night I’m going back to work’. In truth, I wasn’t there. I was like him.”
Harvey kept repeating that he didn’t want Smith to make his bed warm. This was because Harvey’s excuse to sleep in her bed was that it was cold.
“It wasn’t making any sense to me. I screamed and scared the living daylights out of him,” she said.
Smith’s husband tried to intervene. Eventually, Smith realized what was going on. They let Harvey have his feelings and eventually, he cuddled into his mom. Her plan was to try and fix it when he woke up in the morning.
Smith said she wanted to share what had happened as there is so much about “gentle parenting” online and she didn’t want everyone to feel as bad as she did in the moment.
She said what happened was just one of the things that happens sometimes.
“I just want you to know I don’t always nail it and sometimes I lose my sh*t,” she said.
Many rushed to the comments section to build up the heartbroken mom.
“Mom rage is such a thing you are human this is hard,” one social media user said.
One said: “If you have the capacity, may I suggest re-watching a couple of the old videos where you used to make his oatmeal in drink bottle? I’ve genuinely never seen someone so patient and compassionately.”
“I screamed like never before at my two-year-old last night as well! Bed time is such a struggle she becomes so over excited and silly and I lost it, I had a long day and she just flicked a switch in me,” one shared.
Another said: “It happens, it’s obviously not a regular occurrence and anyone who says they haven’t done this is lying.”
“I don’t have kids (never had a desire) but I find your mom’s content so refreshing bc you’re not pretending to have it all together. Like someone else said, you’re learning how to be a parent each day,” one added.
Smith recently spoke out after being “mom-shamed” for wearing a bikini around Harvey while the duo were playing in the pool.
In the video, the mom – who is currently pregnant with her second child – was seen jumping into her family pool to retrieve Harvey’s goggles which had fallen into the deep end.
Harvey, who was off camera, could be heard chatting away. It was something the 30-year-old wanted to capture as the three-year-old was developing his vocabulary.
“Our little back-and-forth chats are one of my favorite parts of my day. I had a feeling that when he asked me to get his goggles from the bottom of the pool, that it might’ve made for a cute conversation to capture … I know I’m not the only parent who films moments like this to watch back time and time again,” Smith told news.com.au.
When she shared the video online, however, some weren’t happy with Smith’s bikini and called it “inappropriate.”
“When I watched it back, sure, I noticed my bum was a little on show,” she said.
“But as someone who started out as a lingerie and bikini model, and who has posted her body online for 13 years now, I didn’t really think twice about it nor did I think it would get some of the backlash that it has.
“I ignored the sexualized comments from men, but the comments that made me frustrated were the comments from any gender mentioning that what I was wearing was ‘inappropriate around a child.’
“I accept people have the right to their own opinion, but it doesn’t mean that opinions always need to be shared.”
She said society places a lot of rules on moms, but she refuses to cover up simply because of the fact she is a mom.
