Why is my child only like this… with me?

Many mothers carry this question quietly, until one day it becomes impossible to ignore, watching their child behave completely differently with a teacher, a neighbour, a friend, or even their partner.
And suddenly, the real question shifts from what’s wrong with my child to what is happening between us?

It feels unfair.
You do the planning, the researching, the holding, the caring, and somehow, you still receive the hardest behaviour.
But what so many mums realised this week is that it’s rarely about the child.
It’s the emotional dynamic.
The invisible patterns.
The subconscious signals.
The energy that lives between two people long before any words are spoken.

One mum told us that she sat in her kitchen, the place where her kids sit every morning, and imagined watching herself.
She mentally observed how she moved in that room.
With incredible self-awareness, she noted: she was chaotic.
She didn’t say this with shame. She said it with complete clarity.

Another mum recognised an old inherited pattern from her own mother, the fussing, the controlling, the flapping, a way of being she once promised herself she’d never repeat, as it made her angry as a child.
Yet there it was, resurfacing every morning, shaping the entire emotional climate of her home.

These realisations weren’t rooted in shame. They came from deep honesty.
Patterns don’t disappear because we know better.
They shift when we finally see them.

Most of us live 95% on autopilot.
We hit that kitchen, the school run, every morning with a mental checklist of 100 tasks that “must” be done in 12 minutes.
We’re not actually in the moment, we’re battling it.
And our children, they feel the battle.

Children, especially highly sensitive ones, feel every piece of that.
They don’t respond to our words. They respond to our state.
They sense the internal anger, the anxiety, the resentment, the fear, even when we plaster a look of complete calm on our faces.
Living in that state is actually very painful.
And that pain spills into the room before we realise it.

This kind of work depends on mothers recognising and releasing their own pain, before they can soften what their child is carrying.
Some mothers see these painful patterns have been playing out for decades.
For others, the turning point is motherhood.

Children hold up a mirror.
You start to see the younger version of yourself staring back, as they move through the world that once cracked the parts of you you're still learning how to hold.
Our children are, in fact, our greatest healers, if we allow ourselves to listen.

We saw mums begin seeing their patterns with new clarity and compassion.
They recognised how much inherited emotional wiring they’ve been carrying, and how powerfully it shapes their children’s behaviour.

This is where change begins.

Not in perfection.
Not in pretending to be peaceful and calm.
Not in silencing emotion.

Change begins in awareness.
In recognising and seeing  what’s actually happening.

This is cycle-breaking.
This is generational healing.
This is the brave, quiet work of mothers who are willing to look inward, so their children don’t have to carry the same patterns forward.

Everything changes from moments like these.
Not instantly.
But in small shifts, a changed morning, a different approach to breakfast, that create the new beginnings.