50 Parents Having A Worse Day Than You (New Pics)

We named this list "Parenting Failures", but it's more about the realities of being a parent than the failures. It's important to know the difference between rough patches every parent feels and actual parental failure. Ashley Hudson LMFT explains that difference on her blog.

"Parental failure is when a parent causes significant trauma and/or physical or emotional damage to their child through their parenting style," she writes. "This could be in the form of abuse, neglect, abandonment, and/or when parents are involved in substances or violence that is affecting their parenting."

What most parents mean when they say they think they're failing as parents is just stress and weariness talking. Hudson writes that it's a response to a stressful event, several days, weeks or months. True parental failure has serious long-term repercussions for the child.

One of the reasons parents feel this way is because they feel too much pressure. Either from the outside or from themselves. Tia Slightham, M Ed. and Parenting Coach writes that parents desperately want to feel they are enough. Not messing up their kids, doing the right things as a parent. But the truth is, according to her, "if you love your kids, you're trying your best and you keep trying to learn," that's enough.

Ashley Hudson narrows down the things that might make one feel like a failing parent. Most parents, according to her, feel they have too little patience while disciplining. Others panic when they don't feel control over tantrums, rebellions and defiant behavior. First-time parents have it the worst – they simply haven't had the experience.

A Certified Positive Discipline Educator and Life Coach for Parents Adrienne Bishop writes that these feelings of failure also stem from the fact that parents have no control over kids. "The fact is, our children have agency, which means they have the ability to make their own choices. No matter what you want your child to do, they ultimately have the final say."

Bishop writes that when parents think they're failing, they're blaming themselves for their kids' actions. "We try to control our kids’ behavior in order for us to feel better," she claims. "But since it is impossible to control others' behavior, we consistently struggle to feel good, and to not feel like failures, and then as a result we give our power over to our kids and become their victims."