The 'Good Mom' Trap
Rethinking Magic, Motherhood, and What Really Matters
It was March of 2023, and before bedtime, ten-year-old K. pulled on his Pokemon pajama pants and hopped into his bed where I was already snuggled under the covers, Percy Jackson and The Sea of Monsters open to our page. He tucked against my side and pulled his Squishmallow boba tea to his chest, clamping it under his chin. I began to read, but I didn’t get even halfway down the page before he cut me off.
“We didn’t celebrate this year,” he said.
I paused, my finger marking the spot. “What do you mean?”
“In fourth grade, the leprechaun came and left us treats in our classroom and did a bunch of tricks. I saw the fourth graders today, running in the hall, following the leprechaun’s footprints. In fifth grade, we did nothing.”
K. was ten, almost eleven, with fresh braces that aged him a few years the instant he walked out of Dr. Wong’s office carrying a Crest bag full of orthodontic swag.
I set the book aside and put my arm around him. His bare skin was warm against mine, and I flashed back to the early weeks of being napping buddies, breastfeeding skin-to-skin in my bed.
“Gosh,” I said, giving him a squeeze. “That’s kind of a bummer.”
His cheeks flushed, and his eyes welled.
“We didn’t celebrate either,” he added, rolling away to face the wall.
I knew what he was talking about. For the first time, I hadn’t prompted the kids to build a leprechaun trap the night before St. Patrick’s Day.
To be honest, I had forgotten. My mind was elsewhere, circling adult problems, probably in a conflict of some kind that escapes me now. But likely, I was so focused on building a trap for myself, I forgot the leprechaun’s.
The leprechaun that visited our house usually knocked over chairs, sprayed whipped cream on the counter, spilled the vase of flowers, wrote a snarky note in rainbow colors, toilet-papered the lights, scattered Skittles down the stairs, and always, always evaded then wrecked the homemade cardboard trap.
“It’s kind of sad,” K. said. “I guess in fifth grade everything stops.”
I tried to cheer him toward Easter with, “It’s just around the corner!” But his words stayed with me.
Over the past decade, I have likely held myself to higher-than-average standards of keeping my kids plugged into childhood magic. Because I was the one who initiated the shift in our family, the impact on the boys has often felt like it landed squarely on my shoulders. The holidays, the little rituals, like setting out milk and cookies for Santa, hot-gluing felt fish scales on hoodies for costumes, and hiding hard-boiled dyed eggs around the house, became my way of holding steady amidst the change.
Sometimes I worry I am not doing enough. That if I let one tradition slip, the whole architecture of their childhood will crumble. After K. noticed, I fretted that forgetting the leprechaun trap meant I was failing them somehow. And sometimes I admittedly measure my success as a mother by how well I can maintain these traditions, how long I can keep the magic alive.
When one of them told me so-and-so’s mom put a note in his lunchbox every day, I scrambled to find the Post-Its. If I spaced on tooth fairy money, I chirped an excuse for her (she’s just so damn busy, all those teeth!) and left extra cash the next night. Don’t even get me started on the activity-Advent calendars I made and then had to stick to. Pulling the kids around the neighborhood in a red wagon to look at Christmas lights sounds delightful, but it’s really taxing in the freezing cold.
Don’t get me wrong; I wasn’t simply doing all of these things from a place of guilt or should. Part of me genuinely wanted to because I loved all of it, too. Part of me still does both want to and love it.
But now the kids are older (12 and 15), and I’m not just competing with time. I’m up against screens, social media, the glow of phones and iPads, earbuds that silence my voice, in addition to their busy schedules with sports, theater, and friends. And if I’m being honest, I’m also navigating my own needs: self-care, career, relationship, friendship, travel, spirituality. The parts of myself that can’t only be defined by motherhood.
The pressure to be the keeper of all the magic while also building a life of my own can feel overwhelming.
Lately, I am trying to relieve pressure on myself by trying to see it differently. By showing my children that family doesn’t have to look one way, that I get to design a life that extends beyond motherhood, and that we can challenge the norms we’ve been handed, I’ve also been teaching them resilience and creativity. Maybe preserving these moments of wonder isn’t just about holding back the tide of growing up.
Maybe it’s about giving them a model for questioning the world’s rules, the ones that too often lead to violence and harm, and carving out space for something kinder, braver, and more authentic and playful instead.
Maybe that is a kind of permission to wonder that I’m offering them, just by showing up as myself, even if we wait until the very last minute to carve the pumpkins, and the blasted squirrels eat them before Halloween anyway.
I know magic and play isn’t just theirs to keep. I’m pretty good at giving my own inner child the space. This weekend my friend and I stood in her backyard dancing to club music blasting from her outdoor speaker. We were trying not to fall back on our usual moves—the classic finger snaps, the hands pumping the air—and instead attempted hip thrusts and foot shuffles that felt clumsy and ridiculous. We kept cracking up, losing the beat, starting over. “No more hands!” she’d shout, and then immediately throw her hands up anyway.
It was absurd. It was glorious.
Then on Monday, I hiked a brand new trail to me (that’s hard to find!) and was enamored by the changing leaves. Autumn has always been my favorite. I’ll tell you summer, but under a cozy hoodie, my heart will whisper, the fall. The experience was pure glee for many reasons. Around every bend in the trail was more of nature’s absolute beauty anchoring me to the present moment, gifting me the ability to stay full of awe in my play.
I think about K. that night in March, turned toward the wall, mourning the potential end of something. And I think about myself dancing in the yard and hiking on that trail. There’s something in that gap, between his grief over growing up and my refusal to stop playing, that feels important.
Maybe what I am passing on aren’t the traditions themselves but the knowledge that change doesn’t have to equal loss. That play doesn’t end, it just evolves.
What matters isn’t just preserving their magic, but also letting them see me keep mine. I forgot the leprechaun trap, sure. But maybe the real trap is thinking that being a ‘good mom’ means that I am the orchestrator of the magic, that wonder is something I’m only supposed to curate for them, not live for myself.