A mom of two's message on the mental and emotional exhaustion of parenting is striking a chord with fellow parents.
Annalee Ford, a civil engineer in Colorado, shared a video on TikTok in which she admitted to screaming at her two daughters, ages 4 and 2.
"It's just been one of those days. Ever since they woke up this morning, everything has been a fight, everything has been a struggle. They've been fighting with each other. They've been screaming at me," Ford says in the video. "My 4-year-old told me she hated me because I couldn't un-tear her page that she asked me to tear."
She continues, "This morning, I just lost it. I just screamed at my kids."
Ford goes onto say in the video that prior to becoming a parent, she thought the hardest part of parenting would be the lack of freedom or the lack of sleep.
Instead, she says in the last four years, she has learned the hardest part instead is dealing with her kids' emotions, as well as her own.
"It is the pure exhaustion that comes from emotionally regulating 24/7 a day," Ford says. "The patience and the strength that it takes to watch these humans combust in front of you and stay cool so that they can regulate, and take in all of their emotions for them. Oh my god."
Ford told "Good Morning America" she felt compelled to share her thoughts with her TikTok followers because she often feels alone when having difficult moments with her young kids.
MORE: Mom’s alternative to timeout is taking over TikTok"There's this big shift online with gentle parenting and how acknowledging emotions and being really present with your kids and working through things with them can be a really positive experience," Ford said. "But I feel like we're so focused on that, that we forget to talk about the fact that we're humans too. I'm a I'm a human first and a mom second, so I'm going to mess up and I'm going to scream at them sometimes on accident and feel bad about it, but I don't think people are talking about that side of it happening."
Ford added that she understands why parents may be hesitant to show the negative or hard parts of parenting on social media, but said it has left her with unrealistic expectations.
"In my mind, I just I think that everyone else has it so much easier than I do. Like, I feel like everyone else is killing it at this parenting game," Ford said. "And when we're out in public and my kid's having a tantrum on the coffee shop floor, I'm like, 'Why is my kid the only one doing this?'"
Ford's video sparked a conversation among parents, prompting more than 6,000 comments, most of which thanked her for being relatable and honest.
"I have so many moments like this and I feel SO bad," wrote one commenter.
"You are not alone thank you for sharing," wrote another. "I had a rough morning with my toddler and have felt horrible all day because of it."
Ford also received praise for how she handled her own meltdown. In the video, she describes how she apologized to her daughters, telling them, "You guys know you get really upset. Well, mommy was just really upset and couldn't control her emotions anymore."
She told "GMA" that even though she struggles with guilt if she loses her temper, she has found that being open with her kids is the most important learning experience for them.
"As long as you can live up to it afterwards and apologize and talk about what happened, I think that is even a greater lesson than just showing them, 'Everything's fine. It's OK to be sad. It's OK to be angry. We're gonna work through it,'" Ford said. "But for them to see you kind of lose it and then come back, and how you come back, I think is even way more important than how you stayed steady in the first part."
Ford added that while her 2-year-old daughter is too young to express herself fully, she has noticed her 4-year-old picking up emotion regulation skills as they learn together.
"It's crazy the the way that she uses her words now to tell me, like, 'I'm sorry I just got so upset, but when you took my blanket away, it made me really angry,'" Ford said. "And I'm like, it didn't even occur to me that that would make you angry, like, thank you for telling me that. And then I say, 'I'm so sorry. I never thought of that. I'll ask you next time.'"
She continued, "That doesn't happen all the time, but when it does happen, it feels really good and it makes me feel like maybe we're doing something 10% right."
