Okay, so here’s the thing: have you ever felt like you’re not good enough for mum? Like, she wants you to be more, and expects you to be someone you are not? Honestly, I know I have.

Let me start by saying this, expectations can be a good thing. Your mum wants the best for you, and she wants you to be the best person you can be. She is driving you to be a better person, learn, grow and all those great things. She sees potential in you and knows what you could become if you just worked hard.

That being said, mum’s expectations can become a problem. She might expect you to be perfect. She might push you to do things that she loves, rather than what you love. She might become controlling. She might compare you to your sibling, making you feel bad about your achievements. All of this is not okay. It can damage your self-esteem, your self-confidence and have long lasting effects on how you see yourself.

Mums are always going to have expectations of us, but if they get too much, they need to be managed. You need to take the bull by the horns and talk to them. You need to have an open and clear conversation about how their expectations make you feel.

Having this kind of talk is scary, you might disappoint your mum, or make her angry. The best thing you can do is talk to her when you are both calm and relaxed. Think carefully about what you are going to say beforehand. Be careful not to hurt her too much. Don’t attack her, that will only make things worse. Avoid saying things like “YOU’RE LITERALLY THE WORST MOM IN THE WORLD”. Yeah…don’t do that. Instead, here are a few things you can do:

Prepare well. Before you talk to her, write down your thoughts about the issue. Talk to someone else, maybe a friend, about how you feel. See if your feelings are valid.

Find out why. Ask your mom why she expects the things she does. Find out the reasons for her expectations. Maybe her expectations come from a good place. This will also help her to reflect on her own expectations, she might just realise they are unfair. (Fingers crossed).

Focus on how you feel and not what she does. This will help you avoid personally attacking her. So rather than saying “You are the worst because you expect me to be the best chess player in the world”, say “I know you want the best for me, but I feel really stressed and uncomfortable because I don’t think chess is for me”. If she says she doesn’t care, ask why.

Find out what you have in common. Ask her what expectations in her life make her feel stressed or worried, and then relate your own experience to hers. Make her see that her life is no different to yours.

Be patient. These things take time to fix. It might take one conversation, it might not. Keep working at it until you find a solution that works for both of you.

Goodluck.