Moms Are Gonna Mom—Just Let Us, Because We Can't Help Ourselves

A viral TikTok about how parents will always worry about their kids is so relatable.

Fact checked by Sarah Scott

Something odd happens when you become a mom—OK, a lot of odd things happen, from finding yourself wearing that super unflattering oompa loompa cut-off pantyhose postpartum to saying things like, “If you put your butt on your brother’s head one more time you can’t play with the spatulas anymore.”

But something also happens to your mind. It’s like you slowly become paranoid about every potential danger your child might encounter at any given moment. She might run out the front door and into oncoming traffic while I’m in the shower! He could get bitten by a rabid raccoon as we check the mail!

That baseline panic doesn’t go away as your kids get older either. In my experience, the anxiety only heightens as your offspring’s autonomy grows, and they’re going to parties without you—and, gasp, starting to drive. I’m not quite there yet with my 15-year-old, but I’m already envisioning endless bad scenarios that I can promptly start obsessing over months before she gets her license.

I know you moms out there relate, and that’s why you’ll love the TikTok shared by Krab Videos (@krab_videos) that pokes fun at how parents worry about things that are—let’s face it—probably a bit outlandish. In the viral share, the Micho brothers riff on what it’s like when your mom calls you to warn you about things.

“There was a 40-car pileup in Wisconsin,” one of the brothers playing the mom says in a faux phone call. “Were you there?” The other brother, A.K.A. the son, wryly answers, “Not in that state.”

“You were just at Chipotle, right?” the “mom” then wonders. “Yeah, Panera blew up,” the brother then reports after the “son” confirms he was at the fast-serve Mexican restaurant—and not the sandwich shop.

“I just heard a siren,” the “mom” goes on to say, adding, “So I’m just gonna need verbal confirmation that you’re still alive.”

The next worry? It’s a doozy: “You know that street where nobody lives, in a different neighborhood where we don’t know anyone that lives there? There was a stabbing. Do not go on that street where you would never go on.”

We’re laughing because this is all so spot-on. And because this fake mom isn’t even so far off with these thoughts. The truth is, we can’t help ourselves from worrying, even about grown-up kids. My parents still feel the need to detail their every concern about my well-being via text, daily. Plus, they now tack on all their distresses involving their grandchildren. (How do grandparents ever sleep?)

I blame parents’ constant state of consternation on how the news and social media report on horrible things that happen all the time, like a bus of kids plummeting off a cliff, and the latest mind-bending, stomach-churning school shooting. These are real events, and leave parents reeling from PTSD. We then project our actually fairly-founded fears on our kids, since we love them so much it might just break our hearts at any given second.

It’s worth considering that this may be unhealthy, and cause our kids to become overly cautious, plagued by worry, and ultimately unhappy. With that in mind, whenever I’m going to unload my latest fears upon my brood, I try to infuse a sense of humor. I’ll warn my teen about stuff she has heard a million times, like she should never go off with someone she doesn’t know, and then say, “Just let me do this so I don’t lose my mind!”

Good thing every kid is dealing with their parents’ paranoia, so at least they can all get together to commiserate about how much we annoy them. Commenters to the super funny TikTok created by the brothers had some truly incredible anecdotes to share on the topic of parents worrying about ridiculous things.

“My mom called me to make sure the man that crashed his bike into the ditch by my apartment wasn’t me. Despite me not being a man, or owning a bike,” one person hilariously recounts.

“My grandma just texted saying to stay away from a sinkhole in Florida…I live in Colorado,” someone else shares.

A 40-year-old writes how his mom was “worried sick for days” because he considered going to a concert by himself. Yet another TikTok user posts that their mom sent a group text to her six adult children warning them against looking directly at the eclipse.

As many, many commenters point out, our worries are, in the end, all shared out of love. But I see the other side that the unrelenting angst can get irritating. Like I said, my parents still pile on with what’s eating away at their sense of calm, and it can feel a bit intrusive.

This video reminds me that they really can’t help it any more than I can stop myself from fretting over my kids’ health, safety, and happiness every waking moment of my life for every instant I’m on this earth! Wait, was that a siren?

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