“You Threw Me Out of the Car” – A Reflection on a Hard Parenting Moment

At a workshop recently, I mentioned how my youngest daughter loves to remind me of all the things I got wrong over the years—before I knew what I know now. And tonight, while we were sitting at the dinner table, she brought it up again—that story she always tells. The one she loves to repeat. And honestly, it’s just too good not to share. Because now I see it differently. Now I can reflect on what happened, how it still triggers me sometimes, and how I have to consciously bring myself back to compassion—for her, and for myself.

So here’s the story she tells. The one she’ll never let me forget.

Years ago, my daughter was about to return to high school after the summer holidays—going into either second or third year. The day before school started, she had a GP appointment for some minor ailment she’d been complaining about. I, of course, had been minimising it: “Oh for God’s sake, it’s not that bad.” Just like I always did back then.

She didn’t want to go alone—she was in that in-between stage, not quite a child, not quite an adult—so I moved heaven and earth to get her there. I’d been up early, rearranged everything, and taken her to the doctor. And she was furious. Her face like thunder. She was rude, snappy, unkind. I kept warning her. “Straighten your face,” I said. “You don’t speak to me like that.”

All the old parenting scripts.

After the appointment, her mood hadn’t changed. Still scowling. Still snapping at me. Still making me feel like the dirt under her shoe. And finally, I snapped. I pulled the car over, yelled at her to get out, and I drove off.

She was maybe 13, 14, 15 at most. I left her a 10–15-minute walk from home. It wasn’t a nice walk. It was mostly uphill. And when I got home, I panicked. I called my husband in tears, asking him to phone her and make sure she was okay. I tracked her on my phone, convinced something terrible would happen.

And yet—I still felt I had to “teach her a lesson”.

So I went into her room, took away all her makeup——leaving only a few things behind. When she got home, safe and sound, I acted tough, as though I didn’t care. I yelled. I told her she wasn’t getting her makeup back. Her expression was deadpan, emotionless, and that only made me angrier.

I threw more consequences at her. I said, “I’m not getting up early to drive you to school anymore. You can get the bus.”

Now, this was a 25-minute drive. And we lived nowhere near a bus stop. She had to walk to the main road. It had been on our minds for a while that maybe she should start taking the bus—but looking back, I know I said it in anger, not in wisdom.

So, the next day, off she went. She came home with a raw open blister the size of a 50p coin. Her brand-new school shoes had shredded her heels. And yes, the next day, I drove her to school.

Now, years later, she brings this story up again and again. Especially now that I’ve started to understand things through the trauma-informed lens.

There’s so much in this story that makes me want to hide my face.

She said to me tonight: “Mum, I can’t believe you told me to get out of the car. I hadn’t even done anything wrong.”

And she’s right. She was a stressed, overwhelmed teenager, nervous about school, anxious about going to the GP. And I couldn’t see that. I was taking everything personally, making it about me, and not noticing the child in front of me struggling.

She reminded me tonight how she used to ask if she could go jogging down that road—the very road I left her on—and I’d said no, it wasn’t safe. But in that moment, in my anger, I left her there alone.

She told me about that bus again—the one that went through all the dodgy areas. “Did you ever take that bus, Mum?” she asked. “Did Dad?” The answer, of course, is no. But we let her take it, at 13.

She remembers the people “shooting up at the back of the bus”. I like to think she’s being dramatic—but either way, she was scared. She was alone. And she’s still angry.

And the blister. She still talks about the blister. “That thing didn’t heal for months!”

And again—she’s absolutely right.

And then, she hits me with: “And Mum—you took away my makeup. On the first day of high school. A teenage girl! You took away my makeup.” And honestly, she’s right again. If someone took my makeup now, I’d feel vulnerable. And that was my response to her stress.

But here’s the truth: it won’t help if I beat myself up. I genuinely thought I was doing the right thing. That’s the parenting I came from—control, fear, obedience. I didn’t know there was another way.

And still—when she tells the story—I can feel my defences rise. I want to say, “But you were being a horror, you were being cheeky, you were rude!” And I have to bite my tongue. Because she wasn’t bad. She was overwhelmed. Her brain was offline. And so was mine.

I asked her, “Did it work? Did you never speak to me like that again?”

She laughed.

Because no—it didn’t work.

She didn’t learn anything from the punishment. She learned when I started to listen. When I began holding space. When I started to see her. We’re still learning. Still growing. Still getting it wrong sometimes.

But wow—was she right.

Even my husband got defensive when we talked about it. But I stopped him: “No. She’s right. She was scared. She was overwhelmed. And we were responding with fear and control.”

That day, I was so stressed and overwhelmed myself, I chucked her out of the car in a place I wouldn’t even let her run. How disconnected must I have been? And when I got home, I was terrified. That’s how offline I was. But I didn’t repair. I didn’t say sorry. I didn’t drive back.

If I could do it again, I’d stop. I’d breathe. I’d apologise. And we would talk. We would repair. And we would heal, together.

I still carry the weight of that day. And I still catch myself, now and then, wanting to defend my actions. But healing doesn’t come from defensiveness—it comes from honesty. It comes from seeing our children not as disrespectful or defiant, but as dysregulated and overwhelmed. And it comes from seeing ourselves that way, too.

I can’t go back and change what I did. But I can keep showing up now. I can let her tell me now how it felt and keep apologising. I can keep learning.

And that’s exactly what I plan to do.