Gina Kirschenheiter Says She "Felt Like a Bad Mom" After Learning Her Daughter Was Falling Behind at School

Gina Kirschenheiter is opening up like never before this season of The Real Housewives of Orange County, especially when it comes to her family.

In the latest episode, we saw the mom of three take her 5-year-old daughter, Sienna, to therapy to get help with her sensory issues. Though it can be difficult for Gina to let people in to the most intimate parts of her life, she recently shared on Instagram that she's glad she opened up on the show.

"Sienna Rose…what a [privilege] to watch you burn through this life and light up the sky as you go. We’ve got this," Gina wrote in a post that featured so many adorable photos of her little girl. "Thank you to all the moms of children who struggle and do not struggle with sensory issues that reached out to me to reassure and comfort me after they watched. It’s what I needed in that moment."

Emily Simpson sent her love to Gina and Sienna in the comments of that Instagram post. "She’ll be fine because she has a dedicated mom that will make sure she gets everything she needs," she shared.

Gina opened up more about her daughter in The Real Housewives of Orange County Season 14 After Show, sharing that she "felt like a bad mom" about not recognizing that Sienna needed extra assistance at school sooner.

"I knew that last year when everything was happening within my own personal stuff, I was still maintaining the basic level stuff to take care of my kids, but I was somewhat checked out, and I was very overwhelmed. Sienna being the middle kid and being that she's so good, like she's that kid that if she comes home from school or whatever, she's gonna go in her room and wants to be on her iPad or play with her Barbies or whatever, she'll go do that. And the squeaky wheel gets the grease, and the boys were always squeaking. So she kind of got a little bit overlooked," Gina explained in the above clip. "And then I showed up at a parent-teacher conference, and the teacher was basically like she was behind the other kids. And she's like, 'I know there's a lot going on at home.' And that really hurt."

Because her eldest son Nicholas had been handling everything going on at home so well, Gina said that she thought Sienna and her youngest son Luca would similarly be in a good place. "And then when Sienna didn't, I was like, wow, that's a huge blow to me. I'm not doing what I have to do. It was really scary because that's everything that I have and everything that I wanted, and now I'm not even doing that well. It was very hard for me to accept that," she shared. "It was a reality check that I needed. I got a lot of reality checks this year that I think I needed."

But something positive has come out of this challenging time for the Kirschenheiters. "I'm better for it, I think. And Sienna's better for it, my family's better for it," she said. "It's good."

Photo: Gina Kirschenheiter/Instagram