Sometimes it just comes out of nowhere. Today I didn’t give child #2 a long enough warning before he had to get ready for swim lessons. He was not happy. He felt like it wasn’t fair. Then, when he gets inside to change, he notices that his brother is riding a bike outside. That bike was his brother’s old bike that child #2 claimed this past weekend. That’s correct, it was not even his bike, but a bike that he perceived to be his. There was an explosion of emotions. All of this while the grandparents waited to take child #2 to swimming lessons. I didn’t see this coming, but suddenly I was dealing with a situation where his emotions were way out of whack and my emotions were spiraling quickly.
I had to actively remind myself to
1. Not explode
2. Diffuse the situation so we could have a rational conversation
3. I can’t control his actions, only my own.
I know when I explode, I feel terrible about myself so I stared at him. In my head, I was going over and over all of the things I could say, should say, shouldn’t stay and I didn’t say anything until I was sure it was the right thing. So I stared at him. I stared at him until he started laughing, “why are you just staring at me?” It was more of an “I’m uncomfortable” laugh than a “you’re funny” laugh, but I took it. He needed to break that thought process and then he was more rational.
He went off to swimming lessons with his grandparents and I was left at an emotional level 10. I was shaking. So I stopped my to-do list, grabbed a cold glass of water (it was almost a glass of wine), turned on a show, and started writing this. We, as parents, need to take care of ourselves. As I am coming down from my spike in emotions, I can not parent right now. I can not do much of anything until I can get my emotions under control. Instead of letting things build, I decided that today I would stop and reset. That may not always be possible, but today it was and I am grateful for that.