How To Avoid Having A Mommy Meltdown

Did you just have a momtrum? Here are a few pointers to help you turn down the volume.
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It’s so hard to keep it all together! Parents have so much juggling to do, and so many demands on our fraying attention – no wonder we lose it every now and then. Still, when it happens, we cannot help but feel horribly guilty, and that makes us more likely to lash out. You can’t be emotionally contained when you’re stressed, overworked or feeling like you aren’t good enough. When you’re feeling irritable, you might also notice that you:

  • Flog yourself for not being good enough.
  • Redouble your efforts to control your child’s behavior, even if it’s giving you a headache and making you irritable.
  • Sedate yourself with wine. (This is just a numbing agent against negative feelings, so those feelings will just fester and can even make you feel worse later!)
  • Take a deep breath, pause and use the opportunity to check in: What could you do right now to return yourself to equilibrium so you can parent your child?

That irritation you feel is a signal that it’s time for preventive maintenance. If you don’t do some immediate self-care, you’re likely to end up hurting yourself, breaking something by accident, hurting your child’s feelings or even getting sick.

So when you notice this overload happens, try the following:

Stop. Or at least slow down. Remind yourself that the world isn’t ending. Take a few slow, deep breaths. This will move you back into the present moment, so your big emotions won’t hijack you. Now you can focus on the best reaction.

Say it out loud. You’ll feel an urgent need to act, but instead, voice what you are feeling as patiently as possible. In the moment, it’s hard to separate the two, but try to recognize that this moment is not the time to discipline. Any lesson you need to teach will be far more effective if you are calm. The lesson here is to model self-regulation. There is a cumulative effect to taking this approach. In short, it gets easier simply from repetition.

“Managing our emotions doesn’t mean stifling them.”

Managing our emotions doesn’t mean stifling them, it means working through them in a way that provides our children the opportunity to witness and to help.

When we do this, we give kids a chance to empathize, learn how to label emotions, and how to ask for what they need in a respectful way. Kids sense when we’re disconnected and stressed, so they act out, and so often your hug will reel them back to their best selves. Sure, they’ll forget and screech and push your buttons, but they’ll do less of that than usual. And you’re taking responsibility for your own irritability, so they don’t feel like bad people just because they’re acting like kids.

Of course, if you’re irritable every day, that’s a sign that something bigger is going on. It could mean more exercise, sleep, or needing to visit with a counselor. And if that is the case, then taking action is not just necessary; it’s the right thing to do as a parent.

There is so much in this world that seeks to hijack our emotions and distract us from the task at hand, but if we apply self-awareness, we can bring these points of stress back under control. And by doing that, we are also showing our kids how to do the same.

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