My 2-year-old was doing something with his Lego set.
Suddenly he started scattering them around.
“Vibhu, don’t throw them” I said in a polite tone.
He ignored what I said and continued doing the same thing.
Some of the parts were behind the bed, some inside it and some of them were on the floor.
“Vibhu, ENOUGH, stop playing”. I shrieked in my loudest most threatening voice. I collected them all, put inside the box and placed the box where my son couldn’t reach.
My toddler began to cry and I realized I was completely boiling over when I did this.
This is always said that Parenting is the most stressful yet rewarding job. But I want to meet the person who first said that because many times our rewards are hard to come by. My son is growing very fast and the level of patience test keeps on getting harder for me. Interestingly my parenting stress doesn’t come from my son at times, but from trying to balance everything. I want to get ready quickly in the morning but my son is in the mood of playing. I want him to sit calm and play with his toys whereas he wants to scatter them without the intention of playing. Like so, I can give many examples where I want to balance my toddler's behavior and my expectations. And these are the moments when I hit an intolerable stress moment. The result is, I yell even I know that I should not, but it happens!
I read somewhere that these are symptoms of Mommy tantrum. When mothers scream, yell and show their frustration in front of kids. But is this a NO NO? It's because we love our kids so much that they are able to provoke such strong feelings of anger in us. Some of us feel guilty that we yelled over kids. Some even feel worse and suffocated because they couldn't release their anger-mix feelings out. But my thinking is little different from those philosophies which assume parents wrong if they yell. I am sorry to differ to those psychologists who say that yelling is usually a sign that a parent has no strategy to deal with tough situations. If we flip out and have a tantrum in front of our kid, I think it's okay. We are human with human emotions and mind. We all deal with situations differently. What matters is how we handle it from that moment on.
To me, it’s a learning moment when I lose it over my son and later I think about it. I go and say sorry to my son, and I have not one bit of shame about it. He is still immature to understand the locus but my plan is I would avoid such situations in future but if it happens I would try to explain it to my son. I know I should take steps to break on my Mama Tantrum. But I am going with a brand new solution for this problem. I don't feel guilty and I don't kill myself because I struggled with furious angry thoughts. I believe in explaining the consequences to doing certain things to my son and I do it to my level best. The reality is, I don’t suddenly feel excited to hang out with him after a stressful moment. And I don’t want to be a “fun mother” who never yells. But those bitter moments I redeem with giving chocolates to my son, or asking him if he wants his Frooty, or if he wants to go outside. Things immediately change and by the time I return with his favourite things, he has already forgotten about my tantrum.
Have you had a Mommy tantrum? How you deal with it?
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