We all heard that when children are overwhelmed by BIG emotions, it’s our job to share our calm, not to join their chaos.
But, what to do if you don’t have any calm to share? What to do if you lost your patience and yelled at your child?
It’s important to remember that we can’t expect to have perfect and calm interactions with our children 100% of the time. We (parents) get overwhelmed, too. And sometimes we lose our temper and our patience and we might yell or say something we regret later on.
So what’s the best way to approach a situation when that happened? What we can do is turn those moments of overwhelm and big emotions into learning opportunities for ourselves and our children. How do we do that?
By REPAIRING what’s been done.
For example, after a yelling incident (when everyone is in a calm state) you can say, “I am sorry for yelling. I was upset and I felt very overwhelmed by my big emotions. Next time I’m going to use a calming strategy to help me manage my reaction. I will start by taking five deep breaths. Do you want to join me next time and we’ll do our best to calm our minds together?”
The beautiful thing about this approach is that you’re showing your child a couple of things:
First, no one is perfect and even YOU get overwhelmed by big emotions.
Second, you’re modeling what you’re going to do next time to avoid a yelling incident.
What actually happen is, as a parent, you’re reinforcing the message that we CAN LEARN how to control our reactions by using various coping and calming strategies. And it can be done.
Hope this article helps you whenever you’re facing trying moments. 🙂
