5 Ways To Avoid A Mommy Meltdown

The other day I was walking through a loud, crowded festival, yet all I could hear was a mother of three losing it on her children. I don’t know exactly why she was so worked up but she was yelling at the top of her lungs and was clearly pissed off. The mom I was with looked at me with raised eyebrows, and then paused saying, “Who am I to judge? I’ve had those moments too.”

At the park recently, I saw another mom struggling with a 3-year-old boy who was pretty defiant compared to other kids. When he threw sand or put his hands on another boy, I could feel her blood boiling and it wasn't long before she snapped.

I get it. For countless reasons, sometimes parents are ready to blow when their little people have gone rogue. But I wonder if parent tantrums are a sign that we might need some help?

Mom Erin says, "I am getting better, but I have lost it with my kid before. For me personally, this was a result of my own childhood trauma resurfacing, so I really had to work on myself and understand my triggers to better control my emotions."

Sometimes even the smallest things can set us off when we're overtired. Mom Molly says, "I don’t lose it often, but when I do it always relates to sheer exhaustion. My coping mechanisms all weaken or fail when I’m tired."

I actually have a big temper sometimes. But with my kid, I never react. I'm thankful that I'm pretty calm around my child, even when he acts up. Though he's also pretty well behaved, and let's not forget — I only have one. But I certainly don't judge other parents who lose their cool, I feel for them.

"I'm someone who never yelled before kids. I had a reputation at work for being chill in any situation," mom Kathryn says. "My partner and I rarely disagree, let alone yell. Me with kids: dragon. My dad is a yeller with everyone, so I know I'm working through my own childhood crap. It's my worst parenting flaw and something I work on daily. I'm way calmer with my youngest, even though she's the one who most people can't handle (she has ADHD). My oldest is so like me. She pushes my buttons like no other. I wouldn't say I have temper tantrums as my dad did, but I lose my cool in situations where the rational part of my mind tells me it won't solve anything."

Fellow mother Erica, who has seen how anger can rub off on kids, says she tries to avoid that reaction."My siblings all had kids before I did, and they and their spouses threw tantrums regularly with their kids — lots of yelling, anger, threats. I thought it was normal!" she says. "The funny thing is, the kids were so used to it they weren’t fazed by their parents’ rage. They just seemed to be learning from it. Now being around them all stresses me out because I realize it doesn’t have to be that way, and it’s not normal or healthy. I don’t judge an occasional adult meltdown (I’ve been there!), but parenting like that every day just isn’t good for anyone involved— not even bystanders."

Therapist Dr. Stephen Dansiger says parents are only human, and losing their tempers sometimes is normal. "That's actually the most important thing for parents to remember: Anger is natural and is actually essential in setting boundaries," he says. "Our hope is to come up with more skillful ways of channeling this emotion than a tantrum."

Dr. Dansiger adds that expecting your children to react with reason can also cause frustration. "In parenting, the anger dilemma is that we are the person in the room with a fully formed neocortex, while our child is coming at us with mostly an attachment-driven and emotional brain, not a rational one," he says. "So eventually if we choose to go at them with reason and are met with fight or flight, we eventually may lose our cool."

Here are some of Dansiger's tips for avoiding a parental tantrum, taken from his book, "Mindfulness for Anger Management: Transformative Skills for Overcoming Anger and Managing Powerful Emotions:"

1. Understand That Anger is Natural

The problem is not anger, but how we manage or mismanage it. John Lydon in his song "Rise" said it best, over and over again: "Anger is an energy!" We just need to learn how to channel our angry feelings more skillfully than with a tantrum.

2. Work with a Mindfulness of Anger Scale

Try this for a few days: Rate your anger at any given moment from zero to 10. After a few days, you may notice that your anger is not as static as you think, it has nuances. Learn what number is your crossover from reasonable parent to adult in a tantrum. Then you can find your best ways of managing things to keep your "resting anger rate" lower and not cross over the line.

3. Exercise and/or Meditate

Of course, these are not in case of emergency, but rather a way of helping us to keep a tether on our emotional states through self-care. Exercise works out a lot of the powerful emotions, and meditation helps us to learn how to have nonjudgmental present time awareness of our feeling states, which may make us less likely to act out when feelings come up.

4. Show Up Calmly

Before using reason with your child, start with making sure the attachment is taken care of. More often than not, what your child needs is for you to not walk away or shout at them, but rather find physical and emotional ways to let them know you are there for them. If you're showing up in a calm way that provides safety and shows your child their anger is natural and understandable, you can work together to dial it down and then come up with solutions.

5. Talk to Other Parents, Formally or Informally

You will find that you are not alone in your struggles. Anger is natural. Tantrums don't really work, they just either get rid of some energy or inflame a situation. We are all capable of learning strategies that help us to manage our anger and help our children to manage their own.

Parenting is no easy task and can make almost anyone lose it at times. But with few new strategies and a lot of patience, we can control our own tantrums on and off the playground.

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