Ideas for Handling challenging kid behavior when you are stressed
Being isolated at home with young children isn’t easy. The increased stress from being cooped up, together (all the time!), against the backdrop of scary news and a terrifying economic climate can make emotions run high for all family memb
ers. Though some kids may jump for joy at school being cancelled, others may have a harder time and the changes in their routine may amplify challenging behaviors. Kids feel this stress too, though they may show it in different ways than adults do.
Some kids can talk with us about their feelings, but when they’re overwhelmed or don’t have the vocabulary to have a conversation about feelings, they may communicate their stress in other ways; they may show changes in behavior, changes in sleeping and eating habits, tantrums, trouble with impulse control, and whining or being clingy can be signs that your child is feeling stressed.
Much like the oxygen mask metaphor, if you are trying to help a little person with their big feelings, it helps to keep yourself calm. Use self care tools to take care of your own needs so you can be there for your child.To help your child when they are feeling stressed, be patient with them and try to view their behavior as communication rather than “being bad” or “annoying.” Make time to connect with them, play a game, do an art project, cook something, or let them choose an activity. Doing an activity together can help kids feel secure and valued. Listen to their frustrations, their fear, their anger. If they don’t have the vocabulary for their feelings yet, help them learn the words for what they are feeling.
Some kids thrive on structured routines, other kids prefer things to be more free-flow. Whatever your child prefers, your schedule does not need to be color coded and it doesn’t need to be perfect. Try to find something that works for your family and do your best. When I say do your best, I do not mean your “Type A” style best, I mean do the best you can without sacrificing your peace and while trying to balance the often conflicting needs of family members. This is messy and loud and chaotic in the best of times; In times of crisis, being gentle with yourself is part of doing your best. So be gentle with yourself and be gentle with your children and when you fuck up (because we ALL do) be gentle with yourself again.
Introduce your child to healthy ways to cope with stress. For young children, playing is a great way to counteract stress. Getting outside and doing active play can help everyone to feel more optimistic. If you must remain indoors, try heavy work activities like bear crawls, jumping, or running laps around the house. Play eye spy looking through a window. Art and sensory activities, such as modeling clay or foam soap can be calming for some kids. Distance learning resources can stimulate your child’s mind and avoid boredom, but don’t underestimate your child’s need for down time too. Kids don’t learn well when they are stressed. Some kids may seek quiet time away from parents and siblings to recharge. You are bound to need some quiet time too. Its really hard to be calm and collected with a stressed child when you don’t have any time away. If your child doesn’t nap, try setting up an activity that they might enjoy playing alone, such as play dough near you in the kitchen, reading a book, or listening to a children’s story podcast.
Talk with your child in an age-appropriate way about why their routine is changing and what types of things they can expect for the near future. Let them know they can ask questions and listen to their concerns and feelings about it. When you are parenting during a crisis, there are bound to be some bumps in the road. Reach out to your support network if you need help or a listening ear. Connecting with people facing with similar challenges can make you feel less alone and help you get through it.
Handling big tantrums:
Keep them safe. If they are in a space where they might hurt themselves or others, either move them to a safe place or remove any objects or people that might get hurt.
Let them have their feelings however loud, angry, sad, or scared they may be
While they are having their feelings, check in with your own. Use your coping skills to give yourself some brain space and stay calm during your child’s meltdown. Are you breathing? Check your mind hobgoblins. Use a mantra or repeat a calming phrase if you need to. “This is hard, but it will be ok” and “they are having a hard time, not giving me a hard time” work well for me. Give yourself some mental breathing room, even if you don’t have physical breathing room. Listen to music or a podcast on earbuds, imagine that old “Calgon take me away…” commercial. Make a cup of tea. Don’t go down with the ship.
If you find yourself at a breaking point, remove yourself from the situation. Lock yourself in the bathroom, step outside or call someone to confide in. Don’t beat yourself up for reaching your breaking point- everyone gets there from time to time. Pat yourself on the back for stepping out when you need to.
When you are both calm, come back and work on solving whatever problem arose with your child. Its ok to leave the “lesson” if you aren’t in a good enough headspace to deal with it calmly right away. You can always talk about it later, if you feel you need to. Or not if you feel you don’t.
Adjust your expectations. Survival mode is not the time to be Super Mom. Grazing on goldfish crackers and a bit of extra screen time never killed anyone.
Meet kiddos needs to help prevent problems
Connection (family & social)
when you are in good headspace, take a few moments to do an activity together with your child. You do not have to give your child constant attention. Finding a balance between encouraging independent play and “together time” is key.
A post about some of the difficult things going on in life…
Why is it that writing about shitty things in your life is so much more difficult than writing about positive things? I can think of a million reasons why I shouldn’t write about them, and 999,999 of them are bullshit anxiety reasons about how my problems aren’t important enough to voice.
Someone you write about will see it and recognize themselves and be upset with you or be hurt.
Someone you wish would see it never will and it won’t help to say it if they don’t.
The worst offender for me is the idea that my problems are insignificant and I’m not important enough for anyone to truly care about how I feel. I am lucky enough to have family that loves me, even if they’re the cause of a lot of strife in my life. And most of them would be surprised if they knew how often I fantasize about suicide and how I could do it. How I’ve thought of driving to a field in the country and swallowing a bottle of pills in my car.
How I thought about how I should bring the lawn and leaf trash bags to sit in so that when my bodily functions cease, I don’t permanently fuck up the car seats when I piss and shit myself.
Even worse would be the fact that I most often think about these things when my kid is going off on me. My own kid. I love him and I would die for him, and he’s had a really rough shake in life.
And right now, I am all that he has. Family is an entire state away, he’s had shitty luck making friends in a new(ish) town, his dad and stepmom have abused him, he was raped by a cousin before he hit double digits, he’s been bullied in school. So I am his rock. I am the bucket into which he dumps his overflow of feelings, and often those feelings are full of sharp, painful words.
All the ways in which he feels I’ve failed him, my own insecurities, all thrown in my bucket. And these days, my bucket is often almost at capacity.
My bucket has always been the reliable one into which others could dump their excess and lighten their own load. I always found ways to lighten my own bucket, and now I realize it was probably a convenient slow leak – things just tended to cool down with time for me, I could sleep on things for a night or two and generally the bothersome feeling ebbed on its own.
As I’ve grown older, it’s like the wood has expanded and the slow leak has resolved itself.
Or perhaps it’s that feelings filled my bucket that were too big to drain through that small leak. Feelings that I had when I found out my boyfriend was sexting four of his exes, telling them he loved them, telling them terrible things about me. Feelings I had when I found out that while I was at my grandmother’s funeral, he was at home saving pictures of one of his exes to his Google Drive. Feelings about how he would gaslight me when I confronted him. Feelings about how shitty he was with my kid.
Feelings about how I shouldn’t have let it happen, how I should have ended things the first time I found evidence of his infidelity and read the saved texts to one ex saying he had a dream that he asked her to marry him and she said yes.
On top of those feelings are all the feelings that settled in that bucket surrounding the deaths of my grandparents. They raised me from birth and were parents to me, more so than my birth parents were while I was growing up. I was the only person with my grandpa when he went to the ER with severe abdominal pain. I asked the doctor if it was an ulcer, and I’ll never forget the feelings that crashed in the bucket when he said, “Oh no, we’re pretty sure it’s cancer.”
The feelings started feeling like rocks when I got a call from my aunt in the middle of the night telling me that my grandpa had died, just one week before my birthday. I always joke, even though it’s not a joke, that I must be the Angel of Death because so many people in my life have died the same month I was born. I will never forget walking into that room and seeing his waxy pallor, his eyes closed, and his mouth open, slack-jawed. He was bony and thin, because the cancer had eaten him away – literally. It ate a hole in his colon, and it was inoperable because his type of cancer could be transmitted through the air if they had tried to operate.
When we told my grandma, she closed her eyes and moaned, “noooo” over and over again. One week later, the night of my grandpa’s funeral, she was brought to the ER and it was discovered that one of her diabetic ulcers developed gangrene. If they amputated the leg, she likely never would have recovered. She opted for hospice instead. My bucket could barely hold the feelings I had when I had to work instead of being with my family at her bedside because just a few months prior, my old job had to lay me off due to miscalculations by the CFO. So I got a day of bereavement leave for each of their deaths, and any other time off was unpaid. As a mother who barely made enough, I couldn’t afford not to work. So my anxiety swam through that full bucket every day, waiting for a call that I had missed it. Missed saying goodbye. Thankfully it happened while almost all her family was by her side, myself included. And I had the good fortune to sing to her to try and help her relax so she could let go. And I held her hand while I watched her face, wide-eyed and mouth gasping, take her last breath and finally release into peace and stillness, three weeks to the day after my grandpa.
My grief was handled alone as I became the rock to everyone else. Handled isn’t even the right word for it. It went ignored as I let everyone else pour their excess into my bucket. And then all the terrible things began to happen. As it often does, death brought out the worst in some family members. Money became a motivator, and they acted as though each red cent of their painstakingly maintained insurance policies was a gasp of oxygen and they needed it to live. I wanted to strangle the breath from them and give it back to my grandparents. I wanted to punch them and scream that I’d give every dollar to have them back. More big feelings as I watched the ugly sides of my parents, the people I was supposed to lean on, show themselves. I cannot forget it, and I cannot let myself fully trust them ever again.
Then the blow that no parent is prepared for – finding out their child was abused. I can’t describe the feelings I had when my son told me, but I remember it like it was yesterday. And he asked me not to tell anyone who didn’t need to know. He was already afraid to tell me, because his abuser threatened to kill him if he ever told anyone else. And so beyond people who were necessary, no one knew what had happened. I respected his wish for silence, and I wouldn’t take it back for anything. But the weight of what happened to my bright, lovely, sunshine child was heavy. And fighting for justice within the legal system, alone, was hard as fuck. The justice system doesn’t do much when the perpetrator is a juvenile, and my son ended up having to jump through more hoops than anyone which led him to develop the feeling that he was being punished for what happened to him. He’s never truly recovered from that, and it infuriates me whenever I think about it.
He was diagnosed with generalized anxiety disorder and talk therapy wasn’t working. I decided to try medication to help him cope better with daily life while we continued talk therapy. Eight months later, he was on Prozac and his doctor doubled the dosage because he thought he was metabolizing it too quickly. He was wrong.
One night it was like a switch flipped in my son, he went off and was threatening to stab us, laughing in my face as I cried, and more. I told him I was going to have to have him committed to a treatment facility, and the switch flipped back. He broke down in tears, and begged me to get him help because he couldn’t control what was happening. I brought him to the ER to be admitted to inpatient treatment and the doctor said it was from too many video games and treated me like an idiot when I explained it was from an increased dosage of medication.
We spent three days and two nights in the ER waiting for a bed, and were finally discharged with a referral for outpatient treatment.
On January 4th of 2020, I picked up my One Year Chip. How awesome that was. And in a stretch of ego, how proud I was of myself. Yes, I know I didn’t do it alone, but I was still proud of myself for not giving into the craving, especially early on.
So, I picked up my chip and all was so good in my world. February came and I was still on that pink cloud, vowing to never step off of it – hell, my sponsor said I never had to if I didn’t want to, so why would I?
Then came March, and we all know what March brought. For me, it brought a little more unknown than I was ready for. But I have a program and a higher power, and I was going to be okay. My meetings shut down, but we all found Zoom and again I knew it would be okay.
April got a little harder. I was diagnosed with Covid on April 9th. I was lucky and able to manage my symptoms at home. One thing that was becoming more and more evident, though, was that I was starting to miss my fellowship – the Zoom meetings weren’t quite filling the void anymore. Plus, I had been laid off on March 16th, so I was living in an isolation I knew would be NO good for me. But I was still okay. I leaned on my higher power hard, but He’s got broad shoulders. Then came May.
May was gonna be good. We got back to work on the 13th and although it wasn’t as busy as it needed to be, it would pick up. I just knew it would. And although Covid was ripping through the world, I could stay busy with work and feel some normalcy.
Side Note: I live in South Carolina and masks weren’t much of a thing here until quite recently. So we eventually became a “hot spot”, made the national news – the works. And as Bill would say when sharing his story… “And then it got worse.”
My mom had always lived independently. At 77 she was the neighbor who took all her neighbors to doctor appointments, the pharmacy, grocery store; whatever they needed. On May 20th mom was doing what she does – taking a neighbor to a doctor appointment. Except that after dropping off her friend, she disappeared. Just like that. We searched and searched, checked parking lots of nearby doctor offices, hospital parking lots, made all the phone calls, and yielded nothing. We checked her apartment for clues, and that’s where we found that her wallet with all her money, credit cards, and license were still there. As was her cell phone. Mom disappeared and had no money or ID or way to call or be called. That’s when I started to feel a serious WTF feeling.
In the meantime, I had filed a missing person report here with the police department. Besides walking in the rooms of A.A., that was the smartest thing I’ve done. All told my mom was missing a total of 26 hours. She was found at about 1:30 on the 21st, in Virginia. I may have forgotten to mention my mom lives here in SC too. She was pulled over by a police officer for driving with her hazards on. The officer here in SC who filed the missing persons immediately put mom on the NCIC, so her license plate dinged as soon as the officer in Virginia ran it. Maybe that’s procedure, I don’t know, but I’m grateful he did that. Beyond grateful.
**At this point I’d like to point out again that mom had no ID or money. I have no idea where she spent that 26 hours because the trip to Virginia from here is 4, maybe 5 hours. This troubled me for weeks, but she doesn’t remember any of it, so that right there is some Grace of God stuff, and I chose to let that go**
Mom had no idea where she was, how she’d gotten there, or why she’d gone there. She was belligerent with the officer and he brought her to the hospital for evaluation. That hospital was less than helpful. As a matter of fact, for a minute I thought about legal charges against them, but knew I could not afford to pursue litigation against them. So, I let it go. Mom wasn’t hurt by them; she just wasn’t helped.
That Thursday we were ready to head back to South Carolina, but it was too much to drive so we decided to get a room. I had to stay up all night long at that hotel because mom kept trying to leave the room… that was a long night. We came back home the next morning and I will spare too much of that story; let’s just say that immediately upon returning home I brought mom to the hospital here, where she was admitted and stayed for what ended up being a week. There I found out mom had developed a bad UTI which brought on an early onset of dementia. That explained her previously inexplicable trip to Virginia and her subsequent behaviors.
About the 4th day in the hospital, it became obvious that once the UTI had cleared up mom wasn’t much better. That dementia wasn’t just going to go away. What was worse though was because she wasn’t “medically” in need any longer, the hospital wanted her gone. Every day they would tell me she needed to be released. I had no idea what the hell I was supposed to do with her! She certainly couldn’t live alone anymore and if she stayed with me, I’d have to quit my job and probably never sleep again for fear she’d sneak out of my house. None of those were viable option, I was so lost. Suddenly I’m the caregiver with absolutely no clue what my next steps were. Medicare, Medicaid – I knew nothing, but I was about to get a crash course.
Again, I’ll spare you all the details, but I found a place for mom to be transferred to while I tried to figure the Medicaid/Medicare piece out. It’s a lovely assisted living that is costing me $2000 a month. I cannot sustain that for much longer before I bankrupt myself. To make matters worse, this assisted living facility (I have very recently learned) doesn’t accept Medicaid payments. As a matter of fact, there’s one place that covers most of the eastern seaboard of South Carolina for Medicaid assisted living residents. It’s an hour away and NO ONE is taking what they refer to as “community transfers” due to Covid. So, for now, mom has to stay there while I try to figure out how old is too old to become a prostitute…
Kidding, of course.
So, for now, mom is where she is and she’s safe. She’s as mean as a rattlesnake every time I see her, she even told me she wished she had killed me when she had the chance. Yes, I know she has a disease and doesn’t always know what she saying, but I can promise you that doesn’t make it hurt any less. But I’m all she’s got and I don’t get another mom, so it is what it is.
My sobriety has taken quite a hit, but it’s still intact. Year 2 of sobriety has thrown a shit ton of curve balls at me and I’m trying to learn when to swing and when to let em go by. I’m getting better at it. I got to go to an in-person meeting last night – first one since early March. It was glorious. I have been missing my “people” so much. Way more than I realized.
I’m sure there’s a lot I left out, maybe forgot, but I’m finally beginning to realize what some of our slogans mean. Living Life on Life’s Terms isn’t for pansies. One Day at A Time is something I’m having trouble with these days, but my people smack me in the back of the head with it when I need it. Also when I need it, they’re here for me. You’re here for me. That’s amazing and I hope to never take that for granted.
When I was in the depths of my worst dark days, there was a feeling I would get. It feels like an itch that you can’t scratch. It ignites a burning desire deep within to just rip off your skin so you don’t have to feel it anymore. Every second you’re forced to spend in your body is worse than the last and there is absolutely no end in sight.
When you come to the realization that THIS IS IT. Fear is all you can feel. What does the end look like? People say it gets better, but holy shit, have they encountered YOUR demons? They have not! How in the world am I going to wake tomorrow knowing that the FEAR will still be there. You hear “Just hang on” and can’t believe that you can accomplish such an insane task. That ledge is getting really slippery and you can’t feel your fingers.
So, everyday I started looking for one thing to live for. There were many days that it was my husband’s smile or my children’s laughter. Other days it was a chocolate doughnut. Some days it was the color of the sky, the smell of the air after rainfall, the beauty of a butterfly with an intricate face on their wings, tiny flowers in the yard that no one planted there, but are a gift from Mother Nature, or the sound of the lapping of ocean waves.
The Midwest sunsets on calm evenings, when the delicate pastels of the evening skies are painted on the bottom of barely moving clouds. The call of the male bullfrogs looking for them girls. The song of the cicadas in the damp summer nights. The howling of a distant pack of coyotes counting up their pack to make sure everyone made it through the night’s battle and had full tummies before heading home at dawn. The gentle curves of newly budded trees. Tiny insect eggs tucked into the stem of a dandelion. The deep buzz and tiny squeak of a nearby hummingbird.The delicate structures inside of ordinary looking flowers. Watching two tiny lizards basking in the late afternoon sun. Each of their heads on the other’s back enjoying the quiet before the next adventure.
The way the sun hit my living room window just right only during the “dark months” to light up the crystals in my window to give me rainbows in the afternoon on the days when it finally decided to grace us with it’s presence. The sound of raindrops on windowsills.
These are the things that make life worth it. That one thing would get me through. Before I knew it (though it seems like an eternity in the midst of it) the sun would come out a little more. I’d feel like showering a little more often. I’d hear myself laugh without having to touch the internal reminder that things are funny. Breathing got a little easier.
Here’s the thing… I’m talking to you, person who didn’t want to wake up today. Not the one that didn’t want to get out of bed, the one that prayed the night before (to a deity they don’t believe in) to allow them the freedom of not waking up. You. I love you. You are not alone. You can make it. Do you know how I know? Because I made it. More than once. I have survived every cell in my body telling me to give up. I will survive again. Because I know that one day I’ll look forward to waking up. One day I’ll be able to plan beyond the next minute. One day breath will come. Friend, it feels so good. You are worth it.
We have been very quiet over here, for many reasons. We are watching the news unfold, watching communities around the country, the globe, unite against racism. We want to speak, scream, rage with you about the injustice, the hatred. How not okay this all is and has been. How the whole system is wrong. We want to discuss steps we can take to make things better and how we help get justice, if justice can be achieved.
We want to give you stories from black voices about black trauma and what it means to be black. But we don’t have any. Not one. And that is both okay and not. It is okay because no one owes us their story, no one owes us their pain.
It’s not okay because while we accept everyone and welcome everyone, the vast majority of people that interact with our site are not of color, at least that we know of (because we don’t ask, should we? <- actual question). Or they don’t come here for intersectionality* of mental health, physical health, and how that interacts with race (or gender). The reality is that we talk a lot about depression but we don’t talk about being depressed and black. We talk about domestic violence but don’t address racial aspects. There is so much to learn in regard to trauma, intersectionality, and mental health. So, we will continue to sit back and learn more. We have so so much to learn. If you are reading this, and you have a story to tell, we would love to hear it. We would love to share it. But mostly, we would love to support you and give another platform to your voice. There are so many good things already posted to the internet, we won’t link them. There are lists of media to be consumed, things white people can do to help, places to donate to various funds to help causes close to this. You don’t need our help finding them. <3
We see you. We hear you. We stand with you. #blacklivesmatter #sayhisname #sayhername
*intersectionality: the overlap of identities and how they work together to shape our life and world view. Example: a black transgendered woman.
Ideas for Handling challenging kid behavior when you are stressed
