Chad and I find ourselves in a parenting stage of trying to decide when to listen and explain the situation to our kids, and when to say “when”.  At some point, they’ve gone off the deep end and no amount of calm explaining will stop their near fit; you just have to say “when” and send them off to calm down in their safe place.  When where is that point?  Today I sadly find myself in the place of offering you my thoughts, but no solution.  Maybe someone out there has already figured this out.

We mostly struggle with this when dealing with Grace.  She tends to have very big reactions to her expectations not being met, so we find ourselves explaining to her that her expectations were not known to us, or perhaps weren’t realistic, or maybe she took something we said out of context – sometimes all three.  Then her whole world falls apart and we try to help her put it back together.  She has grown a lot in this and I do believe we’ve started giving her some tools to work on this through counseling and having more patience with her.  But sometimes it’s like she just throws her little world pieces back on the floor and wants them to stay there.  Then what?  How long do we keep working without her help?  I’m not sure that’s teaching her anything.  It feels cold sometimes, but I’m learning that sometimes teaching just can’t happen until she is calm.  And sometimes that requires a little tough love and informing her that we will talk more when she can have a calm conversation.  When we’re all just repeating ourselves, the only thing that happens is raised voices because no one feels heard.

So we’re still learning – where the line is, how to manage her expectations, how to help her calm down.

Sometimes I just need to share my parenting struggles on here.  Maybe someone needed to be reassured they aren’t the only one with this problem.  Or maybe no one cares 🙂  Thanks for listening.

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