How to Stop Losing Your Sh*t with Your Kids: Effective strategies for stressed out parents

by Carla Naumburg

So, you’re losing your shit with your kids. You snap, shout, and scream at them. You’re irritable and reactive more often than you’d like to admit. You know how you want to parent; you want to be calmer and more intentional. But no matter how hard you try, you keep losing it.

I like to think of these as “shoulda coulda woulda” suggestions. You know you should do ten jumping jacks or take fourteen deep breaths instead of yelling, and if you coulda done that, you woulda done that, so clearly you need a different approach. I’ve got one.

KIDS PUSH BUTTONS for lots of different reasons. They do it because they want our attention, they’re trying to get what they need, and they don’t have the maturity or impulse control to do otherwise. Sometimes they’re just doing what kids do, and what kids do can be loud and stinky and annoying.

The secret to staying calm is self-awareness; it’s about noticing you’re about to explode and giving yourself a chance to calm down.

What you need to remember is that (a) losing your shit is an emotional reaction, not a rational one, and (b) we don’t have nearly as much control over our feelings as we’d like to think. We can’t force ourselves to feel a particular way; all we can do is notice that we’re actually having a feeling so we can choose how to respond.

In most cases, melting down is an unconscious process beyond your control, one that can often be traced back to your childhood and the ways your parents lost their tempers with you. This is why you can’t simply decide to not lose your shit and then just not lose it. Your explosions are a predictable outcome of developmental, neurological, and biological processes, rather than logical decisions.

Toxic explosions are unpredictable, disproportionate reactions that can include angry words, physical outbursts, personal attacks, shame, and blame. The moment feels out of control. Toxic outbursts happen when we are triggered, and they continue to trigger everyone involved. Examples may include screaming at your child over spilled cereal, exploding because he’s taking too long to put on his shoes, or angrily berating a daughter for forgetting her homework. These reactive explosions can rupture and weaken the connection between you and your child.

I’ve seen silent stares that are just as hurtful as flying remote controls.

You can be overwhelmed by emotions and still not lose your shit. You can be deeply pissed off or scared or sad or confused, and still not reach a toxic level. You can let your kids know you’re having Big Feelings without exploding all over them.

The more you lose it with your kids, the stronger and more connected your “lose it” neuronal pathways will become, allowing your brain to freak out more quickly and easily in the future.

But walking on eggshells around someone is not the same as respecting them, and as soon as your kids are old enough to take some control over their time and space, they’re going to react to you the same way you did the last time you worked for an explosive, unpredictable boss: AVOID. AVOID. AVOID.

Much of parenting is based on trust, which is an especially tricky issue for kids. They’re wired to trust their parents and caregivers because we’re the ones who are supposed to keep them safe. As a result, when we lose our shit with them, they tend to blame themselves because that’s easier than questioning or doubting the person who keeps them alive and runs their lives. Over time, our kids may learn to not only tolerate and expect bad behavior in others but to also blame themselves for it.

their little kid brains don’t necessarily make a distinction between our smart parenting moves and our terrible, impulsive ones.

We think our thoughts are The Truth, but the reality is that sometimes they are, and sometimes they’re just mental monkeys throwing bananas.

We make promises we can’t keep and issue threats we have no intention of following through on; we hold our children to unreasonable expectations and then get supremely pissed off when they don’t meet them; we set similarly unreasonable expectations for ourselves and then berate ourselves when we don’t live up to them; and many of us rival our little ones in our tantrum-throwing abilities.

But our brains start to get a little twitchy when things seem random or unpredictable; they prefer predictability, not chaos.

You’re doing an incredibly hard job, and you’re doing it without the right information, support, resources, and rest. When we do something really hard every single day without those things, we lose it. It’s the human way. We are literally wired to freak out when our buttons are repeatedly pushed. And I think we can all agree that parenting is nothing if not an exercise in repeated button pushing.

You’re not a bad parent, and while your shit losses are absolutely your responsibility, they’re not your fault.

WHY IS PARENTING SO DAMN HARD?

PARENTING IS HARD BECAUSE IT’S A PART OF LIFE, AND LIFE IS HARD.

The carefully curated and filtered world of social media further perpetuates this BS idea that there are folks out there who effortlessly have their lives together in a consistent, ongoing way. The end result is that those of us (which is actually all of us) who have to deal with flat tires and debilitating anxiety and dwindling bank accounts and difficult family members and ingrown toenails are left thinking that everyone else has figured it out and we’re the ones doing something wrong.

YOUR LIFE CIRCUMSTANCES CAN MAKE PARENTING HARDER.

SOME KIDS ARE HARDER TO PARENT.

MOST PARENTS SUCK AT TAKING CARE OF THEMSELVES.

CHRONIC EXHAUSTION MAKES PARENTING HARDER.

MOST OF US ARE RAISING OUR CHILDREN WITHOUT ENOUGH SUPPORT, OR WITH THE WRONG KIND OF SUPPORT.

The attachment parents are attaching better, the French moms are feeding their kids better, the Scandinavian kids are happier, the Asian kids are smarter and harder working, and meanwhile I’m just trying to figure out how to get my kid to stop picking her nose and wiping it on the wall.

SOCIAL MEDIA AND SMARTPHONES MAKE PARENTING HARDER.

TOO MUCH INFORMATION FROM TOO MANY EXPERTS MAKES PARENTING HARDER.

Remember, you’re not a bad parent raising a bad kid. Life is hard and parenting is hard. It’s not your fault you’re losing your shit, but it’s absolutely your responsibility to do what you can to reduce the likelihood that you will lose it and to stay cool as often as possible.

if you don’t expose Little Susie to enough Baby Mozart and kale before she heads off to preschool, you’ve screwed her for life! This is an unhelpful story for every single person on the planet who is older than three, and it’s not true, so let’s ditch it. The truth is that there is a lot of activity in those early years, and another truth is that our brains continue to learn and develop, in both helpful and unhelpful ways, as long as we’re alive.

While your brain is not a muscle, it’s useful to think about it as if it is. The more you use certain parts, the stronger they get, and the more likely they will be to come online the next time you need them. Have you ever watched a kid the first time they get on the soccer field? They can barely get their foot to connect with the ball. With enough practice, though, they can dribble the ball down the field without a second thought.

The opposite is also true. The less frequently you activate certain parts of your brain, the weaker and more rigid they become. This is why it’s harder to learn an instrument or language later in life; the neuronal pathways we need are just too rusty to make those new connections quickly and easily. (This doesn’t mean they can’t; it’s just harder.)

kick ass, freeze up, or sprint away.

We all lose it with our kids, and most of our parenting meltdowns share a few common features. There are lots of Big Feelings involved, and our behavior is Automatic, Reactive, and Toxic.

If you’re still blaming or shaming yourself or struggling with Bad Parent BS, reread Chapter 1 and go spend some time with people who love you and can remind you that (1) you’re awesome, (2) parenting is hard for everyone, (3) you’re gonna screw it up (it’s inevitable), and (4) you’re still awesome.

Let me repeat that: Screwing up and being awesome are not mutually exclusive.

I also hope that you’re eager for some more information about how to not lose it with your kids, and we’ll get to that soon, I promise. But if information were all we needed to make hard changes, the tobacco industry would be bankrupt and we’d all be hitting the gym at sunrise and drinking kale smoothies for breakfast.

sat down at the computer and googled “how to stop yelling at my kids.” I then made a list of Everything I Was Going to Do Instead of Yelling. I was ready to change. Within a day or two I had lost it again,

I expected motherhood to be challenging; I didn’t expect it to turn everything upside down.

fell into a cycle of eating my way through the day and worrying my way through the night.

Your number one job as a parent is to keep your kid safe. Do the best you can. Your number two job is to manage your emotions so you can respond to your children intentionally and without losing your shit. That’s what this book is all about. From there, you need to figure out how you want to raise your children, which is as much about how you respond to them as anything.

Finally, remember that it’s not your job to keep your kids happy. Big emotions don’t need to be fixed, they need to be felt. Children need to learn that there’s nothing wrong with feeling sad or mad or embarrassed or confused and that eventually those feelings will pass. If you can’t tolerate their meltdowns, they won’t be able to either. It all starts with you, so saddle up and get ready.

Of course you need to set limits, hold boundaries, maintain expectations, and teach them about appropriate behavior and self-awareness and indoor voices, but you’re not doing it so they’ll stop triggering you. You’re doing it so someday they’ll be functional members of society. These are long-term skills that many adults still haven’t mastered.

Finding the time, money, resources, or childcare to get help may feel impossible, but it also may be the most important choice you ever make for yourself, your children, and your family.

Making snarky comments

Craving sugar,

Reaching for your smartphone or repeatedly checking social media

Stressing about getting things done NOW

Rushing unnecessarily