Over the weekend I had one of those oh crap moments. I realized that we are in charge of an entire human being, which includes teaching them everything about everything! Things like recognizing and managing their emotions. “I can’t do that for myself half the time!”, I moan, “how am I going to teach Tyler to do it?”. But I guess something we are teaching him is sinking in though, because the following happened this past weekend:
Ty was over-tired, which is never a good thing. It was close to bedtime and he was upset about something (I don’t remember what). He yells at me “you’re not my best friend anymore! I don’t love you anymore, no, I hate you!!” Kevin told him that that wasn’t a very nice thing to say to mommy, and Ty looks at me and yells “I want to make you sad!”. I just calmly told him that we’ll talk when he calms down, and that I was going to bed. I get about 4 steps up on the stairs when he runs to the bottom of the staircase and says “mommy, I’m sorry, I’m sorry!”.
After he calms down we have a talk. I told him that it’s ok to get mad, but it’s not ok to be mean to someone because you’re mad. I told him that what I do when I get too mad is just walk away until I calm down. So fast forward a day or so, and he gets mad about something. All of a sudden he stomps off into the living, telling me “I’m going to walk away until I cool down!”. After he did cool down, I told him that was exactly the right thing to do. I guess he was listening when we had our talk the other night! Now if I can just make myself follow that advice more often… 🙂