The aspect of parenting I seem to be struggling with most these days is setting a good example. This isn't across the board as I, for the most part, eat pretty well, don't use bad language, am polite, etc. That's the easy stuff for me. I'm talking about dealing with emotions and handling when life doesn't go my way. My own unfortunate reactions come out far too often and, considering this is what frustrates me all the time about our oldest son, I need to try and do better. He's already gotten a ton of ingrained traits from me at birth so it'd be best if I don't screw up the nurture side of it as well, for my sanity now and his the rest of his life.
As I've been thinking about the idea of this post, that simple description above is quite accurate. Our oldest can't handle when even the littlest things don't go his way, and it results in the vast majority of his emotional outbursts. Many of these are in the form of transitions, a common difficulty for older toddlers, preschoolers, however you want to designate age four. It's extremely challenging to them to stop what they're doing and move on to something else, especially if what they're doing right now is fun. Our son throws himself on the ground, literally every day, when I ask him to stop playing in the morning to get dressed. He fights us at dinner time every night. He almost always gets upset when I suggest we leave the house, even if it's to go to a park or somewhere else fun. Of course leaving those places is a challenge as well. The other day we were outside playing baseball (his favorite activity) and it was super windy. I could barely throw him the wiffle ball and when he was running around the bases his hat flew off his head. Ooh boy, he didn't like that. All this wears on me.
What does this behavior look like? Well in that last case he was waving his arms angrily and yelling at the sky, demanding that the wind stop. Since playing was already difficult I said we were done and started picking up. This made matters worse but there weren't many good options at that point. Other times he makes a bunch of pouty, whiny noises to express his displeasure at whatever's happening, like when it's time for him to go to bed. This I usually handle alright, though I've increasingly been telling him how much I dislike it. The bad times are when he yells and shrieks at, or pushes, his brother who's doing something he doesn't like, whether it's knocking down the wooden train town he has in his room or a marble run he's been working on or something else along those lines. I try to encourage him to communicate with words instead of pure emotion, or in the case of his room to quite simply shut his door, but the point doesn't always get across. I need to remember it's unfair to expect to much at this age.
Here's the bigger problem. I can tell him all day long what the best way to act/react in these situations, but if I don't model it myself he's never going to get understand or have good behavior to emulate. And I struggle with this exact same thing myself a whole lot, as I also really don't like when all the small things (or big ones) go against me. My initial reaction when he's pushing his brother around, intentionally or not, or being a little s**t in some other form, are rarely all that measured. A meanness to a younger sibling in particular sets me off and I yell far more often than I want to admit. Even if I do come down from the emotional rush pretty quickly the behavior I don't want copied has already been demonstrated. And he will copy me. So yes, a basic description of what happens with regularity is I get mad and overreact to how my son gets mad and overreacts. It's a nice little feedback loop. By no means are my kids the only reason I get riled up (though they're often a contributing factor), but that situation is a good summation and we'll leave it at that for now.
At least I can recognize what I'm doing. Maybe it's a whole other point of frustration to know how you can improve if you can't actually do it. Natural inclinations can be difficult to overcome and mine include a tendency to be overbearing, a fact I'm not proud of. But that's no reason not to try. I can start with taking deep breaths, showing him what I'm doing, and speaking calmly. Show empathy, not just anger and frustration. Diffusing my own emotions, and his, has to be the key, not repeatedly attempting to overcome them by sheer will. Actions are so much more important than words.
Well, that's a bit of what I'm going through, and it may be the hardest part of parenting so far. It's always crazy how much like us our kids turn out to be, both because of their DNA and because of how we raise them. Our oldest son is basically my little clone, for better and for worse. It's time to show him a better way.
I also need to look at my phone a lot less, but that didn't really fit the rest of this.