Dads certainly have come a long way in the last few decades. It wasn’t too long ago that fathers were called “Sir” and were feared for the most part. Children needed to behave or else they heard the dreaded sound of a belt being ripped free from Dad’s pants.
One of the hardest skills for any person to develop is how to stop an emotional and physical eruption from happening or how to cool ourselves down once it has. We call these explosions “tantrums” in children, but adults have these, too. I call an adult freak-out a bigtrum: big person tantrum.
I discovered this post on Arlene Dickinson’s Facebook page. As is common with this type of remark, the comments were divided between women (I’d say 95% of the commenters were women) saying, “I agree!” and “You have no right to judge others—stop it!”
I believe that being able to calm ourselves in the throes of emotional intensity is one of the most valuable parenting skills to develop.
The wild behaviour that can happen when our rage hijacks us can seriously damage the relationship with our children, grow negative core beliefs in their minds, and inadvertently teach our kids to react in the same manner when they, too, get taken over by big feelings. If you haven’t heard of the term negative core beliefs before, stay tuned, because I’ll be writing about that in the future.
Have you heard this phrase, “You can’t control how another person reacts, but you can control how you react?” Easier said than done—but it IS possible!
I know how hard it is to stay cool when others around you are melting down or freaking out. Really, I do—I have the hole in my laundry room wall to prove it. As a psychotherapist with anger management tools, I was shocked how hard it was to stay calm when my young children were blowing their tops. I think they missed that section in the anger management books.
