How learning to manage my kids’ meltdowns taught me to manage my own anger.
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Need help applying this to your life? Ready for more strategies like this, but personalized to YOU? Set up your free consult and let’s talk about your unique situation and how coaching can help:
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Everything on this podcast and website is for informational purposes only and should not be used as medical advice. Views are our own, and do not necessarily represent those of our past or present employers or colleagues.
How learning to manage my kids’ meltdowns taught me to manage my own anger.
_________
Need help applying this to your life? Ready for more strategies like this, but personalized to YOU? Set up your free consult and let’s talk about your unique situation and how coaching can help:
https://getcoached.jennyhobbsmd.com/consult
_________
Everything on this podcast and website is for informational purposes only and should not be used as medical advice. Views are our own, and do not necessarily represent those of our past or present employers or colleagues.
Welcome to Rethink your Rules with Jenny Hobbs MD. A fresh perspective on relationships, success and happiness for high-achieving moms. Hi friends, Kevin here, Welcome back to Rethink your Rules. Today's episode is about how our kids meltdowns helped us to learn a lesson in how we manage our own anger. Sometimes, no one's a better teacher than your own children. Here's Jenny.
Jenny:Hey, there it's, jenny. Welcome back to another episode of Rethink your Rules. This week, we are going to be talking about another lesson I learned from my kids, and specifically in this case, it's not so much a lesson that my kids explicitly came out and told me or something that they said that made me think, but rather it's something that I learned as I was reading and learning about how to be a better parent to my kids.
Jenny:And as I was reading and learning about how to handle their big emotions, their temper tantrums, their meltdowns, I was pretty struck by some of the things that I learned about anger and allowing anger and what that means, and it has actually really changed my mindset about my own anger and big feelings. And so I think that this, hopefully, will be something you can relate to, because, if we're honest with ourselves, we all have moments where we're angry, and I think some of us, more than others for sure, many of my too much moms and those of us with ADHD or who suspect we might have undiagnosed ADHD we're going to have even bigger, stronger emotions and anger can be a real problem because we can also be very impulsive. So I think this will be really useful to no matter what, whether you struggle with this or your kids or other family members, or even in responding to other people in your life who come across as angry. So let's talk about how my kids taught me to learn to allow anger. So, as I've mentioned, my kids are both really, really, as Becky Kennedy would say Dr Becky, who I've referenced a lot as a parent coach and parent advocate. She talks about the idea of deeply feeling kids. I have two very deeply feeling kids, so something that maybe is sort of a minor blip to one child. For my kids it's a lot. Once they get upset or hurt, they kind of go from zero to 60 very quickly.
Jenny:And as I had these two kids in the toddler years my son, as I've mentioned he started having these really big meltdowns and emotions and temper tantrums, and I think I talked about before how I learned that I really had to slow down and acknowledge that for him and he would respond to me so differently when I showed empathy. Now the thing about my son is that he would have these quick temper tantrums and he typically also recovered very quickly from his temper tantrum. So he would get very upset but in a relatively short period of time. If you offered him empathy and a hug and some validation, he would calm right back down. Now he would do this multiple times a day. So it felt like a lot, but it was usually easy to recover him with some pretty basic responses.
Jenny:My daughter, on the other hand, was sort of a bit a different picture, so she would have many fewer moments of big deep feelings or anger or meltdowns or whatever you want to call it. She would seem like she was doing just fine and then maybe about 10% of the time, something would set her off and she would just be absolutely beyond the point of bringing her back to logical thinking. So there's a lot of different parenting things. You can read about this, but they call it flipping your lid. But she would just be in this place where she would get upset. She would go into a temper tantrum and meltdown, flip her lid. She was completely a different person, unrecognizable. You could not reason with her, you could not do logic, and the more that you tried to help, the worse it would get. We struggled a lot with that because it could sometimes go on such a long time and we didn't know what to do about it. The things that we had always done and offered my son just didn't quickly flip that switch off for her.
Jenny:Quite the same way, and as I was reading and learning about how to handle temper tantrums in kids, one of the main concepts that always came up with was this idea of when your kid is in that big emotional moment, that temper tantrum, that anger, that emotion has a lifespan of its own. It is going to last as long as it's going to last, for that big vibration in their body to work its way through and get out of their system. And as a parent, when you know that, you recognize that there is nothing you can do right then in there to slow it down to I guess I should say to speed that process up to make it go away more quickly, to make it stop. We think in that moment we're very desperate to come up with something to make it stop, because it's often happening in a public place, so it's very embarrassing. Or it's taking away from something we wanted to do, like going to dinner. Or maybe it's making us late for something that we needed to be at, like getting to work and dropping them off at school. So we have a desperation for this to end. And maybe it's disrupting the house. It's loud, it's stressful to us.
Jenny:I could go on a whole other tangent about. Also, our brain starts to worry about what this says about us as a parent, especially if other people are watching or things in the future that we are. Are they always going to have this problem? Our brains just do a lot of things in that moment because we are starting to feel dysregulated, because they're dysregulated and it's hard to watch them hurting and we want to solve for that, and sometimes we can see how it just totally doesn't even make sense anymore. We just want to give them the logic and have them calm down so we can all move on, and our desire to get past that negative emotion that they have and make it end more quickly is very strong. And the problem is that, as I said, the emotion that they have itself has a lifespan of its own. It needs to be able to run its course. If we are trying so hard to stop it, make them push it down and ignore it and not express it, it's actually counterproductive.
Jenny:Now for some kids it may look like you set a very harsh boundary for them. Okay, you have to stop yelling or stop crying. I'll give you something to cry about or we'll say these very we're in front of your grandparents and you better be quiet. You might see some kids quiet down and it would look like oh, it's working. So well, I'm making them stop screaming or yelling or being inappropriate or whatever they're doing from this place of being dysregulated. So it appears on the outside that it's working, but the argument would be that it's actually not working, because what you're teaching them is that it's not okay to feel their emotions and that their emotions are a bad thing and that their emotions need to be hidden and suppressed.
Jenny:And, as we know from any psychologist, therapist, parent, educator or coach, like I am, we'll tell you that, like suppressing your emotions and telling yourself you shouldn't feel them and that you should bury them and bottle them up, is very unhealthy, and what it does is it trains those kids, even if it looks like, oh, they're being compliant, they're sitting and being quiet and letting us get on with the night. If you're giving them this message that their emotion is not something that they can express and experience fully, they are going to grow up believing that they need to suppress their emotions and that their anger is a problem. And emotions sitting under the surface, not being expressed, not being validated, is extremely unhealthy, and they will always find another way to come to the surface and cause a problem. And so the bigger problem in the present moment for someone like me is that when I tell my kids, hey, stop it, here's the boundary, et cetera and they are not kids who quickly respond to that. So, instead of them bottling up their emotions and making life easier for the parents, the grandparents, the teachers for us to get out the door or whatever. They continue to escalate more, and so then it ends up lasting longer and longer and longer, because now, on top of the original thing that was bothering them, now they don't feel like they're being heard, they feel like they're being shamed, they feel combative and argumentative, and so it just begins to escalate further and lasts even longer.
Jenny:Okay, and some parenting experts would even go so far as to say, if you notice in that moment, if my daughter is really upset about her clothes, feel on her body and she's freaking out about it, right. And then I began to freak out because now we're gonna be late, right? Notice how I am not giving her the idea that, like, emotions are safe. I'm basically saying your emotions are so big that now they've triggered emotions for me that are so big that I can't handle. And now we're all out of control and no one can handle our emotions and it's very scary and unsettling for everyone, right, and you're not showing up as, like the sturdy parent who's like I got this. We can feel bad. It's okay to feel bad, you know, we will get through this, that kind of energy, because we've allowed ourselves to get triggered, right, and we've kind of bought into the same story that they have.
Jenny:So, getting back to this concept of when my child is dysregulated, having a meltdown, having a temper tantrum for whatever reason, right, that emotion has a lifespan of its own that I do not control. It needs to run its course, it needs to be heard, right. And it's not a bad thing because we know life is full of 50% positive, 50% negative emotions. It is not a problem to have a negative emotion, right? So that emotion is there and you may be asking yourself, right, but, like, I can't just let my kid, you know, throw rocks at people because they're angry and like, run into the street. And, trust me, I have had this happen where my daughter was in one of these tantrums, literally trying to run into the street. So that is where the distinction comes in.
Jenny:My job in that moment, as her mom, is not to make her anger, her fear, her anxiety, her frustration with her clothes, her disappointment at not getting what she wants, whatever. My job is not to make that feeling go away as fast as possible so that we can all be more comfortable. My job is just to keep her safe. My job is to keep everyone safe from anything that comes from that negative emotion. Okay, so in that moment I literally reframed my thoughts. When my kids freak out, I literally go okay, my only job here is to keep everyone safe until this emotion runs its course. Period. The length of what is going on here is not my job. It's not my job to slow it down. It's not my job to talk them out of their emotions or give them a bunch of logic to explain why their emotions don't make any sense, because they're totally, even if they don't make sense, right, my job.
Jenny:And so I literally go into this almost like zen place which, if you knew me, is funny because I'm not a very. I struggle to be zen sometimes. But I go into this zen place of here's my daughter throwing a fit on the stairs and trying to hit me right, and my only job is to make sure I don't get hurt and she doesn't get hurt until the storm passes. I can't make it go by any faster, I can't change her mind about it, I can't reason with her right now. And, as one of my clients said, a really good mantra in that moment too, is like the more I say, the worse it gets right, or the more I do, the worse it gets. So just kind of go to the zen place my only job.
Jenny:And so I literally have stood there in front of a whole group of people while my daughter is doing this in public right, and everyone's looking at me and trying to help me and all this stuff, and she's just completely beside herself. And I have just stood there calmly and every time she ran to the street I gently gave her a hug. I can't let you do that. I'm not gonna let you herself. I can't let you do that. I'm not gonna let you herself. She's like hitting me and put my arms around her. I can't let you hurt me. All I do until it passes.
Jenny:And people I know I'm sure people judge me, I'm sure that people are always trying to help me oh, does she need this? Does she need this? Does she need some money to buy the things she wants? What are you trying to solve for? Which is really sweet, right, and I get it, it's very tempting. But I don't do any of that. I just sit there in the moment and I'm with her and I am trying to show her like safety, like to myself, like I know we got this. I'm gonna keep you safe, we're gonna let this be here, we're gonna let this emotion, this vibration work, is through your way, through your body, you know, and I just have this like trust and calm and peace about it, right, and it's a completely different interaction and eventually, however long it takes, it passes, right.
Jenny:And then usually this girl who has been saying and doing just absolutely horrible things to me she got older, you know, she would start, you know, yelling terrible things at me when she was angry and I can probably do a whole nother lessons learn from my kids about this but you know she would like scream at me that I was the worst mom ever. She always dreamed, you know, she always wished she would never have a mom like me, and you know she can't believe how unlucky she is Just terrible, terrible things and pushed me away. And then, if I walked away, you know she'd come after me again and this like push and pull and all this stuff, and I would just, you know, give her space when needed, keep her safe when needed, just sit there and like in my zen place of like. You know, this is just about her emotion running his course, whatever if she, you know, set the boundaries that I needed to, and what would happen is eventually she would just collapse in tears usually and come to me and like, need a big hug, right, and we would let that all get out of her body. And then we would talk about what really went on and we would repair it.
Jenny:Now you might say, looking from the outside in well, wait, she needs boundaries, she can't talk to you this way, et cetera. I'm like, but this child is like at the same four or five, six years old. She hasn't yet learned the skills that she does need to learn to be an adult, to not hurt other people, to not say those hurtful things, et cetera. But my first job as her mom is to show her how to allow the emotion without trying to suppress it, without telling herself something's wrong with her for it, because she's already going to do that, she's already going to blame herself, she's already feeling like this mix and that moment of guilt for being mean to me, but misery about what happened. So that's all jumbled up in her head and she doesn't have a model for what to do.
Jenny:So I'm modeling that for her, because I'm feeling those same emotions now in a different way about her and I'm modeling for her that I can allow all my emotions and not act on them, and I can allow her emotions and we can just keep everybody safe and everybody home. This doesn't mean that I don't set boundaries for my kids around what they can do. This entire time I am both acknowledging and allowing their big emotions as real and valid and important and calmly stating the boundary of behavior so that we keep everyone safe. I'm showing them with my actions and my words that we can allow big emotions theirs and mine and we can do that in a calm, safe way. So I'm modeling it and I'm also using words to say that's not okay. That's not okay.
Jenny:And this is really powerful because, like it or not, all of our kids and us are always having big emotions and one of the biggest problems in society is the fact that we pretend like those emotions are bad, especially the negative ones, like anger, that they're bad, that they just need to be suppressed and we tuck ourselves out of them, we shame ourselves for having them and we miss all the valuable information our emotions are offering us and this ability to really get in tune with our emotional state which, as we know drives all the things that we do and keeps coming back to the surface if we don't address it right. So we are teaching our kids with this strategy to be honest with themselves and loving and compassionate when they are having a really terrible feeling in their body, and not letting them be isolated in that terrible feeling or judged or blamed or shamed for that. And we're setting healthy boundaries around how you need to manage that for yourself while not hurting other people. Right, and they're little, like they're not going to do it perfectly, but we can help them do that, like we can model and train that, and then that is going to be a model that can follow their whole life and many of us didn't get this as kids because our parents just didn't know. So, first of all, just for a strategy for your kids, this is so beautiful and really like honestly. It allows for connection after the fact, because when I stand there, zen through these moments set the boundaries, but also like compassion for their big feeling. Afterward I get to learn all this great stuff about my kids, like I have so much great insight that they offer me after the fact because they're not afraid to, because I've told them that their emotions and their feelings are totally valid and they're safe and connect with me. And I have no you know what's the word. I'm not naive enough to believe it will always be that way, as they're teenagers and whatever else absolutely, and I'm sure they're not even telling you everything and I'm sure I know for a fact I don't always do it perfectly, but I really think this is a valuable way to look at it and it's different than the traditional way. And, yes, people probably think that I'm being too lenient with them at times or that I'm like encouraging the behavior. But if you notice like again, you can't force them long term to suppress their emotions and be robots and do all the things perfectly. You really can't. All you can do is create this connection and the safety and model it for them so that they can grow up and make good decisions, fingers crossed, hopefully right.
Jenny:But even more important than the parenting piece, in my opinion, is what this taught me about myself, because I realized shortly after I began practicing with my kids, one day I went to work and something happened that has a history with it and whatever, and I got there and I was so angry. It brought up all these feelings that I have about people not valuing me and listening to me and trusting me and whatever else. So the anger was the superficial emotion over probably a lot of other deep-seated hurts. But in that moment I thought, oh OK, so this anger it's kind of like my kids' temper tantrums it has a lifespan of its own. It needs to run its course. It's not something I can ignore or push away, or I can't make my body process that feeling faster with anything that I do. I can't talk myself out of it with logic and, just like my kids temper tantrums, my only job is to allow it to run its course, while I don't hurt anybody else, right.
Jenny:And so there was this moment where it was this feeling of anger. It was like just taking over my entire body. It felt like I was gonna explode and I wanted to go like write the strongly worded email or solve the problem or complain to somebody or whatever right Like to, and why? Because I wanted that feeling that was in my body out, just like it's just like with the kid right, like they have this, this terrible feeling in their body Sometimes they don't even know why, and they got to get it out in the form of a tantrum or something that makes no sense to anyone else. It's just like pure, raw emotion, not always logical, right.
Jenny:And I recognize that tendency in myself that I had an urge to do something to get this uncomfortable feeling of anger out of my body right. Just like when a kid has an uncomfortable feeling in their body and they don't even have a name for it, they want to get it out by throwing a temper tantrum, right, it's the same. You know, there's an analogy there. Obviously, I'm not a child, but I could see the analogy. And so in that moment I was like, okay, I'm gonna manage my mind and my emotions the same way that I manage my kids Big emotions, right. And so I said, okay, there's anger, this is feels like I want to explode. It's gonna run its course, it's gonna have a time course. I can't affect that time course. All I can do is make sure that I don't hurt anyone or myself. And I kind of like channeled that same Zen place I channeled with my kids, where it felt terrible and I wanted it to be over and I wanted to do something about it, and I just didn't and I decided, okay, if I write any emails or if I do anything about this right now, it's got the high likelihood of hurting me or hurting someone else or making more problems for me down the line that I don't want to deal with. So instead I'm gonna just practice being okay, allowing this emotion to sit in my body until it passes. Right, and this process that you're doing, when you're allowing the emotion to be there without acting on it.
Jenny:People in coaching and therapy have different words for it. Some people call it, you know, processing, and there's different steps to processing an emotion. Right, you name it, you notice things about it, and that would be another whole episode, but I mentioned it here because once I realized that I was going to be able to do this, once I realized this analogy with my kids, from then on I always think of it as allowing the emotion, because for me, the phrase allow evokes what I do as a parent. Right, there are things I allow with intention. Right, I allow their big emotions and I have a good reason for it, and I don't allow them to hurt other people from that place. Right, and so for me, I love thinking like I am allowing my anger. Right, just like I'm parenting myself, just like I parent my kids in that moment and for me the analogy just makes a lot of sense. So I share that because I hope that maybe that analogy will make sense to you as well and you can think about in those moments when you just feel like you're going to explode with an emotion, whether it's grief or embarrassment, or fear or anger or whatever. Like how can you allow so?
Jenny:When you hear someone talk about processing an emotion or naming it or embodying it and all those things like starting with just like, I'm just going to allow it to be here, I'm going to notice it and I'm not going to think it's a problem that I have to get rid of.
Jenny:I'm going to let it run its course and not hurt anyone in the process. And the last thing I'll say about that is that for adults and they've done studies on this most emotions only last about 90 seconds on average. So if you can sit and allow it to pass, it actually doesn't take that much time. And part of the problem is because we do all these things to try to make things go away more. We try to enforce the emotion to go away or be suppressed or talk ourselves out of it, or we lash out at someone else and then they lash back at us, and so we start to make the emotional process last longer because of all that stuff that gets piled on top, whereas if we can just allow the original emotion to be there and honor that with compassion and hold the boundary around hurting other people or doing something that makes it last longer, we can actually get through the emotion in a lot more productive way. And, as I said at the beginning, it's actually emotionally more healthy for everyone if we're being honest about those emotions versus trying to ignore them and suppress them.
Jenny:So that is one of the biggest lessons I learned from my kids. My anger it's just like a temper tantrum. It's going to run its course. There's nothing I can do about it other than let it be there and keep everyone safe in the process. And, as always, if the topics I'm talking about resonate with you in any way, I offer free consults so we can sit down and see how this all applies to your life. So I hope you have a wonderful week and I will be back next time with more good stuff.
Kevin:Thanks for listening to Rethink your Rules with Jenny Hobbs MD. Would you like to learn more about how to apply this to your own life through personalized coaching with Jenny? Visit us on the web at JennyHobbsMDcom to schedule a free consultation. If you found value in what you heard today, please consider subscribing to the podcast and giving us a five star rating so we can reach even more women like you.