Schizophrenic parenting 101

I’m being overly hard on myself and finding it hard to see things clearly tonight.

My son is throwing these wretched temper tantrums and I’m just really having a tough time with it. I know that they’re normal but it seems like he’s hitting atomic bomb level and they’re are so frequent! I actually “shut down” during one today and it left me dazed for an hour.

I feel like a bad parent. I feel like I fail at life. I feel like no matter which way I choose to handle these, it’s going to be the wrong way.

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i don’t have kids , but you sound like a great mum, don’t be so hard on yourself.
my sister in law second guesses her parenting skills all the time but she fundamentally loves her kids, gets annoyed, has a tantrum, and keeps on loving her kids.
your human not super human.
take care

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I know in my heart that I’m not a bad mom. I just feel like one today.

Thanks for the kind words.

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It is a very hard thing battling this illness and raising a child. Tantrums are hard to watch and listen to. That is a lot of energy being thrown around. How old is your child?

The sound of children temper screaming is a very hard sound for me to take. (happy screaming is getting easier for me) But I bet you feel shredded when it happens.

When my niece has a tantrum I pick her up and set in the middle of my sisters bed and leave her there. My sisters bed is a bit high off the ground and it’s big with lots of pillows. So my niece can just scream and scream and then she will usually fall asleep. But it ends a lot faster if I leave the room.

My niece hasn’t had a tantrum in a while. Crying jags… yes. Tantrums? not so much anymore.

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He’s 19 months, so he’s hitting the terrible twos and teething. I’m usually okay with tantrums, I’m used to them, but this is a whole other animal.

I called in the “support team”, his father and my fiancé, and we came up with an action plan so that we can nip this in the bud.

I’m feeling better about it today, but I was a mess yesterday!

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Oh lord. That age is the main reason I don’t ever want children. Any kind of screaming or excess noise is hard for me to take.
Heaven/God/the cosmos/ whatever you believe in/ bless you.

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Oh man. I remember when my kid sis was two and teething and cranky. I used to give her frozen chew toys. The type you fill with water and freeze.

Popsicles also worked well. When she was two she was a runner. It was hard to hold on to her when she was two. Also at two, it’s easy to redirect the attention. If she was fixated on something she shouldn’t have, it was easy to take her outside and get her interested in something else. She really liked the jumper swing.

I wish I could find the pictures I have of her when she was two. Red hair sticking out a odd angles, only a few little teeth, big eyes and pretty much always happy.

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We’ve definitely been using a lot of tethers and Popsicles… And Tylenol. Lol. It’s usually easy to redirect his attention with anything electronic.

Your last paragraph is now making me think of all of the cute things he does :slight_smile: like when he puts his little hands on my cheeks and then mashes his mouth into my face. Toddler kisses are awesome.

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