5 Ideas to Prevent Frustration With Yourself and Your Children

I Thought I Had It Together and Then I Became a SAHM

Going from working full-time to staying at home was a huge shift in our family dynamic. It has overall largely been a positive one, but it has definitely been an adjustment, most specifically for me. You know what I have noticed about myself since I have been staying at home with my kids this past year? I get frustrated…A LOT. I thought I knew myself. I thought I was calm and collected and it took a lot to make me mad enough to “lose it”. I thought I knew my faults or challenges and had been working on them and made progress. When I was working, that might have been true. I did have it together at work! But I quickly realized my job had been a lot easier than being a stay at home mom and I just assumed my mental confidence and “togetherness” would transfer over to my stay at home mom life. I was so wrong! This past year has been so fun but also extremely challenging for me. I have had to learn and relearn so many things about myself. I learned that where I was self-aware of a lot of my faults, and I thought I had them under control, I had never had them tested like I have being home with my kids. 

Our kids have our traits, good and bad. The bad ones push our buttons as parents in a way nothing else can, mostly because they got them from us. Seeing all those traits and annoyances that exist in myself amplified in a toddler is very tough and very frustrating! Do you know how hard it is to not argue with a toddler? How hard it is to see one of your faults in your child and try to correct it in them only to realize you have to correct it in yourself too? And then how hard it is to actually correct it in yourself? When a tantrum happened, one of the kids got upset, something didn’t go according to plan or maybe even the dog was just underfoot all day, I was getting frustrated. So I started doing some thinking. Why was I getting so frustrated?  But more importantly, why when I got frustrated was I having such a hard time letting it go? I spent a lot of time this past year trying to answer these questions in order to be the best version of me. After trying lots of ways to get my frustration in check, here are a few things I’ve been doing that have helped most significantly.  

 

Organization and Routine

If you are someone that has read anything else I’ve posted, this will not come as a surprise to you! The number one thing that helped me with having more control over my frustrations was getting organized and having a routine. (For some helpful tips on this click HERE.) A routine gives a sense of predictability; it helps everyone know what to expect, lessening tantrums around the unexpected. It can also help you pinpoint why you or your child might be upset, i.e. being hungry or tired if it’s a meal or nap-time. For me, having less visible and mental chaos prevents me from being overwhelmed or overstimulated. If I am ever either of these, it’s not pretty. I can very quickly become short-tempered or frustrated with just about anything in my way. I’m not proud of it, but it’s a fact. My kids, specifically one, is very much like me in this respect so being organized and having a routine helps them as much as it helps me! 

 

Self-Awareness

Know your faults and triggers for frustration and work on them continuously. Knowing these and how to cope with them can help keep your frustration in check. Me? I am a night owl. I like to stay up late and I always have! But I also know that if I stay up too late for too many nights in a row, I’m going to have a short temper and everything is going to frustrate me. When I reach this point, I have to force myself back into a “bedtime” routine in order to get the rest I need. Another trigger for frustration for me is seeing one of my not so flattering traits come out in my kids or see them do something they shouldn’t that I know they’ve watched me do. It immediately makes me frustrated! So instead of getting really upset, I take a step back and look at it from their perspective. I acknowledge what they did was wrong, admit they might have seen me do this, apologize for that and work together to find a solution on avoiding this behavior in the future, for all of us. They need to know we’re not perfect. When we get down on their level and admit what we showed them was wrong, and then apologize, we’re teaching them to take ownership of their actions and to acknowledge the problem or issue and figure out how to solve or overcome it.  

 

Resetting

When you do get frustrated, take a minute to reset. When the kids get frustrated, I have recently been telling them to pause, take a breathe and count to ten and it seems to help them! So I decided I should take my own advice. When I inevitably get frustrated, I have made a huge effort to take a breath and assess the situation before I go handing out discipline. Just this brief time I am taking to reset makes a huge difference! It prevents me from making assumptions as to what happened and who is at fault. It also helps calm the mood because I have come in with an even tone and an open mind. We are the adults, we set the mood. 

 

Picking Your Battles 

If you find yourself constantly getting onto your kids, take a minute to think about why that is. Are they really being difficult, or is it your attitude causing this reaction? If it’s the latter, before getting onto your kids, ask yourself if it’s that big of a deal. Why did you say no? Is this really a battle worth fighting? There are many, so be selective. Sometimes I just wake up in a mood or maybe I got frustrated earlier that day and just can’t shake it. When this happens, I like to  reevaluate my mindset and try to reset. There comes a point when some arguments are just not worth it. If I’m just nitpicking, I need to stop and really decide if it’s a battle worth fighting. So I just ask myself, “In the grand scheme of things, is it really that big of a deal?” If it’s not, then I move on. 

 

Making Time for Yourself

Lastly, I have been forcing myself to take more breaks away from the kids, even if it’s just a short trip to the store by myself. I have been making sure to take the time to do the things that I like or want to do whether it’s reading a book, creating, or just watching a TV show I really like. It is so easy to forget to prioritize anything for yourself within motherhood so I have been very intentional with my downtime from the kids. I do not want to waste that time; I want to be able to do the things that I enjoy doing! When I do take time for myself, I usually come back very refreshed and able to handle a challenging situation with grace instead of frustration. When I’m in the “thick of it” for too long without a break away, all of the little frustrations build on top of each other and can cause me to get very frustrated at whatever little thing finally pushed me over the edge. So I like to think of time away as a planned reset. 

While this all sounds great, I realize it is so much easier said than done. Obviously, now, I’m still getting frustrated. Not as much as when I first started staying at home, but still frustrated. To a certain degree, it’s impossible not to. The biggest difference now is, I realize my frustrations are there. They are valid. However, I am gaining control over them so I don’t overreact, take these frustrations out on the kids or make something worse than it needs to be. Will these things cure me of all my frustrations? Heck no. But it sure does help! Life is frustrating, kids are frustrating, I even frustrate myself sometimes! But focusing on having a more positive mindset will eventually become a habit and it won’t be quite as hard to calm my annoyance when something happens, it will be second nature. Once that habit is established, my hope is that I’ll be able to overcome my frustration much more quickly than I do now. 

If this is something you struggle with, what do you do to calm yourself in a moment of frustration?