Toddler meltdowns are not easy. I’ve experienced my fair share of them with Bruin and I wanted to share a story about two in particular, two that were a year apart from each other, and how what I’ve learned during that year has helped me grow from the mom who “reacted” to his meltdown a year ago, to the mom who “responded” to his meltdown last week.
Let me just say, being a parent is hard, navigating all the different milestones your child goes through can feel overwhelming. It’s as if you’ve just figured out how to handle one that before you know it, it’s over and the next one is already starting. Or is that just me? Either way, for me, parenting has been far from easy. But with every milestone or “phase” Bruin goes through, I learn so much about not only him but about myself.
When I became a single mom I felt like I was living in survival mode for the longest time, and honestly sometimes I still do. I’m not saying being a parent and having a partner or spouse isn’t hard, I know it’s all hard, but being a single parent can be hard and also very lonely, especially during a meltdown or “tantrum”. You have to have stellar patience and you have to be able to handle whatever comes your way with even-temperament, because being the one parent day in and day out, the one person they’re around more than anyone else in their world, means that the way you respond to anything and everything is the way they’ll learn to respond to anything and everything, too.
This was a hard truth for me. It’s brought me on this path of digging deeper to figure out how I can be the best version of myself for Bruin. I’ve come to the realization that I still have a lot of “parenting myself” to do. I still have a lot of inner wounds that I’ve never known I had let alone know how to properly address them. I realize now that I probably didn’t learn the best ways to regulate my emotions when I was little or even throughout my entire adult life. I started to notice this come out in who I am as a parent in the form of having very little to no patience, especially during the meltdowns. It was almost as if I was being triggered myself while seeing Bruin go through one, and I really didn’t know how to handle the emotions happening within myself let alone properly show Bruin how to handle his. I knew that in order to help him grow to have a healthy relationship with his emotions, I needed to first learn how to understand mine.
I distinctly remember a meltdown Bruin had a year ago, we’ve had many in between since then but I only point this one out because I’ll never forget it, it was a very difficult night that I know ultimately helped me grow into the parent I am today. He cried for what seemed like hours at the time. I tried as hard as I could to implement the “gentle parenting” advice I’d read all over the internet, but I still got to a point of feeling defeated and like I couldn’t do anything for him. I felt like a horrible parent. In the middle of this particular meltdown I just got up and walked in the other room. I needed a second, I needed to breath, I felt like I wanted to crawl out of my skin and just scream. Afterwards I felt so guilty that I left him alone in all of his big emotions because I wasn’t able to handle mine. I knew at that moment that I had changes I needed to make within myself.
Skip to last week and the other meltdown I want to talk about, this one I believe had a lot to do with our day to day routine, or lack thereof, and his transition to a school setting. I think it’s fair to say that a young child not having a solid routine can play a huge part in them having meltdowns. While believing this, I still had the hardest time for the past year getting Bruin on one, our lives seemed to change so much week to week that it felt impossible to have a normal schedule. Bruin started school a little over a month ago now, which meant we were finally able to implement some structure in our lives, but it still came as another huge transition and with that, came meltdowns.
Before I put Bruin in school he started either skipping naps or not getting tired until around 3-4pm, but at school they have “rest time” or nap time from 12-2pm. Most days he falls asleep but on those days he doesn’t I can immediately see in his eyes how tired he is, he looks drained. Over the past month he’s had two really bad meltdowns after a “no nap day” at school. This last one, a week ago, I picked him up at the usual time and his teacher said he didn’t nap, so I knew it was going to be a long night trying to keep him awake until an early bedtime. He fell asleep within two minutes of being in the car, we got to the house and he didn’t want to wake up no matter what I did to wake him, I knew he was exhausted so I just let him sleep. He woke up an hour and a half later and he just kept saying no over and over again, to everything. He was whining, complaining, crying, and it wasn’t just the few minutes of a toddler meltdown that’s “normal”, this was the no mommy don’t leave my sight but don’t look at me, don’t sit here but don’t get up, don’t be here but don’t go there, don’t hug me or kiss me, no I don’t want ice cream or Disney World or a cookie. I couldn’t do anything but wait it out, it lasted over an hour.
I want to share something that I read online that another mom posted on her Instagram about meltdowns a few weeks earlier. I believe this one single post changed my entire perspective on his after school meltdowns, so I want to share it here because I hope it can help someone else the way it helped me. I don’t remember what she said word for word, I wish I would have saved it but for some reason I didn’t, she said something like this… “Mamas, if your child comes home with big feelings and they’re overwhelmed, melting down, remember this… they’re in a new world all day, without that one person they have relied on to be there for them at all times their entire life. They hold their emotions in at school because they have no one they trust to express them to, so when they come home, they may just be overloaded with built up emotions that their bodies and minds are telling them they can finally feel them now because they have you, their safety. Their safety is you.”
Bruin pushed me away multiple times, hit me, said he didn’t like me, kept saying he wanted his dad, it seemed like he was in agony just rolling around on the floor. After so many minutes of it, just like the meltdown a year ago, I told him I was going in the other room for a minute, but this time I also said I’d be right here when he needed me. Instead of just walking away I made sure he knew I needed a second but I wasn’t leaving. I walked to my room and sat on my bed, hands to my face again, I listened to him cry “mommy” for about 20 seconds before I stood back up, I took a big deep breath, and I walked back to sit right next to him. I just looked at the floor the entire time because I knew looking at him would make him upset. This time I was able to say calmly, “I know you’re having a lot of big feelings right now, and I don’t know what I can do to help you feel better, but I’m just going to sit here next to you and I’ll be here when you need me, mommy loves you much.”
I still felt helpless, but this time my mind and body acted differently, I was able to respond to him rather than react. In the past I know I would have gone through a million different reasons in my head why he was acting like this and blaming myself or our situation or the world, but this time I just sat there with him. No thoughts except for being thankful and proud I get to be the one person he can trust his emotions with and work through them with. For the first time, I was able to show up the way I’d always wished I had in the past but wasn’t emotionally capable of doing so.
I have slowly over the year learned a little bit of patience, for myself and for Bruin. I know that the work I’ve been doing on myself has brought a lot of growth but I also know that by reading one other moms Instagram post, one other mom’s perspective, a mom that I’ve never met before, helped me grow so much last week in ways I’ll always remember. That is so powerful to me, and that’s why I always hope to come here and share my own stories so that they will be the help that another mom needs some day.
As parents I think we all need to learn that we don’t wake up one day being the parents we want to be. It takes time, a lot of patience, a lot of mistakes, a lot of being easy on ourselves and a lot of learning that we’ll never be perfect. The very fact that we, as parents, recognize when we do something that doesn’t align with who we wish to be, is the same part of us that will continue to learn and continue to grow. If you find yourself having a difficult time with meltdowns, or with any other aspect of your life, remember to give yourself grace. It also helps to try and think about what you’re thankful for in those stressful moments. You’re not alone.
