How The Time Change Helped Me Teach My Son To Regulate His Emotions
We are all bears when we’re tired
I watch as my son looks down at the crumbs on his plate, looks back up at us and then blows them all over the table.
“Don’t blow your grilled cheese crumbs on the table!” My husband says to him.
“But I want to!” he pouts. He smiles a sly smile, looks at us again — dead in the eye — and lets out his biggest blow yet. Bread crumbs fly across the table at breakneck speed.
“Stop it!” We tell him. “Help us clean this up please.”
“NO!” he yells, “you clean it up!” He storms from the table and stomps all the way downstairs.
My husband and I stare at each other in shock. At five-years-old, our son is not immune to such emotional outbursts, but they usually don’t happen that often. It usually means something is up. Similar outbursts have followed a bad day at school — someone excluding him from a game, a friend being mean to him, or him being frustrated with something.
But he hasn’t been to school today — he has been home with us all day. The morning has been uneventful and calm. We shrug our shoulders and move on. Perhaps he just had a bad moment. We decide not to look too much into it. We finish cleaning up and go downstairs to…
