Insanity, or the Try, Try Again Method
I'm sure you heard that saying about insanity, the one that goes something like "the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results."
This describes my evening perfectly.
Right now it's a very hormonally charged time of the month for me. And as you may surmise, I get to experience this every month. Every single month for a period of several days we have horrific evenings where nothing the kids do is good enough, and any real mischief completely pushes me beyond the breaking point into losing my cool with the kids. Unfortunately, in my frustration I am likely to resort to spanking with the younger kids and blistering sarcasm with the older kids, both of which fall devastatingly short of my own standards of mothering. This is followed by serious mental recriminations and tearful repentance and determination to do better next time (and hope that my relationship with my kids will not suffer from my monthly lack of calm, rational, mature parenting). More than once I have vowed that the next month things will be different, with depressing lack of success when it comes down to it.
This month, I knew, I knew when I was headed for the hormone danger zone. I figured it out Saturday, after several normal everyday situations had brought on the tears. So I tried to mentally prepare myself to take everything in stride, to be proactive in preventing situations that might set me off.
Yet we still had a mom-meltdown tonight when I discovered a couple of messes that K had left, and not only did I get mad at K, I got mad at all the kids. Out came the harsh rebukes and the sarcasm.
Insanity.
But how do I change what I am doing so that I can get different results? The biggest factor seems to be my PMS hormonal craziness, and how do I change that???
This describes my evening perfectly.
Right now it's a very hormonally charged time of the month for me. And as you may surmise, I get to experience this every month. Every single month for a period of several days we have horrific evenings where nothing the kids do is good enough, and any real mischief completely pushes me beyond the breaking point into losing my cool with the kids. Unfortunately, in my frustration I am likely to resort to spanking with the younger kids and blistering sarcasm with the older kids, both of which fall devastatingly short of my own standards of mothering. This is followed by serious mental recriminations and tearful repentance and determination to do better next time (and hope that my relationship with my kids will not suffer from my monthly lack of calm, rational, mature parenting). More than once I have vowed that the next month things will be different, with depressing lack of success when it comes down to it.
This month, I knew, I knew when I was headed for the hormone danger zone. I figured it out Saturday, after several normal everyday situations had brought on the tears. So I tried to mentally prepare myself to take everything in stride, to be proactive in preventing situations that might set me off.
Yet we still had a mom-meltdown tonight when I discovered a couple of messes that K had left, and not only did I get mad at K, I got mad at all the kids. Out came the harsh rebukes and the sarcasm.
Insanity.
But how do I change what I am doing so that I can get different results? The biggest factor seems to be my PMS hormonal craziness, and how do I change that???
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