I can’t tell you how many times I’ve coached an accounting wife over bedtime with kids. I, too, am not immune to the struggles.
Like last night for example. The baby and I have been sick. It was an “anything goes” for dinner kind of night. I’m sure you’ve had those too.
After serving whatever we could scrounge up, the kids chose not to sit and eat much at all. They wanted to be up doing anything, but eating. I was clear that once dinner was over, there would be no more food.
Bedtime rolled around. Hubs was still at work. The body aches were creeping back up. I was ready for these kiddos to be asleep.
After getting them all snuggled in bed, the food requests started pouring in. My thoughts immediately went to, “I knew this would happen.” “They should have eaten when I told them to,” and many other similar thoughts. These thoughts quickly created a lot of anger within me, and I reacted.
I opened my mouth and the Kraken was released. I reacted loudly and angrily to my kids, which resulted in many tears. It was not the way I prefer to show up with my kids.
Right after I realized I reacted instead of recognizing and processing my anger. I quickly apologized to everyone. I chose to keep the boundary of no food in place, but after processing the emotion, I was able to maintain a calmness and peace about it instead. The night ended with love and snuggles instead of the previous anger and contention.
We are all human, and we all react at times. Perhaps bedtime is a reaction trigger for you as well.
When you step back and recognize your emotions, you can give ourselves the opportunity to feel and process the emotion instead of reacting to it.
I would love to teach you to process your emotions. Click below to grab one of my free coaching calls where we’ll focus on processing emotions, and what that means for you.
[INSERT_ELEMENTOR id=652]
