Coping

By Kati Samargia

Have you ever had one of those moments? Kind of like one of those weeks or one of those days, but just a moment. One single thing that puts you in a mood. Something happens, someone says something, and that’s it, day ruined.

It happens to me, more than I want to admit. I can be having a great day, laundry is done, house is clean, kids are all getting along. Then that one thing happens, that moment occurs, and everything goes down the drain. I get frustrated at the slightest thing. My poor kids get snapped at for no real reason. After a moment, I can lose complete control of my behavior. And, what’s worse, when I realize that I have become a stomping, snipping jerk, I find it hard to calm down. The moment has come and gone, yet I am holding on to it.

I have said for ages that I feed off of other people’s energy. Yuck! What it really is, is that I never really learned coping skills. Double yuck! I am 45, and don’t have the tools it takes to “just get past it.” I am trying to improve using techniques I have learned while trying to help my kids learn them. Counting to ten, meditation, visualization and prayer are all helping, but I am a work in progress.

As I have been thinking about all this, these skills that I lack, I can’t help but think about kids. If a grown woman can’t realize what triggers a loss of control and how to recover, how can a child? We live in a society where ” you should know better,” “count to ten,” “there is nothing to get upset about ” are phrases used on the youngest of kids. We expect perfect behavior and obedience in public, we give looks of judgement and disgust when a child loses control. But, how is that fair, and how is that right? We expect so much, but the adults can’t control themselves. How can we expect kids to just know how to act “right?”

I don’t think it is as easy as telling kids how to cope. I know from my personal experience that knowing and applying are a long road apart. We can tell them that fighting is wrong, but then they here about parents beating the snot out of each other at a little league game. We can tell them to use nice words, and don’t judge others because they are different, but then they see strangers posting shaming comments about a woman for breastfeeding, or making death threats to someone because they don’t agree with their political views. We can tell them keep their cool when someone does something that they don’t like, but they then hear their parents cursing at the driver in front of them because they are moving too slowly. We can’t expect the skills to be passed on through our words alone.

We need to lead by example. Children need to see the people who are meant to lead, support and protect them, the adults, behaving with control. Our kids already lack social skills because of the electronic world we live in. When they are around other people, they need to see the adults taking a moment to breathe before they address a conflict. They need to watch someone older, wiser, takeing control of their anxiety, not pushing it down or letting it explode, but coping with it. We need to assume the role as grown-ups, and remember that children need to be taught. They need to learn that they are works in progress, as we all are.