7 Things to do after Reacting Badly to Something Your Child Did ...

If you have reacted badly to something your child has said or done, you need to take a step back. Take a few moments to regroup. Get your mind settled down and ready to deal with the situation. You are always going to do better dealing with whatever they have thrown at you when you are calm. This is the first step of the things to do after reacting badly and the one of the most important.

If you have reacted badly, you may need to apologize. This is true even if your child did something bad that made you react badly. A lot of parents are under the misconception that they should never apologize to their child. That is untrue. You are still the parent and still in control if you apologize to your child from time to time for something you have done. It just makes you a fair and mature parent.

Sometimes children expect us to be perfect. We are their parents. They expect us to know it all and be able to fix it all. We are the authority figures in their life. It is good to remind them that we are human too and that we are not perfect.

Sometimes, we all need a do-over. We need to go back and start again. This can sometimes be the best solution. Sometimes I will simply say to my children that we need to start over with the whole conversation. This helps both of us to be more ready to deal with whatever it is from the very beginning.

You cannot promise that you will never react badly when your child does something again. But you can promise to try to handle it better. It is important that you learn to stay in control of your reactions with your children. If you don’t, you are teaching them they cannot come to you without fear of those sorts of reactions. Just like your children can promise to try to make better choices, you can promise to try to handle it better when they don’t.

You know, we just aren’t perfect. We want to be. We strive to be. But the truth is that we cannot be perfect mothers any more than our children can be perfect children. Forgive yourself for the times when you don’t measure up to the standards that you want to reach. Beating yourself up over handling something poorly isn’t going to make anyone feel better.

After you have gone through all of these steps, it is time to let it go. Deal with whatever situation you are in with your child in whatever way you need to and move on. Mom guilt is bad enough from regular daily life without heaping more onto yourself when you had a bad day. Think about all the things you do right and how hard you try to be a good mom. Let it go in order to have a better day.

We all react badly to things our kids do from time to time because we are not only moms, we are just people. What do you do when this happens to you? I would love to hear how you cope with situations like this.