Instead of running the dishwasher without soap, my bf, being the genious that he is, ran it with Dawn liquid!! I was mopping up suds for 2 hours!!

I lose it quite regularly with my kids. I don't mean to, I just can't handle stress well. I always stop immediately and apologize, and I can't believe what I've said or done afterwards, but I feel so bad. I feel like a failure too, but I know I'm the only mother my children have, and I know that I have to straighten up and fly right for their sakes.

I'm going into therapy to try to deal with my stress better. Hopefully this will help.

I hope you feel better about yourself too.

Stress therapy....sounds like fun....just so you know I did was get some counselling. It was the best thing I did. Not ashamed to talk about it. When I grew up I remember my mother so vividly as a stress case and very often she took her stress out on me. She didn't have a partner. Therefore growing up the only emotion I could express was anger....what we call today as rage. This doctor who helped me with my anger took me in as a student. He became my mentor for years. I am now 35 and he still mentors me to work in the community. He put a program together to help release frustration to get to your anger, help release loneliness to get to your sorrow, and release anxiety to get to your fear. The point I am trying to share with you is when we have layers of frustration, we burst out into a rage..this is where we yell, scream, say things we regret saying (i'm guilty of that). By removing the layers of frustration and as Dr. Joe says he has 72 years of layers of frustration (he is 72 yrs old), we get to our anger. When we get to our anger we set boundaries by being able to say "NO". FOr ex: kids saying "no" to drugs is setting their boundaries, showing their anger. Unfortunately our society brought us up to never say "no". Some of us at our age remember being sent to our rooms for saying"no". Thus creating a generation of individuals afraid of saying "no" so we instead keep it inside and build layers of frustration until one day someone decides to put the milk carton back in the fridge empty and when you go to put some milk in your coffee, guess what happens? LOL We may start yelling...LOL. Then we look back a few minutes later, regret having blown up saying the things we said. When too many layers of frustration has accumulated, it takes the smallest things sometimes to set it off. My hats off to you if your going to some sort of anger management or therapy...I think that is great.

Hi Momof2

I know what it feels like to feel guilty for blowing up and it is tough being a single parent. Heck my best friend blows up more often than I do, and she has a partner helping her parent. I know sometimes you feel guilty. Maybe look for a fitness group like cardio kick boxing to release your layers of frustration, or go to a gym, where you can do your own kick boxing. Too bad we are not close by because I would love to do that with you and guide you into frustration releases so that you can get to your anger. I work on my anger on a regular basis. Even though I trained in the Anger Serenity Training I am not a perfect parent, but I have now tools to go to when it gets too tough. Let me share with you what just happened recently with me and my son. My son is 13. I was cleaning out stuff on my computer trying to get the best usage of memory because my antivirus kept kicking off. Anyway, as a result i went into his music downloads to see what was slowing down my computer and I came across some very disturbing tunes. Sexual tunes. Now I know that kids at 13 are curious, but the tune that was in his library was 'a mother being forced to have ***"....well, I was on teh phone with my friend, and she never heard me go into a complete rage. My son was at his father's house luckily for him cause literally I blew up, yelling and screaming for almost 10 minutes. LOL I have had maybe 12 hours now to cool off before I go pick him up today. I thought to myself why I was so angry, how could I have raised a child with those kind of thoughts and fantasies. Really, I was angry because I am a youth coach and I saw alot of teens in tough situations and I thought to myself, I coached ALOT of kids..I taught kids who didn't know how to read or write and brought them to acheiving great academic results and here I was facing my worst nightmare. My own child is going through a phase of lying. I had to go back and figure out why it really annoyed me when he lied even through all the consequences for lying. The rule we have in my house is, if you mess up, ok it's part of growing up, but when you lie, it is a choice YOU make and there will be consequences for lying. Without the lies, we can deal with the issues together as a team...but with the lies no way, unacceptable. So the anger turned into rage of course, because this is layers of lies with him in teh past year I have been dealing with. When we peel the layers of frustration we get to our anger. My anger was that when I was a child, my mother had lied to me about my father's existance and thus the rage started to surface. When someone lies to me, it burns me. So often times when we blow up and say things we know we will regret, learning to release the layers of frustrations of constant repetition we most likely get to the root of our reaction and we can turn the situation around. In this case even though I know what caused me to get into a rage, I am not sure how I will react when I see him today. Already his access to computers, t.v. is gone....of course because of lying about school work. I have never hit my kid, not even a spank...sometimes I wonder if I did, would it have changed things today. What is your opinion?

Hi singleparentcoach and welcome!

I don't think spanking your child would change things. I don't think spanking or hitting is the answer to anything. Communication is key, which from reading your post, I think you already know. I'm not sure what you were like as a teenager but I can certainly tell you that I did alot of lying to my parents as a teenager. Although I did lie my worst fear was letting my parents down. I never wanted them to be disappointed in me. For whatever reason, maybe peer pressure it didn't stop me from lying to them when I wanted to sneak out and be with my boyfriend or do other things that I knew they would disapprove of. I think talking to your kids is the best thing you can do...and realizing, their only human and once and awhile they slip, just like us. Of all the times in my life, I would definitely never want to be a teenager again. I think that is the most confusing time. Your trying to please everyone and your still not even sure who you are.

OK Paul...I am intrigued now.

What about the LAUNDRY

LOL

quote:

"I looked at my already emotionally upset little boy and said, "Fine your Dad doesn't want you and neither do I. Maybe I should just drop you off at the police station"...!

That was a horrible thing to say and I hope he was young enough that he won't remember it. You need therapy. Seriously, anger management, because that was more than an instant reaction to the moment, that was about an hours worth of time and you didn't calm down. Get some help before you ruin your childs life.

Apologising won't fix it if you do it on a regular basis. Hopefully not.

wow bluegirl you really need to not be so judging. This forum is not that kind of place. I think that we can all say that we have lost it at one point in our lives. Who are we to judge? We should be suportive and not so mean. She was opening up about something that obvisily she feels bad about and you comment on it so harshly. Just remember we are all here for everyone else!!

quote:

Even as I said it I was sick to my stomach. What kind of person says that to her own child???? I feel like I'm failing him on all fronts and that my parenting skills ****. Is there hope, cause I'm desperate for it!

Oh my gosh...I've said things when I'm angry too, and I know EXACTLY the sick feeling in your stomach as you say it. There are some days that you feel like your parenting skills **** and I think we all go through that. You didn't mean what you said, and I'm sure he knows that. Sometimes we lose it. I've said things like "Fine! Go find yourself a new mom!" and probably worse than anything you've said. It happens and we lose our cool and we feel like total jerks and want to rip out our own heart as we see our kids weep by what we've said. But then, we stop...we count to ten...and we hug them and say we're sorry for saying that and then we talk to them about what they did and why we are so mad about it, and you know...there's nothing in the "manual" about being a single parent and dealing with our kids' quirky behavior they have sometimes, while simultaneously trying to balance out the rest of our "jobs" outside and inside the home. Come to think of it...I didn't get a manual, did you? If your parenting skills really sucked, you wouldn't be on this forum and you wouldn't be confessing a very difficult thing to admit, that sometimes we lose our cool...I should know.

quote:

Originally posted by BigBobby:

quote:

Originally posted by paulj_in_phx:
Fresh cheese in the Pot cupboard.

Wow...I guess the marijuana laws are more relaxed in AZ than in MA?

Marijuana laws relaxed in USA??
(I know, unfair advantage living in Amsterdam....)