How To Be A Calm Mom, Even If You Feel Angry

How you can handle challenging situations when emotions run high and you feel like lashing out at your children. Stay calm, check your own emotions and then you can attend to your child in a calm and effective way.

How To Be A Calm Mom When You Feel Like Lashing Out

Here are a few ways you can stay calm, while you deal with big emotions coming from you and from your child.

1. Take a moment away from your child in another room.
2. Turn around and take a deep breath
3. Drink some water and try to relax
4. Take kids out for a walk
5. Take a moment and do some jumping jacks to release happy pheromones
6. Get some rest if you can
7. Call a friend
8. Schedule a coffee date
9. Take a shower
10. Scream into a pillow

These are all simple things you can do when you need to calm down and not lash out at your child, but making sure you do them takes a little bit of self-discipline and self-awareness. If your children are younger and can’t be left unsupervised while you take a shower, then perhaps that solution will not work for you, but you can take the kids out for a walk or scream into a pillow.

Remember that a sleep-deprived momma is more likely to lose her cool and have trouble controlling emotions. Another thing that can trigger anger and anxiety in a parent is a messy and disorganized home. It’s not a trigger for all moms, but it can be a trigger for some, like myself.

Another helpful thing that can help you remain calmer throughout the day is to set up routines for the family so you can feel more structured and less stressed about what comes next. I personally like to have morning routines before school, bedtime routines, school night rituals, after-school routines and even cleaning routines in place in my own home to help me keep the calm.

We all feel angry at times, and when our kids do something that triggers our anger, we really need to check in with ourselves and figure out what is really going on and calm our own anger before we can attend to the problem at hand.

Give Yourself Space If You Need It

Personally, I am a stay at home mom, and the pressure to focus on the children every second of every day is huge. All of this can get overwhelming and it is very easy to lose our cool when we are so stressed out and wearing thin.

Take some space for yourself and implement quiet time and independent play at an early age to ensure you get that much-needed space.

Here are some of my best tips on how you can get more energy as a tired mom and if you need a little bit of motherhood inspiration here is a very popular and well-received post on mastering motherhood.

Get alone time as much as you can, even if it’s hiding in the pantry with a chocolate bar while the kids watch some tv. It’s ok, it’s normal and you’re not a bad parent if you do this.

How To Create Trust And Respect With Calm Parenting

Discipline is most effective when keeping in mind that your goal is to create cooperation and gain your children’s trust and respect.

It is so important to focus on the discipline strategies that can help children grow and thrive in adulthood, which is why it is imperative to show them respect and positivity, even when it’s hard.

I’ve been known to ask my children to do a task over and over again. I really really hate when that happens, and honestly, those are the situations that make my blood boil and my anger comes out.

It is such a challenge to keep your cool as a parent when simple situations cannot merit cooperation and listening.

Fortunately for me, I have some tricks I use to keep calm and collected during those tough heated situations so you can stop asking yourself ” how can I stop getting so angry at my baby/child?”.

Why Is It So Important To Stay Calm In Emotional Situations?

It is important to create a home environment that promotes positive conversation which in turn creates good communication.

Children often repeat what they see. It is important to model good behaviour if you want to see good behaviour out of your kids. Parents that stay calm, warm, and gentle (even in the toughest moments) often meet the required psychological demands that children require and raise their kids with kindness and love. It also makes them feel safe.

Think about this. If you were working and you made a small mistake such as using a blue pen instead of a company black pen which company rules state you must use.

Your boss calls you in and starts to yell at you with a face that’s turning red and veins popping out left right and centre.

Would you be willing to fix your mistake and apologize or would your guard come up and you start to argue back until you also have veins popping out of your neck? Maybe you’ll cower and feel so bad about yourself your self-esteem will plummet and you might even make a rash decision and quit your job. I mean it’s an extreme situation but I am trying to paint a picture.

In this situation, you wouldn’t have a job if you yelled at your boss with popping veins, but the point is that when we get yelled at, our defences come up automatically and instead of dealing with a situation properly things just turn bad.

You can see the importance of staying calm, even when children are being destructive, impulsive, evasive, etc. Angry parent moments usually have a very negative effect on a child, especially if we resort to negative punishment (fear conditioning) too.

Related: How To Get Kids To Talk And Open Up

How To Promote Calm Communication And Managing Mommy Rage

Eliminate Threats And Bribes

If you find yourself getting angry and feel a threat coming on…stop and think.

Is saying something like ” You’re going to get in trouble for doing that, stop it right now” going to stop the behaviour? Could it maybe provoke even worse behaviour?

(most likely, YES)

If you find yourself in a situation like this, think about how you can phrase your request in such a way that a small child, who is still learning so much about the world, can understand.

Instead of: Don’t Kick Your Sister!
Use: Kicking Your Sister Is Not Ok. Let’s Find Something Else For You To Play With

Instead of: Don’t You Dare Throw That Toy
Use: Let’s Not Throw This Toy Around, It’s Meant For This Purpose (show). Let’s Put This Away And Go Do “example” Instead.

Related: Powerful Comforting Phrases For Calming Down A Sad Child

You see, children require specific information and clear instructions (that don’t sound like demands).

Your job as a parent is to provide clear and specific information in any given situation. Instead of threats and bribes, use redirection.

Related: Using Positive Language – Alternatives To Saying No

Provide Encouragement

Sometimes children simply do not understand what you want them to do. Providing warm encouragement will go much further than threats and yelling.

When you are faced with challenging behaviour. Provide alternatives.

Instead of: Time to go home!
Use: It’s time to get going, would you like to go down the slide one more time or go on the monkey bars?

Instead of: No more computer time today
Use: Time’s up for today, would you like to turn off the computer or would you like me to do it?

Give Them Space And Time

Sometimes, in heated moments, children really do need some space.

This is a good thing. If your child is requesting a moment alone so process a situation, the emotional maturity is growing. Here are some tips for a non-time out, time out.

Instead of: Go to your room!
Use: I can see you’re upset right now, would you like some time alone to think about this?

Your Calm Is Their Calm

In moments of distress, your energy becomes their energy. Provide the environment that you wish to be in, instead of a reactive, explosive situation that could end up hurting feelings and big emotions.

You are not alone if you react to situations in an angry way. I struggle with this myself, but the most important thing is that we try. All of us, collectively, need to try to be calm around our little human beings who want so much to be like us. We are their world, and scaring them with anger can be damaging to their soul.

It is ok to feel all the emotions that we feel as parents. Frustration, sadness, anger all creep up throughout the long days of parenting and feelings of disrespect and rejection are common.

I know these feelings are great, but they are understandable and you are allowed to have them. This is a difficult journey and all of these feelings will pass eventually.

How you handle these feelings is up to you. You can get grounded and you do your best to stay calm using some of the tips I mentioned.

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