{"id":57277,"date":"2016-05-15T06:31:28","date_gmt":"2016-05-15T06:31:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/xenodochial-archimedes.45-76-20-142.plesk.page\/2016x105x1traumatized\/"},"modified":"2022-11-29T18:22:03","modified_gmt":"2022-11-29T18:22:03","slug":"traumatized","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mrsbishop.com\/2016\/05\/traumatized.html","title":{"rendered":"Traumatized – Mrs. Bishop"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

Today I was \u201cThat\u201d Mother.<\/p>\n

The one who rolled her eyes as she dropped her son off in the church nursery because I had just dealt with his 312th tantrum of the morning, and could not wait to sip some coffee and sit in the church service alone.<\/p>\n

The mother who snuck out a few minutes early to try and go to the bathroom unaccompanied.<\/p>\n

The mother, who when she went to pick up her toddler, he pushed her and told who to go away. Who screamed at the top of his lungs while knocking toys all over the place. Who\u00a0threw himself on the floor and refused to budge.<\/p>\n

I was \u201cThat\u201d Mother, dragging my child out of the side entrance as he screamed and and kicked. Dropping my belongings more than once. People staring. Trying to go unnoticed, which was an impossibility, since I was essentially holding the hand of a banshee. (At this point, I was mentally kicking and screaming myself.)<\/p>\n

Completely mortified, I just sat in the car in the parking lot.<\/p>\n

What would people think?<\/p>\n

It\u2019s then I came to the conclusion- an epiphany, that we can\u2019t always view our children\u2019s actions as a reflection of ourselves. Or our parenting.<\/p>\n

Sometimes our kids will throw tantrums. Behave badly. Be defiant. This doesn\u2019t mean we are doing a horrible job. I spent too much time stressing over what people would think of me as a mother, rather than trying to figure out why my toddler was being a crazy person.<\/p>\n

Guess what? He\u2019s 4. Sometimes he is a big ball of crazy. Or hungry. Or over-stimulated. Or tired.<\/p>\n

My job is to get to the bottom of why he\u2019s upset, and to get over it. No amount of yelling or screaming at my end would have remedied the situation. He wasn\u2019t throwing a fit because I am a bad parent, or because he doesn\u2019t receive enough discipline, or because he\u2019s a \u201cbad kid.\u201d<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s take this oath as mothers<\/strong>\u2013 to not judge each other by\u00a0the actions of our children. To not assume the mother with the whiny toddler at the grocery store is an overindulgent Mom who doesn\u2019t set limits. Or the little boy pushing the other kids at the park has parents that don\u2019t discipline him. They are their own people, and we can establish and enforce boundaries- but sometimes they\u2019re going to push them. They\u2019re going to occasionally break the rules. And maybe embarrass us a little.<\/p>\n

Once his meltdown was over and we\u00a0were home for a few minutes (after a pretty rocky care ride), he\u00a0was back to his cheery self in a few minutes and munching on a snack. I was the only one that was traumatized by the ordeal. He was over it long before I was.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s when it hit me.<\/p>\n

I refuse to let the actions of my toddler let other people define my abilities as a mother- and so should you. Let\u2019s all go ahead and agree that kids are weird sometimes, and leave it be.<\/p>\n

Side Note: My husband never lets this type of behavior get to him, or thinks himself less of a father because of it. So, let\u2019s take a tip\u00a0from the book of fatherhood\u2026I\u2019ve never once heard of the term \u201cDaddy Guilt.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today I was \u201cThat\u201d Mother. The one who rolled her eyes as she dropped her son off in the church nursery because I had just dealt with his 312th tantrum of the morning, and could not wait to sip some coffee and sit in the church service alone. The mother who snuck out a few minutes early to try and go to the bathroom unaccompanied. The mother, who when she went to pick up her toddler, he pushed her and told who to go away. Who screamed at the top of his lungs while knocking toys all over the <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":58808,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[43,5,32],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-57277","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-mommy-monday","category-mommy","category-parenting","has_thumb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrsbishop.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57277","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrsbishop.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrsbishop.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrsbishop.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrsbishop.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=57277"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mrsbishop.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57277\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrsbishop.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/58808"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrsbishop.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=57277"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrsbishop.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=57277"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrsbishop.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=57277"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}