When You Lose Your Shiz
Yep, it’s certainly not all perfection and sleek systems at our place. There are days where I feel like I’m fulfilling my ultimate purpose in life, raising these little people, and others where i feel defeated, deflated and exhausted.
There are ‘seasons’ of knowing what’s going on and having amazing systems in place to support everyone, and then things shift and I find myself in unfamiliar territory and I’m treading water at an incredible speed just to stay afloat.
Right now we are moving from a transition of all 4 kids at home, 4 days of the week, to my biggest heading off to school and my second heading to preschool 3 days of the week. Life is radically changing and I’m definitely right on the edge of feeling all the feels and certainly feeling out of my depth. In periods such as these, I find myself more easily ‘broken’ or more likely to snap at things that are really quite trivial.
My most recent moment came when I thought things were relatively calm one afternoon, and it was getting close to dinner time. I had just folded a mountain of washing while the kids played and went to take some to the other end of the house. Just moments into dispatching said garments, a frantic Number 3 runs to me from the opposite end of the house, yelling and holding something that appeared to be dripping all over the floor. When i enquired as to what was going on, she began to explain that the youngest, our 1 year old, had taken my alarm clock, thrown it in the toilet, and she had fished it out to save it.
As if that wasn’t gross enough, Number 2 had just been to the toilet, not flushed it and left the lid up/door open as an open invitation for the baby to explore. If that still wasn’t bad enough, I’d only done a half-baked job of cleaning the toilet during nap time and had left it to soak with toilet bleach in the bowl. So… my floor was covered in urine/bleach, my Number 3 had touched this revolting cocktail of poison and my youngest had been playing in it.
Well, I lost it. I lost it at Number 2. I basically modelled a marvellous tantrum about how the world was pretty much ending because the toilet hadn’t been flushed, the lid wasn’t down and the door had been left ajar. I ranted and raved and felt close to no better once I was through (although I’m fairly sure Number 2 will be scarred enough to flush and close the lid for the rest of her life). I washed the other kids’ hands and cleaned up the bleachy urine mess that went from one end of the house to the other.
I felt like an idiot - I had literally shown her/all four kids all the things I tell her not to do… and this small incident fully broke me.
Well done, mum.
When my husband walked in the door that evening I greeted him with little eye contact and a posture of defeat. The white flag was up.
The thing is though, we are human. I’m no super-mum, just because I have 4 kids and manage to wrangle them most of the time.
A wise (older) woman told me a few years ago, not to beat myself up when these things went down. She explained that in a 24 hour period, if this is 10 minutes, no one will be scarred for life. That yelling and tantruming isn’t the predominant paradigm in our household and that this is just a glitch - an opportunity for us to show our kids how to repair relationships and emotions; how to say sorry and live in a way that doesn’t deny reality but shows real breakdowns and resolutions, in a healthy environment.
She went on to remind me that the season of having young kids gives the feeling of being in traction at times - that there is a huge stretch. Like stretching in an exercise sense, it can hurt, but we won’t die. We will live to reflect upon these moments and perhaps laugh while reliving them later.
There is growth to be had in this time.
So… Thanks wise Sue. I will take those things on board.
We all lose our shiz.
We are all human.
May tomorrow be a less urine/bleach-filled day.