To a parent to another parent, is parenting harder and more frustrating than you ever thought it would be?

Perhaps, you were always a calm person before kids, but now that you’re a parent it seems almost impossible to keep your cool. That you never thought you could yell at your child, and maybe secretly judged those parents that you have seen in public yelling at their kids, but now you find yourself snapping at your kids too.

Or maybe you thought when you became a parent that you wouldn’t yell and explode at your child like your parents did when you were a child.

It’s hard to break this reactive, explosive cycle because when you have told your child a million times to pick up the freaking socks because you’re tired of having clothes all over the place and can never find a pair of socks because they are all missing, you start to feel overwhelmed and snap.

You’re so upset that you can’t seem to stop yourself in your tracks.

There is so much going in your life, in parenting, and perhaps you were never taught how to really deal with your “big emotions” in a healthy way. Never was told how to handle anger and overwhelm, that it’s a scary and bad feeling. There are so many things piling up and it gets the best of you.

You try so hard every day to be responsive in a calmly manner, to not yell at your kids, but you still go to bed feeling resentment, guilt, and shame and don’t know what else you can do.