Stay Calm and Carry On

Does your child scream and cry when things don’t go their way? Do you sometimes find yourself yelling or cursing when something goes wrong?

Meltdowns—whether from children or adults—are a universal response to frustration and overwhelm. For some, it’s a scream; for others, a sharp word or a slammed door.

These moments can eat up our time, disrupt our relationships, and often leave us feeling embarrassed once the storm has passed.

Photo Credit: Simran Sood found, Unsplash

We Have Choices

But here’s something we often forget in the heat of the moment: we have a choice. We can let the meltdown take over, or we can choose to stay calm. That’s not to say we should bottle up our feelings. Sometimes, releasing that pent-up energy is necessary—maybe it’s a loud “UGH! This is SO FRUSTRATING!” But staying calm and regulated, especially in front of our kids, benefits our bodies, minds, and relationships.

We grown-ups can help children (and ourselves) by naming the choices available. For example:

“Johnny, are you going to choose to yell and cry and waste the next 15 minutes before bedtime, or are you going to take a few breaths, stay calm, and talk it out with me?”

Years ago, I came across a car metaphor (I wish I could remember where I read it).

Here’s my version:

“You are a race car. You have many roadways to choose from. Will you take the bumpy, out-of-control, crying road? Or will you choose the smooth, straight, calm, and quick road? Maybe you want to try the deep breathing road or the cuddle-with-me road. Which one will you take, and do you want me to join you?”

Real Life: Sadie’s Story

Let me share a recent example from my own life. My daughter, Sadie, spent hours creating a two-minute video montage from over an hour’s worth of footage she’d filmed on her last day of senior year. She worked all afternoon, into the evening, and well into the night. At around 10:00 pm, she emerged from her room and announced with a tone of defeat, “Something just glitched out when I went to save the final video, and it’s gone. I still have the original footage, but I lost the montage I made.”

My heartbeat immediately sped up to a brisk-walking-pace. My jaw, chest, and gut all clenched up with the weight of her lost effort. I asked her what she was going to do. With remarkable calm, she replied, “I’m going to go back in there and do it again.”

Wait…, WHAT?!

Yes, I actually said that out loud.

I pressed, “But don’t you have to yell and curse and complain? You just lost hours of work!”

Sadie just laughed and went back to her room. She re-made the video—this time, much more quickly. I was blown away by her ability to stay calm and simply do what needed to be done.

Real Life: My Story

So it was kind of like a test for me when, only a few days later, I found myself in a very similar situation. I’d spent all day on a photo website creating a photobook to gift to my son for his college graduation. I spent hours sifting through 21 years worth of photos, choosing which ones to use and how to design the book’s pages. I put it in the website shopping cart and, with the webpage still open, I closed my laptop, planning to order the book once Sadie returned home and could give it a final edit and thumbs up.

Hours later when I opened my laptop, there was a big pop-up message on my screen:

YOUR SESSION HAS TIMED OUT

The project was gone.

“No worries,” I said, “I put it in the shopping cart.”

But apparently, since the project was gone, it didn’t exist, and so my shopping cart was empty.

The Test

Oh man, did I feel it! My heartbeat immediately sped up to a brisk-walking-pace. My jaw, chest, and gut all clenched up with the weight of my lost effort. Normally, I would have yelled and cursed. I might have even broken into a small scream. I would have spent a lot of minutes blaming the photo website—cursing it out, yelling about how not-user-friendly the site was throughout the process and now THIS…!

But..., I was with Sadie. The same kid who only a few days earlier stayed calm and did what she had to do. And she was watching me—observing how I responded.

So, after yelling out one or two quick expletives (come on, we have to release the frustrated energy somehow!), I made a choice. Inspired by Sadie’s calm only a few days earlier, I CHOSE to not have the 20-minute meltdown that I felt like having. Instead, I CHOSE to stay calm and focus on the task at hand. I knew that in the end, I was going to re-make the book, just as Sadie re-made her video montage. Did I really want to waste the next 20+ minutes melting down? Well… yes and no, but mostly no.

So I sat down at my laptop, and I re-created that photobook. And like it went for Sadie, it took way less time to re-create the book than it did to make it the first time. By around midnight, I had that photobook complete and purchased.

When Our Kids Make Us Better People

I felt so grateful to Sadie, who inspired me to stay calm and reminded me that usually, we can choose how we will respond to situations (I want to leave space for the times when the more primitive parts of our brain take over and we truly lose access to our higher-level control centers—that’s certainly something that happens to our young children who are still learning to regulate their emotions).

Final Takeaway

We all face moments when things unravel. The real power lies in recognizing our options and modeling calm, resilient responses for the children in our care.

For example:

“I am SO frustrated right now! I kind of want to mope and yell and give up, but I’m not gonna do that. Instead, I’m going to take a few breaths, calm down, and try again.”

We can help our children when they feel overwhelmed by reminding them that they have a choice (you could try using the racecar example, or another analogy that makes sense for you and your child) and supporting them as they choose which path they will take. And sometimes, our kids will surprise us by choosing the smoother road all on their own—even when we’re ready to melt down ourselves.

Let’s keep offering those choices, keep the conversation open, and remember: staying calm is always an option, for us and for our kids.