He’s bad and you’re mad. How do you get out of the downward spiral?
Yitzy has been absolutely terrible lately! He won’t listen to anything I say. I have to ask him over and over again to get into the bathtub or eat his dinner or start his homework — whatever it is he refuses to cooperate. I’ve got other kids and other responsibilities and I can’t spend all my time trying to get him to do the basics. I’m so frustrated that I feel like I don’t even like him anymore! And then of course I feel guilty for being an awful mother. I just don’t know what to do.
Raising children has a way of bringing people to both their heights and their depths. A parent may be willing to throw herself under a train for her child yet in other moments she may wish that she could have an extended vacation from the very same youngster (“Please come back when you’re an adult!”). While children can be adorable they can also be extremely taxing challenging alarming and maddening.
One core difficulty is that when children enter a negative phase — becoming defiant argumentative aggressive dramatic demanding or otherwise impossible — parents tend to follow suit. In other words parents react negatively to children’s negativity.
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