Think back to your last bad day , no I don’t mean a “dang that sucked “type of day I mean an awful day one where you could have walked out the door and burnt every bridge you don’t care about the result . We all have them right ? I know I’ve had many days that I had to take a time out and find any and all excuse as to why I need to calm down and not make a rash decision. Do you know what I’ve never considered though , that my nearly eight year old is subject to the same type of day. Never did it occur to me that she could have days that she couldn’t shake off I mean what’s she got to worry about she’s a kid am I right ! I was dead wrong and let me explain that my conscious Is still carrying the guilt around like a water pail on the end of a stick across my shoulders . While I was at work having a training day like I do every week my boss was showing me important things I needed to know how to do , so you can imagine the agitation I had when my phone kept going off with messages from my mom (watching my daughter) was complaining and frustrated with my daughter because at the drs office my daughter was acting a fool . I finally answered and gave Ainsley the good old “ if you don’t behave I’m taking your phone and you will have no tv “ talk , her attitude at that point was a firm 7 on the sassy scale . She’s wired that way and sometimes she gets overwhelmed or overstimulated and really does not know what to do with herself so usually that’s that and I take the bad with the good but the one thing I didn’t think to do was ask what she had going on . Sometimes I forget how little she is I mean 8 is pretty young but my daughter is so self sufficient and independent that it’s easy to forget . So I get home from work and I’m watering the roses and she asks to play with the hose but because I’m already tired I let her I don’t care I just want to sit down at that point . My husband was not okay with it given our water bill gets a little out of control quickly so he told her he’ll let her use the water and then turn it off simple enough right ? Well my little independent very headstrong daughter got very upset as I can only imagine we were taking away her feeling of independence and control . That’s something we don’t think of often either have you ever sat down after your child had a temper tantrum and realized you took away their ability to feel in charge of something? I mean as adults we won’t stand for someone coming in and making us feel we aren’t in charge of ourselves am I right , and that maybe although young our kids may have the same frustrations ? So anyways que her running away and crying and the guilt that I hurt her feelings and that what was she really hurting making sandcastles in the front yard ? I mean in hindsight we use just as much water watering the already dead roses so is it really that big of a deal ? Except this tantrum wasn’t the normal mom told me no tantrum ; she was crying saying she hates herself and she hates her life . As a mother it kills me to hear her say that I mean what’s so bad she has everything she’s asked for sure I work 45-50 hours a week but we get to go nice places and do cool things . So immediately I go to chase her and try to console her resulting in turmoil between me and my husband as he feels I’m babying her and I’m too easy on her , add the if it was my stepchildren they’d be in a lot of trouble remarks which always turns the argument that was a 4 into an 9.5 . Everything was spinning I didn’t know which direction to point my irritation towards , None of that matters to me because my little girl just said she hates her life and even worse herself ( my inner child crying because I know the feeling and I never want her to feel that way ) I’m trying to save her and that’s the only thing I can think of I’m supposed to be her safe place . I’m trying to explain to him that this is different it’s not just her trying to get her way. So I give them both space , she wasn’t ready to talk . About an hour later and she’s still in a bad mood and of course tripped over her hoverboard and got a rug burn so here comes the crying . I ask her to play play doh with me because maybe she needs my attention but of course she drops something and on the way back up slammed her head on the edge of the table . She’s crying like I do the day before that time of the month begins so I pick her up off the floor and hold her , I sit her on my lap and let her cry on my shoulder and rub her back . I asked her what was wrong and she tells me mom I had the worst day ever and I never want to go to school again , mind you my daughter can’t wait for school everyday so I was really worried at that point . I asked her what happened and she said I always get hurt when I’m there ( she just got her elbow out of a cast because a boy ran into her and hyper extended her arm ) I asked her to tell me what happened and she said a boy did a somersault and kicked her in the jaw but it was an accident he didn’t see her standing there , it still hurt . And then after that she grabbed a basketball and asked the boy who has been being mean to her all year if she could play basketball with him , he said no go play somewhere else and threw her ball over the fence . She started crying really hard so I know that really hurt her feelings. The only thing I came up with to help her and turn her bad day around was to tell them both to get in the car , we go to del taco and get her a snack it was nearly 9 pm at that point so we drove up to the water tower to eat our food ( I thought the lights and fresh air would help her get her mind off of it ) . I turned on kidzbop and we sang the Encanto songs and went home , she seemed cured but for good measure I laid down and cuddled her while we watched hop until she fell asleep. All night I just kept thinking 🤔 I wonder how many tantrums she’s thrown because she was having a bad day and they went unnoticed and she was in trouble , when really she needed to be consoled and didn’t know how to express herself. And how many tantrums were a result of her feeling like she wasn’t being trusted to be independent and I hadn’t taken the time to look into it . Sometimes we get so caught up with our own problems and our own emotions that maybe we don’t take the time to consider our kids are going through things too . But for the first time as a mother I felt like I did my job that night I finally did what a mom is supposed to do . My way too close to eight year old but still my little baby taught me a lesson , what she did is made me better. I realized I can parent better if I stop being so hard on her and consider her feelings instead of being so worried that she’s behaving what I recognize to be bad behavior. I know as adults we tend to bottle things up and we tend to explode once we’ve had enough and why should we never consider they do the same ? And that’s on breaking generational trauma ! I hope my very hectic parenting ascension helped you have some food for thought if you too are dealing with an emotional child .