One of the most crucial jobs that we have as parents, as I see it anyway, is to help our children learn to tolerate and manage their emotions. Do you know any adults who don't understand their own feelings? Any that have difficulty managing their temper or their sarcasm? How well do they do in their relationships? You get the idea.
Guess what our biggest obstacle to helping our children to learn to tolerate and manage their emotions is?
Correct!
Tolerating and managing our own emotions. Maybe it should give us a bit of empathy for our kids. Even having at least a couple of decades on them, it is still difficult, when we're honest with ourselves, to manage all the feelings that parenting and simply living in today's society brings, not to mention that simply being a human being brings.
Whether we're talking about a four year old, a twelve year old or a college sophomore, we have a lot more experience in life than our kids do. Try to imagine what it is like having the powerful sorts of emotions that we have at our worst moments, with a good deal fewer skills for managing them.
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