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[quote=Anonymous]One of the surprises of parenting is how much it has made me realize about my own childhood. Just stuff I'd never really thought about before has become so obvious.

I have a toddler, going through the phase of learning how to handle big emotions. Something I learned early on in the process is that when she melts down, one of the best things I can do is stay calm. Some of the parenting resources I look at call this "being their calm." The idea being that they don't know how to manage feelings like frustration or disappointment yet, but if you can model calmness, it helps them process those feelings without always becoming angry or screaming and crying.

This was an epiphany for me. I don't find it hard to model calm for my kid, and it's actually really help deal with the toddler meltdowns. But it's made me realize that no one modeled calm for me as a child. They modeled irritation or rage, or they just ignored me when I was upset. As a result, I've struggled as an adult with managing the same emotions my toddler is now working on, and definitely have bad habits of getting angry, irritable, or simply ignoring my own feelings. Helping my toddler has actually helped me figure this out and I'm sort of amazed I made it through this much of my life without these skills.

Anyone else realized stuff like this via your kids and learning how to parent them? I honestly don't think I would have realized any of this stuff if I hadn't had a kid.[/quote]

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