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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]1. You need to try harder to not lose your cool. I KNOW how difficult this is. I promise, I do. I have a child who I think was harder than yours. I'm naturally an anxious, hot-tempered, impulsive, loud person, and learning to stay calm in the midst of DD's storms was the hardest thing I have ever done in my life. But I did it. If you want to know how I can get into that.

2. I would parent her as though she does have ADHD even though she doesn't have it. My oldest has ADHD (and she is on the spectrum and has anxiety) and getting really into parenting her as a neurodivergent kid was so helpful. Other parenting techniques don't work on her. [/quote]

Op - how did you learn to keep your cool? I sincerely try and for most of the time I do! It’s the big outbursts that cause the most problems.

I listen to podcasts about parenting (thanks to the pp who suggested the podcast. Just started it). I also talk with her therapist regularly to come up with ideas and strategies to help her. [/quote]

It really sounds like you're on the right track! What I did was take a very proactive approach. I put myself first whenever I could. I made time to exercise, cut back on my work hours, I prioritized sleep, I made sure I was never too hungry, and spent 10-30 minutes a day doing journaling and therapy-type stuff. And I read a lot of Brene Brown. It's just all that basic self-care that we know we are supposed to do but is often really difficult. I did a lot of work to learn to recognize when I was losing control and excused myself before that happened. I spent a good amount of time in the bathroom. :)

I cut myself a lot of slack when it came to important but not vital aspects of parenting, like "Kids eat in color" advice and minimal screen time (I tried to find the sweet spot between enough screen time that would keep me from losing my s**t and so much that they the kids would lose the ability to emotionally regulate). There are a lot of things we can do as parents that are good but not worth it if it comes at the cost of our ability to regulate our emotions.

I remember really hating this because it was so unfair that I had to be this super-parent in order for our household to be able to function at a basic level. I cried a lot. But I did get used to it, and having the ability to emotionally regulate has been really great for lots of aspects of my life. [/quote]

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