We've spent first four weeks talking about how changing our relationship with ourself and changing how we view the situations around us will help us to become less reactive and more responsive. And so now we want to talk about one more part that's really specific. It's starting to get even more into taking things from our relationship to ourself to how we interact with our kids. We want to talk about a way to take a moment before we just lose our minds.

We're going to stop. And there's one question that I want to ask you to ask yourself whenever this happens. And that question is, "Is this actually an emergency?"

What happens when we get angry

Because here's what happens: Our kid does some crazy thing, and we start to freak out and we have body chemistry changes going on too, so our cortisol jumps up, that's our stress hormone, our adrenaline jumps up, that's the fight or flight response, and so we feel like we either need to fight our kid (cue yelling) or run away from the situation (cue the wino mom jokes).

Of course, fighting our kids is not really going to help. So we need to take a moment to get out of that mindset before we keep moving on. So as an example, that happened a month or two ago: My 3 year old is a big snacker. She'll get into the pantry, she'll climb her little stool, and she'll find whatever she want and makes herself a bowl of cereal and eat it. Which would be fine I guess, except she always makes a huge mess.

And so for example, one morning we walk into the living room and there are just Cheerios, everywhere in the living room. It's just incredible how many Cheerios there are.

So of course, the immediate knee jerk reaction is to freak out and be like, "Oh my gosh, what am I going to do? There's all these Cheerios, I already have tons of laundry to do. I don't have time to vacuum this stupid cereal..." And then you just get really angry and then just have a bad rest of the day day after that, right? Like you're angry at the kid, you're angry at the situation, and you're just really high strung and stressed out.

How to short-circuit the emergency reaction

But the trick is to stop. Take a breath and ask yourself, "Is this an emergency?"

And when you really stop to think about it, let's be real. There's always Cheerios on the floor anyways, right? You just vacuum them up, it really doesn't take that long, and you move on with your day.

But it takes some presence of mind to remember that. So it's honestly very rare that we actually find ourselves in an emergency, short of like your kid running into the road in front of a car or something like that. It's almost never a thing. Even something that's really bad isn't necessarily an emergency, because it's not urgent. A quick reaction probably won't help.

So take a breath, ask yourself, "Is it an emergency?" Once you've got yourself into that calm state, then you can respond to a situation.

How to practice responding without urgency

Now the beautiful thing about kids is that they give you a chance to practice responding instead of reacting every day, probably multiple times a day. You have lots of chances to notice when your kids do something to make you mad. Take that chance to stop and ask yourself, "Is this an emergency?"

The answer is almost certainly "No." And so once you realize that the answer is no, you're going to respond to the situation instead of react.

Just a couple of examples: Say your kids are squabbling over a toy. Your knee-jerk reaction is to jump in, chew them out, and snatch the toy from Kid A to give it to Kid B to get Kid B to stop crying,

Instead, stop.

Think about what you're going to do before you jump in.

Or maybe, you're trying to get your baby or toddler to go to sleep and they just do it. And you're just getting so angry because you're thinking, "Oh my gosh, I just want 10 minutes to myself. This kid's never going to go to bed, I'm going to be stuck in this rocking chair forever."

Is that an emergency? No. Your child really will eventually sleep. In fact, if you stay calm, she'll probably go to sleep faster.

And of course that five o'clock hour you get home from work when everyone's losing their tiny minds. because they're really hangry. You're hangry too, but that's not an emergency. It just feels like an emergency.

Responding without urgency to things besides just your kids

And you can even use this same principle for things not related to your kids. So for example, if you work outside the home, if you get negative feedback at work, you may flip out and either be like, "Oh my gosh, I have to start staying there 80 hours a week to make sure I do what they want." Or you take the opposite tack: "Screw this job. I'm just going to quit."

Stop. Is the feedback you got an emergency? Probably not.

You can take some steps to respond, right? But you don't have to react.

Or maybe you have an argument with family member or your partner. Again, instead of like flipping out and yelling or making some sort of rash decision, stop. Ask yourself, "My partner's upset right now, I'm mad at my partner." Is that an emergency? No, we can work this out. It might take a little time, but we can work through this.

So use this principle, think about it.

Your homework: At least once a day, notice a time when you can use this principle of recognizing that the problem isn't an emergency. Any examples or concerns you need to work through? Check in with us in the Facebook Group.