How Do I Not Lose My Cool as a Parent?

0:00 Honestly, it's such good advice. Cuz I feel like I've been like a ticking time bomb. How do I just hold my patience and like not lose it? Yeah. And like how do you keep your peace? So first of all, nobody has endless patience. And I think it's especially us women, we've been kind of trained to just keep the peace, always be patient, but all that sets us up to do is ignore low levels of our own needs or annoyance, and then it sets us up to explode and feel guilty about it after.

0:26 Now, if people are around and you notice, for example, I need to be alone. I need my visitors to leave. If your next thought is, "Oh, it's probably not a big deal." Honestly, it is a big deal cuz if you wait another half an hour and then, I'm making it up, your great aunt says something annoying, you're going to lose it and it's not because of the comment, it's actually cuz you wanted to be alone a half an hour ago. So much of the core job when we're a parent is knowing, I need to speak up for my limits earlier than I think so I don't explode, and I need to get ready for other people to be a little upset about it. Yeah. It's like people will say to me, "Why am I fine until I explode?"

1:03 Nobody's fine until you explode. It just means something's happened where we've ignored level one, level two, level three, level four, level five, and then we're at level 10. Right. And it all comes out.