Moodiness. Ask any mom if they’ve ever experienced this with their kids, and you’ll likely receive a yes (with an eye roll to match). For those of us (including myself) who thought we had some time before the “moody years” arrived, we thought wrong.
I’ve had it pretty easy thus far. As a mom of three, I’ve managed to (luckily) bypass the infamous terrible twos and sleepless nights, so I guess it’s only fair that I pay my dues now. Mood swings are common, and we all have them occasionally. However, when our children experience them, they can overwhelm us, especially when there is no rhyme or reason for where they come from or how to make them stop.
We hear it all the time about the infamous teenage years, where hormones start racing, and things seem to shift overnight. As moms, we instinctively expect this and do our best to prepare for the windfall of emotions that await us. Some of us have an old-school collection of Chicken Noodle for the Soul books that we break out occasionally to stay ahead of the game. Yes, they are a bit dated, but the content is unmatched regarding parenting!
Motherhood contains the good, the bad, and the ugly. Moodiness is no exception! My rude awakening came when my son turned eleven, and it’s been an emotional roller coaster ever since.
Indeed, you can’t put an age to the stages our kids go through, but most of us may not anticipate this until the middle school years. For me, this whirlwind showed up one day out of nowhere and has stuck around like a bad cold ever since. One minute, my son played video games, and the next, he was in the kitchen complaining that there was nothing to eat (standing in front of an open fridge stocked with food). Before I could speak, he shut the door and stormed out of the kitchen disgruntled.
I was puzzled but chalked it up to a game of Fortnite gone bad and went on with my night. Later, while getting the kids ready for bed, my son decided to boycott brushing his teeth. I didn’t think anything of it until the following morning when he went on a tangent about how I was too strict and that he should reserve the right to make his own choices regarding hygiene.
From then on, I found myself squabbling with him about things that never seemed to be an issue before, and then it hit me: this would not go away anytime soon and would probably linger for a lot longer than I wanted.
Not long after my son developed a love for complaining about anything and everything under the sun, his little sisters joined the fun. To put it all into perspective, kids change daily regarding their likes, dislikes, habits, wants, clothing, and food preferences.
The key is to help them through this transitional period with an open mind. A growth spurt may be the culprit if you’ve searched high and low for answers. They come out of nowhere, and from what I can tell you from my experience, it’s best to disregard the baggage that comes with it, which will most likely leave you feeling like you’re in the eye of a tornado.
That’s not to say we moms should ignore bad behavior, but feeding into the outbursts and tantrums may not be the best way to go about it. These things usually need to run their course, but there are ways to diffuse the situation and change the route of action.
If you’re one of those moms lucky enough to have your child openly express their reasons for distress, you can devise a game plan together about what triggers your child. We may still rely on a guessing game until our little ones come around. No matter which, acknowledging the behavior and attempting to work through it is far better than ignoring it and letting it get out of control.
These scenarios can be extremely triggering for us moms, bringing out our moody side. For instance, imagine buying four pairs of the same leggings in different colors because your daughter wears them every day and refuses to change them up. Then, come to find out, she wakes up one morning hating the leggings and misses the bus because she has nothing to wear. That’s the irony of it all, we try our best to fix the problem before it even comes to fruition, and it backfires on us tenfold.
However, the problem should never be bigger than the solution. You will have days when you feel out of control and down on yourself because you are doing something wrong. We all feel like that occasionally, and it’s completely normal. Everything passes with time.
