emotional regulation

Momdate Review: Rage Room

| Patti Webb

Yay! New blog feature.

We’ve written extensively on PPD and how important it is for moms to take time for themselves. This recharges our social battery and keeps us balanced, so our entire lives aren’t completely ruled by our kids.

Looking forward, I came across a teen parenting account that said that one of the reasons teens stop looking to their parents for advice and quality time is because their parents aren’t fun. During high school, my parents never really had friends. They would work, make dinner, and watch something on the couch…every…damn…night. I love an introverted bed rot, but seriously no other people anywhere in the radar? Not even a best friend that I’ve ever heard of?

I feel like most of the parents I appreciated growing up were those that had their own social lives; they played more roles than just being a parent or an employee. They had interests and hobbies and would go out for girls nights. Their personal schedules were just as involved as their kids’. Overall, I feel like their homes were just lighter; and consequently, their villages were bigger.

So, Mary and I would like to propose a trade. We will exchange two playdate reviews, for two Momdate reviews. We love doing fun stuff with our kids, but we’d also like to try out some fun, new things that are a little more age-appropriate for us.

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Mommie Dearest

| Mary Stoffel, MOT, OTR/L

NO WIRE HANGERS, EVER! (Mommie Dearest, 1981)

The classic story of a mother off the rails, Mommie Dearest recounts the parenting years of Golden Age Hollywood actress Joan Crawford and her demanding, irrational behavior towards her two adopted children. Sure, it’s campy, but it doesn’t feel that far off when we have our own bouts with mom rage.

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Post-Holiday Hangover

| Mary Stoffel, MOT, OTR/L

The glimmer and glow of the holiday season has seemingly come to an end.  The lights and decorations go back in their boxes, the tree is put away (or finds its new purpose as mulch), and the joy of opening presents will need to wait until the next birthday or holiday event. Although most of us are just fine with the holiday season ending and look forward to going back to the usual, some of us, especially kiddos, struggle with the shift.

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Child(ish) Reads for Kids: Emotional Regulation

| Patti Webb

For the last two weeks, we’ve been talking about emotional regulation and how we can model and assist our kids to be more mindful in tough situations. In this episode of Childish Reads, we wanted to flip the script and pick books for kids to help with this type of regulation at early ages.

Last week, Mary and I hopped down to Barnes and Noble to find some new and classic kids books to help lay the foundation for emotional recognition and processing.

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Cheer Up, Emo Kid…

| Patti Webb

A couple weeks ago, my toddlers where downstairs in their playroom. We were just hanging out after snack, and my daughter Aeris decided to play with a set of Leapfrog building blocks, similar to Duplo.

Aeris is much more independent compared to her sister, and is very focused on what she wants to do with her toys. In this case, she wanted to take all the single blocks and build one tall, skinny tower.

She had about four blocks left when her tower started to bow and snap. She tried reassembling it but once it got too tall, it wouldn’t stay upright. She is only about 3′ tall, and she could not keep a hand on the tower and attach the last few blocks to the top at the same time.

I could see her frustration every time the tower fell. She was getting red in the face, she was slamming down blocks trying to get them to fasten tighter, and she was refusing to let her sister help her. More importantly, she hated that her vision of what she wanted to do wasn’t working.

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