166: The meltdown over a football card…

Becky Jennings (0:00)

Welcome to ResponseABLE Parenting, the podcast that shows you how to parent in alignment to your emotions, needs, and goals versus your programming, bad advice, and let's face it, outdated strategies that just don't work.

Becky Jennings (0:12)

You'll get in the trenches support on nervous system and emotional regulation, critical mindset shifts, stronger communication strategies, and more.

Becky Jennings (0:20)

In this podcast, you'll gain transformational tools that take you from reacting to every frustration to responding with clarity, regulation, and finally setting the example you desire for your kids.

Becky Jennings (0:31)

I'm Becky Jennings, your new parenting coach, and this is the ResponseABLE Parenting Podcast. Let's get into it.

Becky Jennings (0:37)

Hello, everyone. Welcome back to another episode. Thank you so much. I just want to give a quick shout out. Thank you so much for all of the messages. I feel like there's been, I don't know if people have just discovered my podcast or what, but I've just been getting a lot of really positive, kind comments from families saying, how do you know so much about me? Feels like you've installed video cameras in our house. Like this is crazy how well you understand what's going on in my house. So I just want to say thank you so much for these messages because I feel like I've just been sharing this stuff for a long time and it just feels so nice to be connecting with you all. So thank you. This is really exciting. And no, I don't have video cameras in your house. This is just, I'm in the trenches too, right? So thank you so much for being here. I'm actually going to share an in the trenches story with you today.

And it's both light hearted, but it's also something that I feel like is really one of those moments that we can get tripped up and we can just kind of gloss over. And for the sake of the fact that we're rushing, we just kind of maybe don't see that this is a pattern that we're running into. And we could probably be addressing it in a totally different way. Let's just paint the scene. It's morning. We've done the breakfast routine. We're trying to find shoes, trying to find folders and backpacks. And we all know what this looks like. We have that three to five minute window where we're either gonna be good on time or now we're gonna be pushing time and maybe even late. So I had to get to school even earlier because I was gonna be helping out at the front for the PTA that morning. And I was more motivated, let's just say, to leave the house than my son was. That is the most generous interpretation I probably could have ever spun on that one. But I was very ready.

He has his bag being packed with all of the things. I mean, all of the things. How many journals can one child take to school? I think he had four in his backpack. We have Post-It notes because he's doing little art projects with his Post-It notes at recess and after school. And then he had the journals and then he had a fidget and we just got a Tamagotchi, which is really fun.

Old-school Tamagotchi. And so he was just filling his backpack to the brim. And by the way, his backpack really only fits his lunch pail, his homework and his water. I'm not really sure where all this other stuff was fitting. And he's basically walking around with this 50 pound backpack. He's walking at like a 90 degree angle these days. I mean, it's the most absurd thing. I digress.

We get into the car. First of all, he's leaving shoelaces untied, almost trips and falls down our stairwell to go outside. He heaves his bag into the car, and I start to drive away, and he freaks out. Oh my gosh, I forgot my cards. Cards with the Pokemon cards and all the trading cards, and the baseball cards, and the football cards, and all this stuff. The previous week, he had brought his Pokemon cards to school, because they trade after school. It's a big thing. It's like a huge social event where everybody comes and brings their cards. Well, that previous week, he had walked away from his binder filled with Pokemon cards. A few kids had gone through them, pulled them all out. There was a pile of his cards, and then one, the one card that was probably worth a couple hundred bucks, ended up going missing. Good lesson to learn should not have brought cards worth any value to school, especially not after school, especially don't show it around, especially don't show it around with older kids. Anyways, he brought these cards to school, lot got damaged, several went missing, the really prized possession went missing. Nobody's been able to find it. It's been weeks now, it's gone. However, he freaks out. He's like, I need to bring my cards. I try to use logic. And why, why did I try to use logic? Because he is speaking in emotion, and I am speaking in logic, so we both don't hear each other in the moment. He's almost in tears because he's like, I need to trade my football cards. I need to trade, I need to go inside and get them. Now, I'm in that compressed time period, the compressed time period where I'm starting to see that we're inching away from being able to be there early enough so that I can greet the first families to do the PTA thing. And then I see that window quickly diminished and I'm seeing it go away and I'm starting to feel the lava chest in my body because, oh my gosh, here we go again. Here's another thing that you are going to do that is going to make things harder for me. I find myself catching myself on a regular basis wanting to say, the version of you changed so I feel better. You stop having a meltdown so I feel like this morning is easier. You stop having this emotional reaction so that we can get to school on time. We know what we're talking about. It took a Herculean amount of effort in my body to try to figure out why he was so upset. I will say, let's rewind a few steps back. My instinct was to say no immediately without understanding anything that was going on for him. My instinct was to not get curious. My instinct was to say, we have to go.