DON’T YELL AT YOUR KIDS BEFORE SCHOOL HERE’S WHY
Children have a mental and emotional capacity as well. (I’m just the messenger) Watching my kids grow has made me realize something, kids experience that same feelings and mental setbacks just like adults. Kids get depressed, kids have anxiety and kids could have PTSD, too. See, the older generation seem to feel like kids do not experience any of this and when they show signs of feeling those feelings, they are made out to be invalid or unacceptable. They are denied not only the space to be able to have a bad day, they also do not get the comfort nor help that they actually need.
Imagine waking up in the am to get your child ready for school. You know it takes them at least 30 minutes just to “wake up” so you start waking them up an hour and a half early. All while you are waking them up, they are moving slow, stalling, and probably even trying to play sick. Hardly ever do they actually make it to school in time for breakfast. You see kids approaching your child as he/she is walking in the building however, he/she just ignores them. When you ask them why they ignored the kids, they simply say because they didn’t feel like talking.
Parent Teacher Conference comes and you go. You ask the teacher about your child’s behavior and they inform you how your child does not participate nor complete work. Most of the time he/she is sleep. They don’t respond when called on. They don’t ask for help. They may start on the work but will simply give up.
Now let’s take this scenario; You have to constantly tell your child to go to bed which some nights they never go to sleep. You have to wake them up an hour and a half because you know they get distracted and sometimes may even have a meltdown about something. When you wake them up, they are asking for breakfast, asking about their Doctor’s appointment that’s in two weeks. They see that their tooth is loose so they want you to take it out NOW so that they won’t lose it. After you convince them that the tooth is okay, you have to fight with them about what to wear and how to wear their hair because they, “Don’t want the kids to bully them.” They finally get dressed but their clothes are either on backwards or inside out. You leave out on time but have to turn back because they left something. They jump out the car at school forgetting their bookbag again. They approach a child whom they are soooo excited to see that they jump on them for a hug.
You go to Parent Teacher Conference and the teacher informs you that your child is very disruptive. They talk a lot. They don’t finish their work because they can’t stay focused. They ask to go to the bathroom every 5 minutes. They have to be reminded constantly of classroom rules. And sometimes, they fall asleep while the teacher is teaching.
Your kid can be hyper or severely withdrawn. This could be from anxiety or depression or both. It’s not because they are bad or defiant. They may have something actually going on in their brains that is making them behave in these ways. Most adults can’t manage their depression or anxiety by themselves so, how could we expect kids to when they can’t even voice what is going on? Not only can they not tell you what’s going on, even if they could, their parents may invalidate their feelings. Did you know that kids don’t develop the capacity to retain things in their short term memory until the ages of 3–5? Yea, so when you have to tell your 5 year old to sit down a 100 times in five minutes, It is not because they are bad or don’t listen to you, they forget that you told them to sit down. This is one of the reasons why I don’t whoop my children. Yea I get tired of repeating myself however, I am forgetful my damn self and I’m supposed to have a well developed brain that is capable of recalling things in my long-term and short-term memory bank, but that is not the case. So, how can I hold my kids accountable to remember things when they have not fully developed that part of the brain to do that? It is unfair to them. A lot of times, they don’t even know why they are getting hit because they forgot!!!!But yea, denying kids the proper space to have bad days and invalidating their feelings breeds dysfunctional adults. See, a lot of adults feel that kids nowadays are too sensitive when in fact, I think they are stronger than any generation in some aspects. Why do I say this? Because, our kids today are way more vocal about their feelings. Most of us and our parents, and their parents, were not allowed to have bad days. We could cry because we couldn’t put our shoes on (Yea some days kids’ brains glitch and they can forget how to do a task they have been doing for years). We weren’t allowed to spill milk by accident. We weren’t allowed to wet the bed in our sleep.
We couldn’t tell our parents that we were depressed or felt anxious/nervous/scared of something. In turn, some of us resent our parents, are hypersexual, drug addicts, alcoholics, timid/docile, abusive, comfort eaters and they/we struggle with relationships because we don’t know how to properly process and handle our emotions let a lone the emotions of others. THIS IS EXTREMELY TRUE WITH HOW SOCIETY HANDLES OUR MEN AND THEIR EMOTIONS. We were sensitive too at one point. We were just misinformed about our feelings. We need to be more mindful of our children’s mental health because they are our future. Let’s stop trying to stunt their emotional and mental growth. Let’s learn with our children, how to properly process and handle our emotional and mental health for ourselves and for others.
