How To Stay Calm When Your Children Push Every Button
Every day starts with the best of intentions: Today, I won’t lose my temper.
By the time you’ve already clocked up thousands of steps running up and down the stairs, gently encouraging the children to get out of bed, your patience is already wearing thin. You know that if they leave the house stressed and dysregulated, the rest of the day is unlikely to improve. But 9am arrives, they’re still in bed, and you’re painfully aware that another late arrival could mean a school attendance fine—something you can ill afford.
At that moment, it can feel as though the only way to get your children to cooperate is by raising your voice. And then, almost as quickly as it happens, the guilt arrives.
If this sounds familiar, it doesn’t mean you’re a bad parent or that you’ve somehow failed. More often than not, it’s a sign that your own nervous system has reached capacity.
In this blog, I want to explore why we lose our temper, what’s happening inside the body before we reach breaking point, and how simple nervous system regulation techniques, including breathwork, can help us respond differently when our children seem determined to push every button we have
Why We Lose Our Temper
A fairly typical school morning…
You’ve spent the best part of an hour climbing the stairs, gently encouraging the little darlings to put on their uniform so you can move on to the next stage: brushing teeth, finding shoes, locating the missing PE kit and persuading them that, yes, they really do have to leave the house.
Then 9am arrives…and they’re still in bed complaining that school is shit, the uniform is uncomfortable, they don’t want to go.
Meanwhile, the mind monkeys are reminding you that all these late arrivals are going to land you with a fine for the number of unauthorised absences and what a shit parent you are for not being able to get your children to school on time. Everyone else can manage this, why can’t you?
Somehow, despite everyone else’s emotions bouncing off the walls, you’re expected to remain a calm, regulated adult in the room. Eventually you get everyone out of the house, but none of that stress has actually gone anywhere. You’ve simply pushed it down because there wasn’t time to deal with it.
You arrive at work and there’s some catastrophe you must deal with. More stress, pushed down. Then you get a call from one of the schools; one of your children is truanting that lesson that they hate and if they don’t comply they’re going to be suspended for the hundredth time this year.
Another reminder from the mind monkeys that you’re clearly failing at parenting.
You get home and spend the afternoon helping everyone else regulate after their day whilst absorbing all of that emotion yourself. You get through preparing dinner for everyone; variants of different things for each person…because you have a house full of people who struggle with a variety of tastes and textures, but you do it because at least they’re eating. You finally sit down to catch up on the work you didn’t have time to do earlier, only to be interrupted by another argument, another appointment, another crisis.
One child winds the other up because they’re looking for a dopamine hit.
Somebody can’t find their favourite spoon.
The Wi-Fi drops and suddenly someone is screaming because they’ve been kicked out of a game at a critical point.
And that’s the moment you lose your shit.
Your Nervous System Keeps Score
At this point you’re in the peak of overwhelm, and you’re ready to explode. You still have work to do, and uniforms to clean, and that friend is waiting on a message. You can’t focus on any one thing because everything is demanding your attention, and you’re desperately trying to hold it all together.
Losing your temper was never about the Wi-Fi dropping out; it was everything that came before it.
Stress doesn’t disappear simply because the moment has passed. Most of us don’t have the time or allow ourselves the space to process it: we push it down because there are still lunches to make, meetings to attend and a hundred other things demanding our attention. Then another stressful thing happens. And another. Every rushed morning, every difficult phone call, every piece of emotional labour and every time you swallow your frustration because there simply isn’t time to deal with it adds another layer.
By the end of the day your nervous system isn’t reacting to a dropped internet connection; it’s reacting to the accumulated stress of everything that came before it.
That is why the smallest thing can suddenly feel big enough to tip you over the edge.
Dysregulation Isn’t A Character Flaw
If you find yourself snapping at your children, it doesn’t automatically mean you’re impatient, failing or a bad parent.
More often, it means your nervous system has reached capacity.
When that happens, the thinking part of the brain begins to take a back seat whilst the survival part takes over. That’s why shouting can feel almost automatic.
Later, when you’re calm again, the guilt creeps in:
“I shouldn’t have done that.”
“I’ve failed again.”
“I’m such a shit parent.”
But guilt has never regulated anybody’s nervous system. Self-compassion is much more likely, but this part often takes practice.
How To Catch Yourself Before You Lose Your Shit
When you notice yourself reaching that point where everything feels too much, you still have a choice. You can react, or you can recognise that you’re overwhelmed (which is really fucking difficult to do when you’ve been pushed into dysregulation!
One of the most powerful things you can say is:
“I need some space right now. I’m feeling really overwhelmed. I need to go calm myself down.”
It also shows your children that it’s okay to recognise when you’re overwhelmed and take a few minutes to calm yourself before coming back into the situation.
Leave the room if it’s safe. Go somewhere your nervous system can exhale.
Take yourself to a safe space. This could be your back against the bedroom door, the toilet, even sitting alone in the car for five minutes; wherever works for you. Put on some calming music. For me I like binaural beats but it’s whatever works for you. Then breathe.
A Simple Way To Calm Your Nervous System
This is why I love breathwork so much.
Not because breathing magically fixes parenting. I’m sad to report that this isn’t a breathing exercise on earth that guarantees you’ll never lose your shit or shout at someone ever again. However, slow, controlled breathing sends signals of safety to the nervous system.
One of my favourite techniques is Equal Breathing (also called Box Breathing): A structured breathing technique to reduce stress and improve focus.
How to do it:
- Get comfortable: sit or lie down
- Inhale for four counts.
- Hold your breath for four counts.
- Exhale for four counts.
- Hold for four before inhaling again.
Repeat for three to ten rounds.
Or this mindful body tense and release practice:
Tense, Release, Relax Progressive Muscle Relaxation: Tense and release different muscle groups from toes to head. Scrunch and release toes, calves, thighs, buttocks, core, hands, arms, shoulders, and face. Follow this with three deep inhales and exhales. Ideal for winding down before bed or anytime..
The aim isn’t perfection.
It’s giving your nervous system a chance to come back out of survival mode.
Building A Nervous System That Needs Less Firefighting
One of the biggest things that have helped me massively reduce my own full blown meltdowns, is taking preventative measures. It’s come from what I do every day to reduce the chances of reaching that point in the first place.
Learning what genuinely regulates me.
Building small moments of recovery into ordinary days. Setting up my life with the accommodations and practices that help me to hack my own happiness chemicals.
Making accommodations instead of expecting myself to cope with everything exactly the same way everyone else seems to.
This is also much of the work I do with clients.
Not creating perfect lives.
Creating lives that ask a little less of already overwhelmed nervous systems.
You Won’t Get It Right Every Time
Life is messy. Children are unpredictable and sometimes everything feels like too much. Stress happens. Parenting whilst carrying chronic stress, burnout or an overwhelmed nervous system is incredibly difficult, and there isn’t a perfect breathing exercise or parenting strategy that makes life suddenly easy.
The goal here isn’t perfection (it doesn’t exist!)
But if you can notice the build-up a little earlier than you did last month, recover a little more quickly than you did last year, and treat yourself with the same compassion you offer everybody else, then you’re already moving in the right direction.
The above are small, realistic ways to support your nervous system so you’re not constantly living on the edge of overwhelm. If you’d like a little more in-depth guidance, The Little Book of Breathing contains simple breathwork practices you can use throughout your day to help regulate your nervous system, whether you have two minutes in the bathroom or ten minutes before bed.
If you’re tired of wellness advice that feels impossible to implement, join my September waitlist. Together, we’ll explore practical ways to support your nervous system without the wanky woo bits.
Difficult days don’t define you as a parent. They simply remind you that you’re human.