8½ Tips for How to Avoid a Mommy Meltdown

1. Buy a good set of headphones

…and listen to uplifting music. (Did you think I was going to say drown out your kids?) Music is one of the quickest way I know to zap yourself out of a moment. So when you’re kids are spitting their favorite food in direct direction of your face or wailing about who hit who first, pop in headphones and change that crazy chaos into a music video. Everything set to music always looks better.

2. Now yous can’t leave

Whenever I start to feel overwhelmed because one is running with scissors and the other is climbing furniture, I contain.  It’s like that scene in A Bronx Tale when Chazz Palminteri gives the biker gang a chance to leave and they don’t so he locks the door and says, “Now yous can’t leave.” Everyone into one room. Close the door. No one leaves. I may not be the mafia but I can be just as scary.

3. The Moonstruck Smack.

To reference another movie, sometimes you need a good smack in the face… your own face, of course. When First Little was itty-bitty, she was nearly impossible to put down for a nap. We would walk her, sing to her, bounce her, airplane hummmm her. And after all that, she’d finally fall asleep… for 15 stinking minutes. One day, Husband, who is the patient parent admitted to being so frustrated that he smacked himself.  In. The. Face. You don’t have to actually smack yourself out of it but maybe step into another room and give yourself a timeout or scream into a pillow.

4. Monkey see…

If you’ve never shown your kid what they look like when they’re losing their mind – you should. Grab a phone and selfie that craziness and see how quickly they entertain themselves by their own lunacy.  This one can sometimes back fire but usually they can’t help but laugh at how ridiculous they look.

5. Take turns. 

Wednesday nights are Husbands ultimate frisbee nights. One Thursday a month is wine night with girlfriends. Sometimes I’m utterly exhausted and want to drink wine at home and guilty binge watch Keeping Up with the Kardashians. Don’t do it. Don’t skip those things. No matter how tired you are, you need to get out and socialize with people taller than 2 feet.

6. What’s that saying? “A glass a day keeps the doctor away…”

Look, I know there’s lots of negativity going around these days about wine moms and I won’t be adding to that. I’m not saying that you need wine to parent. I’m not saying that you should pop open a bottle every night. I just feel fine with having wine.

7. the laughing game.

In college a close friend would start the laughing game when we were out. It starts by just laughing. Yes. You all just force yourself to laugh – a big, fake, hearty laugh. No jokes. No tickling. Just laugh. The funny thing is that eventually you are all legitimately, full-belly, uncontrollably laughing. It never didn’t work. So at those times you’re kids are driving you bonkers, just start laughing and remember this will pass. The moon will set, the sun will rise, and your kids will turn back into human form where a werewolf once stood.

REMEMBER — and this is a hard one

8. what they see is what they will eventually do.

I remember when the First Little learned she could climb. She would climb on top of the coffee table and I would place her on the floor. She’d climb back up and I’d put her back down. On and won this went. I finally screamed. “STOP IT! Stooooop it!!” She looked back at me and yelled, “TOP IT! Tooooop it!!” She didn’t remember the 57 times I patiently carried her off the table, all she remembered was my screaming. It isn’t fair, I know; I never said they played fair. But what I realized in that moment (and so many moments since) was that what they see is what they will learn and what they will do. So keep that in mind when you’re about to unleash holy hell.

8½. If all else fails, put a paper bag over your head

(cited from “Self-Respect” an essay by Joan Didion.) “It was once suggested to me that as an antidote to crying, I put my head in a paper bag.”

So… there’s always that…

P.S. How I lost the family bed war and gift ideas for moms who need a pick me up