Mommy Throws a Fit

Wednesdays are spent in town with M and her three kids. We've scheduled our various lessons and errands for Wednesday so we can carpool. Which is great in theory, but sometimes not so pleasant in practice.

Our children are together nearly every day. There is a familiarity that comes with spending so much time together. It's not always pretty.

BW has been having problems lately with his tone of voice, being snippy, being moody, not wanting to share, not wanting to cooperate. Or should I say we've been having problems with these things - he seems to be quite happy with the way he's behaving.

Yesterday was more of the same - nothing too horrible, but enough to require yet another conversation about how I feel when he's talking to me in a way that's not very nice, about how that makes his friends feel, about how it leads to people treating you in a way that's not so nice, about how we should always try to treat people with respect and courtesy.

We had our talk, I told him he needed to stay home instead of going out to play with his friends, and then proceeded to deal with several other irritating situations: the new dog peed on the floor again, the bread machine was giving me grief because I keep turning it off wrong, and BW had a few mini-melt downs over various things. All of this happened within about 30 minutes of arriving home.

Needless to say, I finally lost my temper when BW had his third mini-melt down. And I yelled. Loudly. And hurt his feelings. He ran off to his room crying, threw himself down on his bed and hid under his blankets. I figured we both needed a few minutes to cool down. When I went in to talk to him, he was sound asleep. At 6:30. With no dinner, no pajamas, no teeth brushing, no one-last-potty-before-bed.

He slept through the night. I had a night of peace and quiet, and he had a night of much needed sleep. I do feel slightly guilty - I let my upset child go to bed crying with no dinner. But I'm OK with it. I'm justifying it by telling myself that he obviously needed the sleep. And this morning I apologized for losing my temper and yelling. That's one thing I don't really like about myself - I am impatient and get a little loud when worked up about something. I don't always yell, but my voice is definitely louder than it needs to be in some situations. I'm working on it.

But I'm wondering if I should be feeling worse about the whole thing. Is it wrong that I didn't wake him up for dinner? That I happily curled up in bed and caught up on 30 Rock and My Family? That I was happy to not have to deal with him?

So basically, I'm feeling guilty for not feeling more guilty. Nice.