Your Children are Evil! Evil, I Tell You! Naw, just kidding… but they are trying to manipulate you.

Listen, I have been doing it right in some ways and wrong in some ways.

As a kid, my feelings weren’t a priority. You deal with it, suck it up, and move on. The problem was, I was terrible at dealing with it, sucking it up, and moving on. I think I might have sometimes I needed someone to give me a good, long hug and let me cry or just let me be mad for a while. Really mad. Let me hate my parents for a bit. Not always feel like they were mad at me for having feelings of being upset. I feel like that should be illegal.

Anyway, in some ways, I’m proud of how I’m parenting my kids and letting them feel their feelings and giving them space and all that… but, I’ve swung the pendulum so far in the opposite direction that the kids now use this against me to manipulate my heart-strings and get what they want. In the quest for being understanding and flexible, I’ve been turned into someone that gets bulldozed over by my emotionally manipulative kids… and I know I need to end it, but it’s really, really, really hard for me.

Last night, my daughter wanted to play a game late in the evening after our family had already spent quite a lot of time together. Earlier in the day I guess I had said I would play it with her, but, as things sometimes do, plans changed. And yes, I know I know all the things about not changing the plans on your kids, but guess what? Sometimes, it happens.

I let her know that I was sorry and we wouldn’t be able to play since it was already getting so late, but assured her that tomorrow morning we could play the game. She screamed, cried, and freaked out, but I had already made the decision that even though I had made a mistake with telling her earlier that we’d be able to play the game, I was making the right call by not making a late night even later and dealing with the repercussions the next morning. I knew she would try to get her way, but even though I understood her point of view and even empathized with it, I was going to stick with my instinct.

Well, she let me know that she would never in her life be caught dead playing a game with me ever again and she hated me. She was pulling out all the stops. Screaming, yelling. I let her know that I was sorry it didn't work out the way we’d planned and calmly let her know that I hoped that wasn’t true.

When I left the room, I was exhausted, anxious, and sad. Honestly, I copied in the only way I knew how with the feelings it brought up: I ate a bowl of M&M’s and purged. And I thought, woah. Maybe all the times that I was making my kids feel more comfortable with their emotions, I was really just readjusting what was going on because I couldn’t handle the negative emotions that having kids that were angry with me would bring. I don’t even know what to do with them.

Tonight, we played the board game. Twice. We had a lot of laughs. Then suddenly, when I said it was time to go to bed she went on a huge tangent which is probably private to her so I won’t mention. But it was very, very over the top and manipulative. (She’s my expert at manipulating). This time, it was easy to spot, and therefore easy to stay regulated myself. I calmly let her know that if she didn’t go upstairs and get ready for bed she would be doing all the laundry in the morning.

She went. She hates me. But, I’m okay. Today it feels okay.

I think I need therapy or something because I am definitely no good at figuring this all out and dealing with negative feelings and stress. I don’t think I can do it on my own.

I don’t really know how (or if!) anyone really does.