I was a teacher for over ten years. I stopped teaching when I got married and had kids.
Back in my teaching days, I had many parent-teacher conferences.
And I had many parent-teacher conferences where I’d tell a parent how quiet or well-behaved or respectful their son or daughter was and they would look at me and ask, “Are we talking about the same kid?”
I think we have all had that experience with at least one kid.
Our kid is perfect at school, but a total handful at home.
I have one of those.
A rule follower who would be mortified to ever get in trouble at school.
At home though, this kid is one of my most challenging.
Like really challenging.
If I ever told the teachers what this kid was like at home, there is no way in hell they would ever believe me.
This isn’t unusual.
Most kids do things at home they would never do at school.
They annoy siblings like it’s an Olympic sport and they talk back and they push buttons and test limits with abandon.
There are varying levels of deviation from that good behavior baseline.
But all kids are different at home than they are at school.
Any parent who has ever helped their child with homework has experienced this.
And any parent who has ever coached their own child on a sports team has lived this.
Coaching your own kid is much more challenging than coaching other peoples’ kids.
I know. I have coached swimming for over thirty years.
I have coached all of my own children.
Some have been easier to coach than others.
But there always comes a time when it is officially time to have someone else coach them.
The level of familiarity is just too high.
And the line between coach and parent just become too blurry for kids to see clearly.
Or for the parents to see clearly.
Or both.
This is why even most former athletes who competed at the elite level don’t coach their own kids.
It’s too hard. They don’t listen to you. They want you to be their parent.
Not their coach.
And you lose your goddamn mind.
This is where many parents find themselves right now.
It’s like you’ve been named head coach of your kid’s little league team with no warning — or option — and the last time you played baseball was when you were seven years old and hitting the ball off a tee.
Or you never even played tee ball at all.
You don’t know all the rules (or any of them) and you don’t know the terminology and your kid is really pissed because he loved his old coach.
Oh, and also your kid is now playing baseball alone without any of his teammates without any warning that any of this was going to happen.
Oh yeah, and in addition to this change, your child’s whole entire existence has also changed overnight.
Indefinitely.
What would your reaction be to this as an adult?
Oh wait… I know what it is.
You spend a billion hours on Facebook.
You start eating, drinking, and smoking everything you can get your hands on.
You stop taking care of yourself because you are just too stressed out.
You start watching meth-addicted, mullet-wearing, animal abusing wack jobs on Netflix to numb your brain to the bullshit that is going on in the world.
Our kids aren’t as emotionally evolved as we are.
They don’t know how to numb themselves with The Tiger King.
Instead, they act out.
They have epic meltdowns.
They rage cry.
They throw chairs and books and anything they can grab and hurl in your direction.
They tell you they hate you.
They overreact to stuff we think they shouldn’t be reacting that way to.
But the reality is we all are finding ourselves in a scenario we have no experience with.
There is indecision and uncertainty everywhere.
Almost all of our normal escapes have been stripped from us. And from our kids.
We are all in a very unfamiliar territory.
We are very uncomfortable.
It is really hard for a lot of kids to verbalize their discomfort.
And so they just lose their shit.
Our first week of mandatory distance learning was last week.
It was rough going.
Things got better as the week went on.
Yesterday we had a pretty good day.
And then today was like we traveled back in time to last Monday and day 1 of distance learning.
There were multiple level 10, Code Fucking Red meltdowns.
And there will be more.
And I just wanted to let you know that if your kid seems to be full of anger or extremely emotional, it’s okay.
It’s normal.
If your kid slammed the computer keyboard in a fit of distance learning rage today, I want to assure you, you are definitely not alone.
If papers were ripped or pencils were snapped, if chairs were knocked over, if expletives were spewed, or if the tears were plentiful, you also are definitely not alone.
It’s normal behavior.
You are also going to make it through this, and so will your kids.
Hang in there, Coach.
We might all be separated right now, but ultimately, we are all on the same, big, team.
That was my house yesterday, I’m dealing with my kids and my own emotions by eating all the food! Not optimal, but I’m giving myself a break. I still work out & go for walks daily but it’s just not cutting it these days. We’re all doing what we can to get by right now.
It’s so reassuring to read this. My kids have been acting out really badly. Anger, talking back, throwing things, arguing. I was beginning to think I’d done something to ruin my kids! How do you handle the outbursts, obviously punishment is not the answer?