Ok, so if you know me and you know Zane, you know about "meltdowns." Zane is very sensitive, persistent, determined, energetic, extremely intelligent, easily frustrated, etc. When you combine all of those, you get a great smart fun-loving crazy kid - most of the time. But when Zane has had enough, you know it. And so does everyone else within a 10 mile radius. Fortunately for us, at 3 years old now, we have figured out how and when to prevent most of the meltdowns and "losing it". We protect those "meltdown tip-offs" with our lives. Unfortunately, there are times, when you just can't avoid it. Today was one of those days.
We had to run some errands today, which on a good day for Zane, he can handle going to about 3 places a day. Today was NOT a good day. We went to 4 stores. Add to that a birthday party at the swimming pool (his favorite place) to go to this evening. Of course, we didn't want to keep him from that. He was tired, he had had enough today, we knew we would be lucky if we escaped the meltdown. At least the meltdown came after the birthday party - when we were leaving. Add to that, the fact that we were already about 30 min. late for bedtime (NEVER A GOOD IDEA-one of those meltdown tip-offs).
Breakdown of the hour immediately following the birthday party:
-10 min. to get him in the car
-10 min. of a screaming, yelling, kicking, mommy holding zane's seatbelt so he can't get out of his seat, ride home.
-10 min. to get him in the house from the car/garage.
-30 min. of "mommy rage", some "daddy rage", struggle to get in PJ's, destructo man in the bedroom (that's Zane throwing every single thing he can get his hands on at the wall or on the floor- mainly every book in his bookcase), a whole bag of pretzels on the kitchen floor, MELTDOWN.
Immediately Post-Meltdown (A very "touchy" place-not a good time to try to get him to do anything yet):
Zane calmed down enough to sit on my lap, and I was able to talk to him about what was going on. I told him to look at me (which he wouldn't of course) and asked him if he thought I looked or sounded happy. He said "no, you happy". I said , "No, I'm not happy, I'm very sad and very very angry. I'm so angry that I want to scream and yell at the top of my lungs. Why do you think I'm so angry? It makes me so angry when you throw pretzels on the floor. What do you think you could do so that I'm not angry anymore?" He said "Pick up the pretzels." And proceeded to pick up the pretzels. Yes, he really really did that. All on his own. When he came back, I said "Thank you, that's making me feel a little better but I'm still angry. It makes me really angry when you don't get on your pajamas when I ask you to. What do you think you could do so that I wouldn't be angry about that anymore?" He went straight into his room, and brought me the PJ's he had on just a moment ago, taken off and thrown in his room. Can you believe this is my 3 year old? Anyways, that same conversation went on a couple more times, and he was able to get right into his bed, and fell asleep within minutes. He got lots of loves and kisses from us tonight!
I am stunned, amazed, joyous, but most of all, as Zane would say, "I happy."
