Whinypaluza Wednesday: My Morning Meltdown

Hello everyone, happy Winey Palooza Wednesday! No need to whine, it's Winey Palooza Wednesday. Have some wine and join us on Winey Palooza Wednesday with the Green Family.

Ciao ciao, chicken!

Good singing! Uh-huh, thanks for coming without me even having to ask. That was some treatment. She's already gone. Peace out, Ella. Okay, let's put this down. I got it.

You got it.

How is everyone doing today? Happy Wednesday. Winey Palooza Wednesday.

Happy Winey Palooza Wednesday.

Um, it rained all day today and The good news is The Real Housewives was on all day.

That's what I love coming home to, is a Housewives marathon.

I actually didn't really watch. I usually don't. Listen, I usually don't watch TV. I don't watch a lot of TV. I really don't. But when I see that there's a Housewives marathon, I just leave the TV running and I get the episodes that we've already seen.

I could quote you the episode that was on when I got home.

You don't even watch some of them with me. He just likes to harass me. So anyways, let's talk about my topic this week.

Yes.

It's kind of exhausting.

You could do it.

So what I have realized through this process through the years is that we don't want to always talk about what, you know, what I'm doing right. That's kind of boring. If, if I'm doing things right every day, like, I don't want to bore you either. And trust me, I do not do things right all day, every day.

She doesn't. I mean, of course you do, honey.

You were quick to jump to that. Um, I screw up every day. I learn more every day, and I try to be A Better Me Every Day. And I feel like sometimes it's really hard to write about something and talk about something, but those tend to be the most helpful ones. So that is why I push myself to share this stuff, because that's my goal. I want you to know, um, you are not alone, that we all have issues like this. So I titled this My Morning Meltdown. I should have titled it Lily and my meltdown.

Might have been some contributing factors.

I— we went down together. So it was last Thursday, and Lily has been going to 9 o'clock camps a lot this summer, and she's actually been really pleasantly good about getting up and get— getting ready and going. And she's loved all of her camps. And most of the mornings went smoothly. Now this morning, Ella comes up to me and says, Mom— Ella was a junior counselor at Lily's camp. So Ella knew what was going on.

At Lily's Theater Camp.

At Lily's Theater Camp. Lily went to theater camp last week and had a wonderful time. So it's Thursday morning. And Ella says to me, Mom, Doesn't Lily have dress rehearsal today? I was like, oh crap, because what works with Lily, what works best for Lily and for me for our mornings to go smoothly is to be organized. So, if I had remembered that there was dress rehearsal, which I totally forgot, I would have had her leotard out. Like, we would have had everything out and ready to go. But I'm making lunches and Lily's upstairs looking for her leotard, which she can't find. Ella saves the day, brings in her leotard. It's too big, not good enough for Lily. Lily is very particular about clothes, very particular about makeup. Yes, my 8-year-old is particular about makeup. Very particular about her hair. You can't see if you're listening to this, but I'm pretending to shoot myself in the head.

For the radio play.

So anyways, I successfully get her to wear a tank top and shorts, which was their second choice if there was no leotard, and proceed to try to do her makeup to the best of my abilities. She fixed it, by the way, which was fine, and proceeded to do her hair to the best of my abilities, which she did take out. Now I know what you're thinking, You're thinking, why on earth did she take out her hair after I did it? Well, she didn't like it. I hear that all the time. It was too tight. I hear that all the time. And I do know that she gets headaches from her hairdos. So Ella likes to be early for camp. She was a counselor. She was supposed to get there early. And I felt terrible that I forgot about dress rehearsal and was gonna make Ella late. So Lily comes down the stairs taking her hair out, asking me to redo her hair, and Ella is like, oh, I gotta go. So it never goes well when you rush Lily. Never ever goes well. The issue is Lily doesn't like to be rushed. Ella likes to be early.

Bum bum bum.

That doesn't go well together. And Lily is so much more concerned with how she looks and if everything meets to her satisfaction, then she is to being on time for things. And if it wasn't affecting her sister, I wouldn't have cared. But here we are in the bathroom doing her hair for the second time, which she proceeded to take out and not like again.

Poor Rebecca trying to do the hairstyle for the third time.

So I'm like steaming So when my heart is racing, one of my triggers is the clock. The clock triggers me when I know that I need to get moving and get out. So I need to learn that my cue is when my heart starts to race and I'm like, I need to get away from her. I need to get away from her. I need to get space. I need to calm myself down because me in a calm state is what makes everything go smoother.

Amen to that.

So Lily is like, nope, this is not okay, you will fix this, blah blah blah, whatever else she was saying because all I was seeing was red at this point. And Ella is like watching this whole thing go down like, Mom, if I could read Ella's head, she was saying, Mom, just do anything to get this kid out the door because I have to go and please don't start fighting with her. I wish I would have listened to Ella, who wasn't talking, by the way.

That was a telepathic message for those of you watching at home.

And I wish I would have listened to myself, because a therapist lives in my head, and the therapist was like, take some calming breaths, it's gonna be okay, this isn't a big deal, you don't need to pick this fight, you don't need to win this, you don't need to be in control. Move it along. So the therapist was doing great. And you know what the mom said? Shut up. I am in charge and she will listen to me.

Didn't quite listen to your internal therapist.

I'm so upset with myself because it just took a nosedive because I wanted control. And Lily wants control. And yes, does Lily need to talk nicely to me? 100%. Does she need to be considerate of the fact that her sister needs to get to camp? Absolutely. All Lily cared about in that moment was that her hair looked good.

Hair had to be— no, not good, because the first 3 styles probably looked good. Had to be perfect.

So I do Lily's hair. I'm seeing red. I am telling her to get out of the bathroom. I know that I need space from her. She says no. She won't leave the bathroom. Now at this point, I needed to leave the bathroom. Okay, but I was like, this kid does not listen. I was like, listen to your mother. I kept saying to her, listen, be respectful. Not the time to be picking these battles and not the time to escalate her. When she's going up, I need to bring her down, which you and I talk about.

Yes, we do.

Because we need to bring each other down when one of us is escalating.

And by down, we mean de-escalate.

So if Seth is going up and he's pissed, yes, I need to not get pissed with him.

Yeah, that does not go well.

I need to stay calm and help him calm down.

Although usually it's usually the other way around. You're getting pissed and I'm not doing as good a job as I could be some of the time de-escalating you.

Hi, Melissa!

This says hello, Hopefuls.

Um, yes, honey, absolutely. Lily has a lot of me in her. Yes. Um, I think I can only imagine what my mother would have done to me.

I'm gonna say these kids have no, no idea. No idea.

So, okay, so anyways, I move Lily out of the bathroom. She falls to the floor crying, flails, flails. Lily is— Lily is so—

I—

so she is so upset and No, we were talking about you. She's so upset, she's crying hysterically at this point. She doesn't want me, obviously. So Ella is hugging her and calming her down, and Ella is thinking, oh my God, I need to leave, just get in the car. So I get Lily into the car— no, we get Lily into the car. She's upset, Ella's upset, I'm upset. I'm apologizing to Ella for making her late. Ella's worried that she's gonna get in trouble. I tell her, please tell the head of theater that this is all my fault and that you're late because of me. Well, I don't know that it was because of me, but I contributed. So we get to camp, Ella runs inside, she is late and running, and Lily is in the car crying. So I mean, breaking her being in charge did not make me feel good. It made me feel really bad. And I felt like I really screwed up. And I had an upset daughter who was late, an upset daughter who was crying. So parenthood. I calmed Lily down. And we started to talk about what happened. We didn't have time to get into it. She needed to go to camp. We talked more about it later. But let's talk about it because one of the best things we can do is to talk to our children, talk to our spouses. Okay, this went wrong. What went wrong and what do we want to do differently next time? And the goal is to always learn from it. So I also want us to teach our kids. I want my kids to know, like, I felt bad. Having remorse and apologizing and repairing the relationship is something we can teach them, because then when they do something wrong, they learn to have remorse and to repair what was done. So, so let's talk about Lily. It's hard to be human. You're doing a great job, y'all. Thank you for being vulnerable.

Thank you, Melissa.

Thanks, Melissa. I really hesitated because I don't want to upset Lily either sharing stuff. But we just had the conversation before this that when we share this stuff, we hope that it's helpful and we want you to know that we screw up too and we're all doing our best every day. We pick ourselves back up and we keep going and we try to do better. And I always tell people that we just need to keep practicing, practicing, practicing every day. And we still might screw up. So, what does Lily need to do differently? And then we will talk about what I need to do differently. So, Lily. Lily and I need to work on flexible thinking. This is something that a psychologist and I talked about. Rachel Bailey was on my podcast and we had a long conversation about Lily and flexible thinking and teaching her through, you know, role-playing, going over sequences, having her tell stories, having her be creative in her thinking. And we want— I want to get her to be less rigid, like her makeup needs to be this way, her hair needs to be this way, her outfit needs to look a certain way. Like, let's have some flexibility. Like, I can't find the shirt you want, let's find an option B.

Option M for meltdown.

I would say flexible thinking is like top on her list and we're working on it. Lily needs to be aware of the clock and we're going to talk about what I need to do, but like I can teach Lily, we want to teach them to do it so that we don't always have to do it, but Lily needs to learn to look at the clock and if she knows that Ella and I need her to be walking out the door at 8:30 every morning for school, then she needs to learn how to tell time, which I think she can. I mean, it's an easy clock. It doesn't even have— it doesn't even have the hands. So if it's 8:20, she needs to learn that she has 10 minutes. And yes, I need to give her warnings. That's something that a million therapists have told me. Transitions are hard for, for certain children of certain ages, of certain ages. So helping kids with transitions is like giving them warnings, like, you're going to go to bed in 10 minutes. Like start to wind down. You're gonna have to put the iPad away in a few minutes, like giving her warnings instead of being like, it's time to go. And then she's like frantic and like, don't rush me. We will continue to work on her coping skills because sometimes she's like, I need some space. I'm not in a resourceful state. I need to go upstairs for a few minutes. Like we will continue to work with her. And like I was trying to work with her on her breathing. And it wasn't going so well. Transitions are hard for this old child. I know, I know, we struggle with transitions too. And I try, I think that the best thing for me, I have found for myself, we have to find what works for ourselves, is I need to get up early so that I'm ready early. And I would rather be ready early than be like, frantic and rushing. Yep. Um, Lily will continue to look over sequences with me and tell me what she thinks she could do differently, and then I'll give her some suggestions, and Seth will give her some suggestions. And Ella had a suggestion for me. Ella said, Mom, sometimes you just need to let things go.

Out of the mouths of babes.

And I was like, Man, she just watched that whole sequence and that's her feedback. That was really good. My smart cookie. She said to me when I was putting her to bed last night, I had her read this blog because I wanted her to have some repair from the blog because she had to witness the whole thing go down. And she said, "It's like you were reading my mind." And she's like, I was like, why does she need to discipline her right now when we need to leave? So the last thing for Lily is to just know the morning routine. Know the— it's usually the morning. The morning is the hardest with her. Um, transitions are hard with her because, um, she knows what she wants, but she needs to know the routine, the expectations, the rules, and she needs to help us make our mornings easier. And I'm gonna bite my nails off thinking about school starting.

Please do not. So we paid good money for those nails.

What do I need to do differently? I need to have everything organized and laid out the night before. Like, Lily needs to know exactly what she's wearing. We need to start talking about how do you think you're going to wear your hair tomorrow. Seth is like, stop doing her hair, ponytail, and be done every day. I know I'm a guy, but I need to have clear rules and expectations, and I need to lay them out for her. This is what I expect every morning. I told you I need to do time warnings. Most important, I need to stay calm. I need to focus on my own state. If Lily is escalating, I need to stay steady, and I need to not go with her.

That applies in other places as well.

I can't even call in reinforcements because he's gonna already be at work. Bum bum bum.

Oh bummer, I'm sorry I'll miss that.

He's gonna run away.

Does Lily have a system in place to lay out clothes for Monday through Friday?

She— you know what, she lays out clothes every night before school. She doesn't lay out clothes like for the whole week. We're not that— I don't know that she would even be willing to do that because she likes to see how she feels. God save me, Melissa.

Oh my God, we appreciate all your participation.

Yes, yes.

You know what, thank you for making this a conversation.

I will ask her if she is willing to try that. That is an excellent—

the other question becomes, where do all those clothes get laid out?

Yes, there is— people have systems. I'm sure Melissa has a system. Like, I have seen things like with the slots, and it's like Monday through whatever, with all the official—

yeah, like, I thought this was just on the floor.

No, I'm not having clothes all over the floor. Like, she could use her desk maybe, but I'm sure Melissa has a system for homework. Yeah. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. She has to teach.

That's the reason we got the desk for school.

Okay, let me finish what I need to say.

Go ahead.

I love, I love your humor though. We needed your humor that morning.

I'm sorry I was at work.

You, you didn't want to be there. Um, I need to put myself in timeout. Mommy timeout is an excellent thing. We don't just need to put our kids in time. Yes, we need to put ourselves in timeout. Time out with—

you can't have wine if you're driving.

I can't have wine if I'm driving, and I'm always driving, so I don't drink. I really do not drink often because I am always driving. Okay. Um, yes, Lily and I getting space is like the biggest cure for when we're both heated.

Alissa says the hanging system is great. Wine glass.

Okay, she's, she's sending wine through the computer and she's got a hanging system. Okay, we're gonna talk, Melissa. Okay, I need to listen to the therapist in my head because the therapist knew exactly what to do and I told the therapist to shut up.

I might have experienced that once or twice.

Seth will even say to me What would you tell a client?

Which I've learned to stop doing because that pushes her buttons and gets her mad. Oh honey, I'm not supposed to point that out, that you're not using your therapy skills in the middle of a marital conflict.

I, I do not escalate. I do not. Sometimes I do.

Sometimes you're like, oh, I'm not saying that you're not using your skills, I'm just saying mentioning that makes you more mad.

Yeah, but sometimes you're like, oh, you're really problem solving, and sometimes you're like, where the hell did therapist go?

There's a master's in there somewhere.

Where is her master's degree? Hello? Okay, I really, really, really need to pick my battles with Lily. The biggest battle that I pick with her is safety. I, I told her I don't negotiate with safety stuff. Other stuff, maybe I will negotiate. And I have to pick my battles. She is independent. Fiercely, fiercely independent, fiercely feisty. I hope that that takes her far in life. Yes, I hope that she meets a wonderful, calm, easygoing man. You know, I, I ended my blog with talking about the fact that we're all imperfect, and I just want to end with that. We will, we will never achieve achieve perfection, if we expect perfection from our kids or our spouse or ourselves, we're setting us up. We're setting ourselves up to be upset every single day. So I don't expect myself to be perfect, but I expect myself to work on my mistakes and to do my best to do better next time. I can't promise you you will never hear about another conflict between Lilly and I.

I'm sure you will.

But I will try to handle it better.

She's 8 going on 18. We got 10 more years for her to still stay 18 the whole time.

Oh my goodness. She is— she is wonderful. Giving me wonderful parenting skills.

There you go. Excellent material for your show.

When you think that you are patient, your child will tell you to be more patient.

Yes.

When you think that you are calm, your child will tell you you need to be calmer.

Or we'll do something that makes you need to be calmer.

Well, yes, exactly. Isaac tells me that perfect is not a thing. Just being the best person you can be is perfect.

That's awesome.

I love that so much. I— someone asked me, one of my friends asked me, like, the goal in life. She was like, like, what is the— we were having a conversation. I've known her since I was 14. It was just one of our many conversations. Over the last 31 years. And it was just be the best version of you that you can be and keep striving for that. And I cannot end without telling you about my fabulous friend Kimberly Swiatek. She is on my podcast this Friday and she got divorced and the title of the podcast is Divorce My Way. And she decided that she wanted her divorce to go differently than most divorces. And society tells us the crazy stories about divorce. We hear about the horrendous fights and how tumultuous the whole process is, and she wanted it to go differently. And I commend her for how she has handled her divorce with so much grace and dignity. Like, I couldn't do it.

You're not getting divorced.

I never will.

You don't have a choice.

I will never deal with it.

You're stuck with me.

He is totally stuck with me. Never want to deal with it. But whether you are married, separated, getting divorced, or divorced, I promise you Kimberly will teach you something. I loved talking to her. I am sad to tell you that we talked for 30 minutes after I stopped recording, and I was like, darn it, you could have had an hour show. Well, or we could have split it up. So we did discuss that there may be a part 2 because she had so many other fabulous things to say, and I'm so glad that things are going well for her, and I hope you will listen and enjoy it. And I also wanted to tell you something funny. My daughter's one And I did join TikTok. I'm at whinypluzaMom on TikTok, so please come find me and help me learn TikTok.

Yes, that's been interesting. Every— every time she's not— tries to go on, uh, how do I do this? I'm like, I don't know. I literally have to come help her. They're her tech support.

I don't know how to do anything. I'm learning. It's fun. It's something different because I needed more social media to work on.

You did.

So thank you for joining us. Um, Lily, are you anywhere near here? Come and sing us out. Joette, Joette, are you on TikTok? Come and join me, everyone. Join me on—

what are some of the videos you're doing? You're doing some cool tips on TikTok. TikTok tips.

I like that. So my daughter suggested daily tips. I didn't know. Yes, you did. Um, there will be tips. Don't knock over my drink. There will be tips and there will be fun stuff and funny stuff and dances and comedy. So come and join me. Um, Joette says, no, I'm a boy mom, but girls Moms learn good stuff. Yes, I understand, I do. Okay, Lil, thank you for watching my new vlogs at Wednesday with the Green Family. Cha-cha chicken! Thanks everyone, have a good week! Hooray!

Oh my God, is that an HP tie shirt? Oh, Harry Potter tie!

Yes! Harry Potter! Wait, wait, wait. Okay, before we go, I should have said, tell them what you learned from our fight. Tell them your greatest lesson. Um, it can be anything. Sometimes we fight. Just listen. Anything else? Just listen. That would be great. Okay everyone, you heard it. You heard it from Lily.

TikTok.

Just listen, people.