How often would you say it is 'normal' to lose your temper/patience?

[fleacircus]

I have two DC, one is just 2yrs and the other nearly 6mths. I'm on maternity leave so at home with both, although DD1 goes to her CM one day a week. Most of the time I really enjoy it, they are both lovely and DD1 is generally fab. But occasionally I find myself out of patience and a couple of times I have lost it, shouted, even slammed a door on one particularly shameful occasion.

I spoke to nice and helpful HV after that incident and she's coming to assess my mood/mental health/possible PND on DD1's next CM day - we couldn't get into it properly at the baby clinic with DD1 there. Obviously if this is a real issue I need to resolve it but I do want to know what other people consider to be normal before I let myself get medicalised!

I think that is totally normal, less than normal even. Sounds like your CM has been asked to always check for PND so is being overly thorough. Really you sound like you are doing better than great. Small children would try the patience of a saint.

I have to say I tend to flare up quite quickly and come down again just as quickly.

I suppose the kids are used to it! Every night I go up and give them a kiss before I go to bed and say to myself "tomorrow I won't shout, threaten or bribe and will be an earth mother type", but then at 6.10am they are fighting over the cornflakes and it starts again!

I know I am like this though and try hard not to be, but if it is something new and different for you perhaps it does have a reason.

If you like you can adopt my mantra "this to will pass"

oh my goodness Flea. You are a saint if all you've ever done is a slam a door. My DC's are exactly the same age as yours and I'm also at home with both of them. I feel totally overwrought and lose it on a fairly regular basis. When I broke down crying about it with my midwife and acupuncturist they both looked at my like I was about to face the first of parentings' hardest lessons... sooner or later your little angels come to realise that you too are human and therefore prone to ranges of emotion, just like them, and that realisation can only be a healthy thing. I guess somewhere in that process boundaries are created. Showing you have yours, whether you intend to or it's simply a loss of temper is ultimately a very realistic thing.

i was a hideous raging freak when i had my second...with a four year gap. i turnd into a growling dictator when it was time to put shoes on for nursery....i soon realised that this was a trigger for me and decided to just put his shoes on for him insteasd of insisting he do it himself.

i wasnt doing that much by anyone's standards but it was too much...i needed to do less...eventually i did. i dont think it was pnd but it WAS fatigue/exhaustion and not enough support plus high expectaions of me.

i never used to lose my temper before...if that helps atall to answer your question. no idea what is 'normal'.

For me, at least once a day (bearing in mind that I work that's pretty frequent). But then my trigger point is usually when DS refuses to get washed/dressed/brush teeth or when he refuses to eat dinner, so there are at least three opportunities every day for him to be a complete arse.

Thank you, that's a relief, and thank you also for responding so fast. I worry because I think I probably appear to be much more together than I really am and that feels dodgy. And because on the day in question I was so miserable, it rained non-stop all day and although we went to a quite nice activity in the morning DD2 screamed throughout, it was at a children's centre and one of the staff there offered to take her and did better at calming her down than I had (apparently I only have one strategy, which is shoving a nipple in her mouth, and if that doesn't work I'm scuppered). Took them to a cafe for lunch and then to the baby clinic, which killed a couple of hours, and then to another cafe just because I couldn't face going home and being on my own with them all afternoon.

What you have described sounds entirely normal and in fact erring on the side of pretty damn good ! The door slamming incident doesn't sound in the least shocking to me. If you were hitting the kids and shouting all of the time, then that would be cause for concern.

Having a baby and a toddler is damn hard work. Mine are now nearly 3 and 5 but i think i have been permanently scarred by living through the baby and toddler years. Jeez it was hard. Sleep deprivation + Jealous toddler + Very demanding baby = Enough to drive anyone loony IMO. I'm sure the HV knows this. She may even have experienced the demon Baby + Toddler combo herself and still be reeling from the memory of it!

Maybe once a month, but dd is 9 now so life is much more civilised.
More often when she was younger though, especially at 2 through to 3 and a half. I actually smacked her bum in temper when whe was 3 to my shame.
One door slam does not a nasty mummy make. You sound like you are doing well

I have four and I don't really get angry that much so I was very surprised to hear someone say they thought I did! Anyway since that time I've stayedcalm on purpose out of indignation lol!

Anyway Yesterday I took all four to central london in the rushhour (what was I thinking!). They had a great day and behaved well all day, and I lost some of my anxiety about handling four kids alone. However on the bus home the baby (who has a vomiting bug and is a little sickly) started crying. 2 year old wouldn't sit down but was behaving. The two elder were just talking generally and misbehaving at all althoug maybe being slightly annoying. So I was recalling the day with the two year old when an old pompous lady who had got on at the same stop said loudly to her neighbour "I@m surprised they didn't get chucked out!" To which her neighbour giggled. Now we had been to a "posh" place that day, and I'm sure I have a chip on the shoulder that we are not white middle class but those words BURNED in my head for the rest of the journey. I pointed quit firmly that my children were not rude to others, didn't look down on other people or judge them and then stormed off the bus.

To my shame a little after this the kids did actually msbehave and I lost it and shouted. The saddest part was that I was not shouting at them I was really angry with that mean old woman who insulted us for her own amusement. No doubt in her day they would have got the birch out and caned them all.

Anyway vent over lol! You don't sound like you are overreacting however you sound a little like me ie that you believe its "wrong" at some level to shout - and that when you shout you have failed. I understand totally where you are coming from but remember nothing prepares you for a baby, and they do not always behave reasonably.

I don't think you have anything to worry about.

sorry that should have said were not misbehaving althoug maybe being slightly annoying

It's true, shouting feels like a huge failure, especially as DD1 is actually incredibly co-operative and reasonable (within the parameters of being a 2yr old, anyway!) I'm sure DD2's screaming is just a passing phase, too, and no worse probably than DD1 at that sort of age. I think I expect too much of myself but also of DD1 - who obviously has no concept of how wearing it is dealing with a baby and so sees no issue with looming up whenever I'm trying to settle DD2, clutching Maisy's bloody Street ('2 metres of lift the flap fun' that makes me want to chuck myself out of the window) and announcing "We're going to read this."

I feel like the Falkland Islands.

Have a look at this book. Looking after two children is really hard and it is normal to get stressed and angry. My oldest has just started preschool and I've suddenly rediscovered what it feels like to be relaxed and realised just how stressed I have been for the whole last year with them both home.

when ds small, first nine months to a year used to seriously lose it with dd nearly every day. I'm not proud of it, but i think people need to tell others how it can be. I was in a bit of a downward spiral with it, i was exhausted, would therefore have no patience with dd (then 3) get very cross. Teh would feel guilty about it and be even croseer. Didn't help when people said, oh my goodness I got cross today, just made me feel even more guilty. Finally went to gp, who checked for pnd and then referred me for CBT type counselling. Best thing I ever did. I now have ways of "talking to myself" to stop feeling guilty, ds sleeps better,and we are all happier. I also absolutely refuse to miss breakfast, and go to bed at a decent hour. Now get seriously cross maybe once a month or so. Some of us are just wired differently and whilst it's def worth trying to put things in place to help stop yourself feeling cross, guilt about it is like feeling guilty that you're not tall enough to reach the top shelf - ask someone to reach it for you or use a ladder

I should say that i didn't have pnd, but things that i needed to sort out, and gp recognised this and referred me. I'm guessing that the treatment for pnd might be similar, but I'm trying to say that just becaus4e you haven't got pnd, you might still need some help (or you might not)

My 2 kids are 17 months apart. When my son was 6 months and my daughter almost 2. I used to lose my patience a lot! I did shout at my daughter if she repeatedly did something (not on the first offence). It was a tough time.

Now thank goodness my son is 13 months and happier now he's mobile and eating solids well and my daughter now 2 and a half is starting to become easier (now her language is developing) to reason with.

I think the HV is doing this as standard. Try not to worry. You sound perfectly normal to me.

I think you sound perfectly normal too. One of the most hideous periods of my life was from the time DD1 was 3 & DD2 was 6 months, up until DD1 went to school. They are now teenagers and can still drive me to the same state of mental anguish they did as toddlers, when they start bickering with each other.