Meltdowns

In the last three days I have had about 8 hours of sleep and have had 8 jobs ..plus school. Life is moving 100 miles a minute and surprisingly .. I'm kind of loving it. Well, minus school. 


However, 8 hours of sleep in three days and active children could be a recipe for disaster. Today, at my first job, and one of my longest jobs, the girl had a meltdown. Like a major "I'm 10 years old and know better" kind of meltdown. At this point my my "super sitter" journey, I have seen all kinds of tantrums. Most of the time it's with little kids so it's easy to divert their attention to something else to defuse the current explosion. But with a ten year old, not so much. 


My level of patience walking into the situation was already low, add an hour plus meltdown and it was non existent. I could feel the anger rising up in me. In the end, I let her do her thing and just ignored her as much as I could for the safety of her and the safety of my car..like I said, big meltdown. 


Now that I reflect on it, I realized that- kids meltdown, end of story. I was the brat of all brats. I tried every thing in the nonexistent book of "how to piss off your parents". Now there are a few things I still stand my ground on, but bottom line, my parents were right. And the fact that I am still alive, healthy, and willing to see this point is proof enough that they dealt with my major meltdowns the right way.  


In the end, sometimes you have to just let them meltdown. You can't fix every situation and sometimes a meltdown is just what that kid needed. What you have to let them know is there meltdown is not acceptable, they are not going to get their way just because they are angry, and most importantly you are not going to hate them or love them less because of this meltdown.  


Sometimes these major meltdowns between a sitter and a kid is just what was needed to make your relationship with them so much stronger..


until the next adventure 
super sitter ..out.