There are days in parenting that are beautiful: memories are made, major milestones are celebrated, and everything unfolds as planned.
Then there are other days. The terrible, horrible, no good, very bad days. (They’re not just for Alexander.)
I’m not talking about the headline-worthy, traumatic days. These aren’t the seared-into-your-brain days filled with devastating news, excess blood, or life-altering incidents.
These are the forgettable bad days that rage when you’re in them and retreat sometime after midnight (unless you’re up for a 2 a.m. feeding).
Days that seem endless in either their mind-numbing routines or nonstop battles. Days when all house rules are forgotten, ignored, or completely imaginary. Days when attitudes are bad-itudes and your parental authority shows little evidence of ever existing.
My husband tries to help me at the end of these days by rooting out what actually went wrong. When I can’t find the words to explain my dark mood, he asks questions.
Is anyone sick? Were there visits to the ER? Did something happen to our parents?
No.
Is a major appliance broken? Did the car break down? Did we just get a bill with some unexpected catastrophic expense? Is the house flooding (again)? Did we lose a source of income?
Still no.
We just had a bad day, I will try to explain. Nothing went right. There was whining. Complaining. Dietary disagreements. Bathroom chaos. Utter loneliness despite never being alone. Injured feelings. So many feelings.
It can be difficult for others who didn’t share the past eight hours to understand what made it so hard. That doesn’t make your feelings wrong.
And while your occasional bad days might not compare to the truly horrific ones in which the answer to one of those above questions is yes, you’re still allowed to call them bad. And not feel guilty about it.
Please don’t feel guilty.
Because tomorrow you will get up and do it all over again.
It’s fitting that in the book by Judith Viorst, after Alexander has proclaimed his day to be terrible, horrible, no good, and very bad, it’s his mom who tells him that some days are like that.
She would know.
How do you recover from your bad days?
Sometimes I just need to identify if there’s something that makes me feel like me that is missing. Sometimes it’s a happy song. Sometimes it’s a walk. Sometimes it’s reading. All those things help with a reset!