Mommy Monday: Handling the Mood Monster & Helping Your Child Handle Hormones

Photos are mine, featuring @abyni

Last week I wrote about the whole "Wait Until They're Teenagers" comments I used to get and how much I hated them. How much I hate it when teenagers are automatically made out to be such horrible, uncontrolled mood monsters. I absolutely DO.

That being said, there ARE things that you can do to help mitigate your child's struggles with hormonal mood swings that can take you and Them by surprise. This is what I've learned thus far in my 26 years of parenting five kids:

I have to post about this, because its caught me by surprise with most of my children… even though they ALL did it at about the same time. If you have older kids, you probably know what I’m talking about. The hormonal weepies. No, I’m not talking about typical ‘pms’ or whatever, I’m talking about the time before all of that happens. For my kids, it started around age 10-11. For a lot of kids, it starts much earlier.

They suddenly, out of nowhere start having these totally uncharacteristic melt-downs.

Not throwing a fit, but suddenly, intense, emotional upsets over nothing. Over anything. Over EVERYTHING.

After struggling for nearly a year with my oldest, I finally spilled my frustrations on a message board I frequented about my nearly 11 year old daughter’s constant melt downs. My normally happy go lucky child was in tears over things up to ten times a day (Literally, I tracked it trying to figure out what was going on)!! I was losing my mind! I was sure I had to be the worst mother in the world.

_{I should mention that none of us are morning people around here!!!}

What happened to my child??

As soon as I posted my worries on the homeschool mom message board, another mom posted and recommended Michael’s Pre-Teen girl vitamins. She explained that hormonal swings start way earlier than the whole ‘pms’ routine. I was skeptical. Seriously? My 10 year old was basically PMSing without a schedule? What?

Nonetheless, I was at my wits end. I bought the vitamins within a week. My non-pill swallowing daughter crushed up the vitamins and took it with a spoon of applesauce every morning, while I waited with baited breath. The mood swings let up. Quickly. Within a week or so, the moody, tearful child wasn’t crying over everything. She wasn’t freaking out over little things anymore. She was back to her ‘normal’ self. I was stunned. Yes, it was that simple. Actually, by the time ‘real’ pms started, it was a relief, because at least them we were on a regular schedule!

What about the boys?

They hit the same emotional tribulations… albeit a little later, and their emotional mood swings tended to show up more as anger (and then feeling guilty about their out of nowhere anger!) than crying, but still, the vitamins came out and helped again.

Why this wasn’t just something automatic for me at this point, I don’t know. We went through it again with Paris when she hit age 11.

All of this to say that it caught me completely by surprise when Abyni was about 10. We were making a weekly puppet show called Bean's Monkey Business together and she always loved doing it. This one week when we got ready to film and Abyni just burst into tears. Patrick and I were confused. She had been practicing with me happily just 30 minutes earlier… so what was up? She didn’t know, and asking just made her cry harder. We decided to just shut everything down and take a break. Although it is very important to us to stick to a schedule, our schedule doesn’t come before our kids. As much as we needed to film right then, I needed to find out what was up. Since we needed to get groceries sometime anyway, I told Abyni that she and I would take a girl break and have some mommy-daughter time and go shopping by ourselves.

_{Yes, this serene, beautiful, happy child had moods, too! Just like ME! The difference is that she had less control and had NO idea what was happening... which makes it even harder to handle!}

We got in the car and she said, “I don’t know what happened, mom. I was just standing there and my body said, ‘okay, time to cry now’ and I just couldn’t stop.”

lightbulb Oh my word. Seriously? FIVE kids and I don’t catch on automatically with ANY of them!?? I explained the whole hormonal concept to her, then told her that we would just take a break, buy some chocolate and have some girl time. We went grocery shopping and bought a pill crusher and some applesauce in addition to the chocolate, and all was well.

We came home and she crushed up a vitamin and took it… and I think that just knowing that she could do something about the moodiness helped her feel a lot more in control. I mean, come on ladies, don’t you ever just feel completely lost in your own hormonal mess sometimes? I know I do. I can’t imagine how out of control and downright confusing it must be to be an eleven year old girl and have no idea what is happening! It is hard enough as an adult when I KNOW what the culprit is.

To finish off my little novel here, by the time the groceries were put away, Abyni was ready to film the rhyming game and we had a great evening.

Just remember that when your child seems completely upset and out of control, maybe they just need a little reassurance that what they’re going through is normal. Maybe they need vitamins, or just a little extra attention or maybe they just need more sleep. Try to look past the tears, the tantrums and see what the underlying issue is. It is much easier to deal with the cause than the symptoms! Besides, its not as if WE never have those moody days (try not to laugh too hard!)

It also helps to make sure your child is getting regular exercise and eating healthy foods (not stressing about their 'diet' or weight!!!) but having an all around balanced life and a Relationship with you, their parents so that they have someone to come to when they need to talk. Being open for and instigating good conversations with your kids is for a later post, though.

If there is anything parenting wise that you'd like me to address, let me know and if it's something I've dealt with, I'm more than happy to share my experience. I'm not an "expert" but I have learned a lot raising these awesome kids!