I came across an article the other day of a mom who filmed her child while he was having a complete tantrum/meltdown in the store.
She then posted it on social media and it basically went viral. I read the article, watched the video and then read through many of the comments.
The comments alone made me feel sad for the child, embarrassed for the mother, and disgusted with the entire thing.
I’m a mom, and yes my children throw tantrums just like any other child.
I can’t even count the number of times my youngest decided Target was a good time to throw a tantrum and draw attention to us from the entire store.
But in that moment, it never crossed my mind to pull out my phone and film her tantrum and share it online.
Even when I am home and having a rough day.
It doesn’t come to mind that I should get on my social media and share with you all how terrible of a day it was and in detail, explain how my children embarrassed me and made my day a living nightmare.
Here are three reasons why I will never share my child’s tantrums on social media:
I am supposed to comfort my children
Kids need my comfort and my full attention during a tantrum or meltdown, not a camera phone pointed at them.
I can’t even imagine sitting in the store or at home while my toddler is crying and frustrated about something and just pointing a phone at them.
Put yourself in their shoes. How would you feel if you had a bad day or got in an argument with your spouse, and they decided it was a good idea to film and post it on their social media.
You say it’s not the same thing? Yes, it is.
In those moments when you should be trying to calm them down, reason with them, and comfort them, you are disconnected from the moment and connected to people you don’t even know on social media.
What are you teaching your child by doing this?
You are basically saying that their feelings don’t matter right now, what matters is whatever is on your phone. That is most important in that moment because that is what you reached for.
Rather than reaching for your child, you reached for your phone.
Does nobody else see what is wrong with this picture? Please tell me I am not alone.
My job is to build my children up and not tear them down
Child-shaming seems to be a thing. It’s sad how so many moms I know have an “I can’t be bothered attitude” with their children.
They complain more than they praise their kids because they want to be “real” and “normal.”
They share how they can’t do anything in a day because their children bother them all day long.
They complain that they had to put their life and dreams on hold because of their children.
If putting your kids down and always posting about the negative aspects of your life is the new normal, then I would rather be abnormal.
I don’t recall my mom ever sharing how hard her life was, or how she worked five days a week to pay the bills with 5 kids waiting to be fed and taken care of when she got home from her full time job.
She was positive, joyful, loving, present and a warrior.
Her life motto has always been “this too shall pass.” It was never, “ugh what a terrible day, my kids drove me crazy and I got nothing done.”
She made sure to always build us up, yes even after a tantrum.
She sat us down and lovingly helped us understand why tantrums are not ok and how to handle our feelings in the future.
When we tackled the tantrum and talked about it, it never came up again. Life moved on.
I’m glad I don’t have to find videos of me as a child online, highlighting the worse parts of my attitude.
I’m not saying she was perfect, I’m sure she snapped, had really hard days, but I don’t remember because she chose to highlight the good things, not the bad things.
And that is what my childhood memories consist of.
A home full of love and present, respectful and loving parents who knew what to keep private and in our home.
That leads me to my next point.
Here is my mom with some of her grandkids. Still always smiling, optimistic about life and full of joy. A true hero and role model:
Some moments in life just deserve privacy. Period.
If you feel the need to share every single negative moment of your day on social media, even things that should probably be private, maybe you should stop and ask yourself why.
Are you feeling the need to connect with people on a deeper level? Are you lonely? Are you wanting attention?
If yes, in my opinion, social media is not the place to get this fulfillment.
I love social media, I love the people I’ve met online.
But to fulfill the deeper need of connection with humans, I need real relationships like my husband, my mom and sister, my few close best friends.
The ones who truly know my heart, who pray for me when I need it, and who sincerely love and care for me and would never offer bad advice.
They can bring me back to reality when I feel like life is hard.
These are the people who I can call when I am having a bad day and privately share my struggles with them. Not when my children and the entire world can hear.
It would be better to find a friend you can have coffee with. Share your struggles with each other, relate on a REAL level (face to face), and pray for each other.
Encourage each other. Pray for the child that is going through a rough patch and share ideas on how to handle those situations in the future.
Random people on social media are going to either make fun of you and your children, or try to offer you advice or consolation but they don’t even know you.
I could go on and on…… but let me leave you with one last thought and a challenge:
I understand this whole “real life” trend is going on right now where people feel the need to constantly share how messy their kitchen is, how much their laundry is piled up and how many tantrums in a day their kids had.
Oh, and how tired and exhausted they are from it all.
Once in a while, I’ve shared glimpses into our day where the laundry was piled up on the couch or my dishes weren’t done.
It’s a rare thing though because I just choose to highlight the positive aspects of my life.
Not only that, but I am a very organized person. Most of the time my house is clean and I stay on top of my chores. I am not much of a procrastinator.
Why do I have to downplay this because people don’t think it can be a reality? Why do I have to act like my life is always falling apart when in reality, it isn’t!
I feel like people focus so much on the negative that it’s almost awkward to admit when you do have a streak of great days!
We should be proud when things went just right and all of the items on our to-do lists were checked off. Not afraid that people will tell us our life is “staged” and fake.
I’m not trying to portray a “fake” and perfect life but I’m also not trying to highlight things that are negative and don’t bring me joy or inspire me.
With so much negativity in the world, I don’t want to open my social media feed and see moms complaining about their kids and their life.
The facts are that having kids means your going to be tired, have more chores, and all around be busier and more exhausted than you have ever been in your entire life. What did you expect?
I want to challenge you and myself to change the way we think.
There is nothing wrong with trying to have it all together.
In fact, I find satisfaction when I look back on my day and see how much I was capable of doing.
I also have learned that there are days when it is not possible to do it all, and that is ok too. “This too shall pass.”
I choose to focus on the highlights of my day because they bring me joy and give me the mental strength to start a fresh day the next day.
If you end your day by focusing on all of the things you didn’t get to on your list, how difficult your child was, and how tired you are. You are going to spiral into this mentality and it will be really hard to get out of it.
It’s not healthy for you and it doesn’t do any service for your loved ones.
When I chose to become a mom, I chose to tackle all of the daily ups and downs that come with it. And I made a choice to do it all with joy.
Some days are hard and yes, I’ve had a good cry or two.
But then I brush it aside, remember that I am a mom and I have a huge responsibility to my children.
To love them, protect them, build them up and help them through their tantrums. We are here to mold our children with positive things that will help them be happy, successful adults.
In order to do this, we need to stop focusing on the negative, stop sharing things that need to be private, and start physically and mentally being 100% present when it really counts.
I want to challenge you to spend an entire day focusing on the positive. If you see negativity on your social media, put it away. Take a break.
Get yourself back to reality, connected with the people who are physically there, and just enjoy life. Simple moments, complicated moments, ups and downs. It’s part of life. Is it too harsh for me to say, just deal with it?
Life is short. What do you want to remember when you look back on your life? How negative and hard it was?
What do you want your children to remember about their childhood? How many tantrums they had and how much you felt the need to disconnect when they needed you most?
This blog post is just my opinion. If I offended anyone, that wasn’t my intention but even if no one else is with me, I will choose joy, I will choose to highlight the positive parts of my day and I keep certain aspects of my life private.
I would love to hear your thoughts on this! Leave them in the comments below!
So much truth and wisdom in this post!! Love it!