The "Tea Kettle" Effect: Loosing Your Cool
The struggle of patience while being a mother is like being a tea kettle.
Set on a burner, the heat is slowly applied to the kettle .
For awhile, the water is placid and stays still.
As the water continues to heat up, the molecules begin to crowd together, needing somewhere to go. The amount of space is too small for them; they have to escape somehow, and so they burst out the top of the kettle.
Steam escapes rapidly out of the spout of the kettle, and whistles high and loud.
Think about the daily tasks and rigors of taking care of a home, little ones, and the needs of a partner, work tasks and more! For a period of time - maybe a long time if you have great systems in place or keep trucking along - you're able to handle the stress.
Then the balance starts to tip. Maybe it's a forgotten project you now need to drop off on the way to a doctor's appointment. Maybe children wake up sick, or having an off day, they're whining is too much to handle with the necessary flow of getting off to a good start.
As the additional struggle of trying to keep it all together piles higher and higher, eventually we burst. And we're seen as being stressed, nagging, mothers who need to get it together.
Like the tea kettle, though, we're just reacting naturally. We're venting, we're letting off steam. And it's okay to lose your cool from time to time!
The problem is that the amount of tasks we assign ourselves are often impossible to keep all together! After you remove yourself from the burner, take some of the pressure off of yourself. Leave the laundry. Answer the email another day. It'll all get done.
With a sense of your own self worth and built in down time - where you're not rushing to answer a million questions, make lunches or do something 'meaningful' to contribute to the household maintenance - you'll be more apt to tackle each day, and avoid as many bursting bubbles!
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