Mom needs a moment! How to pause parental rage

Now, the Trump administration is opening nearby waters to commercial fishing.

“The American fishermen have never had a better ally in the White House than Donald Trump.”

This week on the Sunday Story, we discuss what's at stake for this wild ecosystem.

Listen, now to the Sunday Story from the up-first podcast on the NPR app.

I saw this meme the other day. It was basically a video, a song that a guy wrote, about how he thought he knew what tired was and then he had kids. Does that resonate? Yeah, in fact, I am so tired, I don't have a good response to that. We had another really hard night. Last night, Ted woke up. He was screaming, "I love you, Mom."

Like, he just wanted cuddles, but he wanted them at one in the morning and two in the morning and three in the morning. Like, it's a lot.

“Being a parent is just a lot, always all the time.”

It just attacks all of your senses and all of your resources.

Yeah. I mean, I hear this from every parent, I know. You're not alone. Very true. You know, this surgeon general actually declared parental stress and epidemic in 2024 makes them parents are spending more time working and more time taking care of their kids than they used to in decades past. Which means there's a very little time left for ourselves to, you know, to recover when you have those long nights with a very, very little sleep.

I want to introduce you to Cassidy Fratus. She's a psychologist, I talk to you.

In moments when I feel triggered and disregulated by my child's meltdown, by the millionth snack request,

what I'm desperate for actually is just just, wait, just give me some space, just give me a moment. You're listening to LifeKit. I'm Mary Elsa Gata and I'm talking with like a reporter Andy Tagel. She interviewed Cassidy about her new book. Mom needs a moment. How to stop your reaction before it starts and become a comor, happier, or connected parent, which sounds very much needed. I have to ask you though, is this advice just for moms? Like, I know a lot of dads who are overwhelmed too. Yeah, good question. Definitely not. To be clear, Cassidy and I talked a lot about our own experiences as moms, you know, dealing with things like anger or all be honest,

you know, straight up maternal rage and overwhelm and anxiety in those day-to-day parenting moments. But she says every parent, every caregiver, even parents to be can benefit from taking a moment or finding magic in the margins as she likes to say. If I am a rested mom that's resourced and regulated and has more capacity and knowing that that's just as important for my kids, I'm going to protect that. Well, on this episode of LifeKit, Andy talks to Cassidy about how to deal with those moments of overwhelmed as a parent, how to give yourself permission to rest,

recover and feel what you feel, and also how to model the same for your kids. Hey, you know that nagging voice in your head, the one telling you to put the phone down and stop doomsgrowing while it's time. Look up! Take a daily curiosity break with shortwave and pair a science podcast. Let your mind wander to the edges of outer space or wonder about what's lurking in the depths of the sea floor all in under 15 minutes. Shortwave, your daily mental recent, listen on the MPHR app or wherever you get your podcasts.

Fall is right around the corner. That means the midterms. Hey, it's Miles Parks from the MPHR Politics podcast.

“Now is the perfect time to calibrate your news diet for the fall. Follow our show for short daily episodes that will help you stay ahead of the most important midterm storylines that you need to follow.”

Find the MPHR Politics podcast on the MPHR app or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi there, I'm Brittany loose and not the brag but I host a really fabulous podcast. It's called it's been a minute. I love making it and I think you'll love listening to it. Over the last year hundreds of thousands of listeners have been tuning in and I got to say, if you haven't yet, you're missing out. Listen to the it's been a minute podcast from NPR today. So you're feeling worked up. Got a short fuse at work, feeling triggered at home by those dirty dishes in the sink or by your kid just doing that one thing she does.

Cassidy has a great exercise for you. Pretend you have a magical calendar. It doesn't just track appointments or events. It accounts for everything that occupies your time. It's just the appointments and activities, but the mental telling of what does my child need for camp today, like who is picking up who. And if I was to ask you where in any of that, is there actually just a margin of empty space where your brain gets to do what it's desperate for, which is integrate all of the experiences and things that have come at you.

When I was doing this exercise in my head, I realized that like when there is a margin, like when there is a little bit of space, my brain will give me like three minutes max before I'm like, what are you doing? Why are you just sitting there?

“We have things to do. I think that this is something that so many moms, parents can relate to.”

And I don't think that that voice just started an adulthood. I think that these voices that pop up at some point, there was a reason that that part of you felt like it needed to optimize or define productivity in this way. And this voice is strong. It takes the wheel and it makes decisions and it pushes us to be reactive in certain ways. And it's robbing us of our presence, of our rest, of our capacity. And so maybe we can get to know this part of us a little bit more than when that voice pops up saying, hey, this isn't productive.

But you might be able to respond to that part of yourself with a, ah, it makes so much sense that that would pop up right now. And actually, this is productive because my brain needs space to process, needs space to recalibrate, to resource, to regulate. My nervous system needs not everything to be so urgent all the time.

“And when my kid is melting down, because that's what kids do, I might be able to show up in a more aligned way. And I also had this space to figure out, ah, how do I want to respond here?”

Because you know what's so funny with that magical calendar, there is one space where our phones don't oftentimes enter. And we don't have a lot of input coming in from the world around us, and it's the shower, right? And I don't think it's shower is enough, like, come on. How many times have you been in the shower, and all of a sudden, you have an idea, like the most creative ideas pop up when we're in the shower. Exactly. And there is a reason.

It's a protected margin of space. My brain gets a chance to just be in wonder.

But if you go and you're standing in line to get your coffee and you're, what's the first thing we're doing?

We're pulling out our phones. We're checking our emails. We're scrolling, and it is so, it feels awkward, actually, to just be. So, take away one. Build in margins before stressful moments by letting your brain rest on purpose.

“There are probably a lot of good reasons why you feel like you have to go, go, go all the time.”

But Cassidy says, parents are so overworked over schedule these days. You need to preserve small margins of time to rest in order to be able to integrate new information and break negative cycles. And by margins, I mean, gosh, margins in your calendar, yes, for a rest. But also, like, building the muscle between your trigger and your response, just a margin of space there to, to pause to recalibrate, to access how we want to respond, right?

To, that's an important thing, as well, margins for mistakes, margins for ourselves, margins for our partner relationships is a lot of different ways in which we want to be protecting margins. Can we talk a little bit about what it looks like to have space in the moment? The times when I most need space are the times when it is least available to me. It's so low parenting, maybe, you know, it's probably the morning, we're probably on a time crunch. I'm probably exhausted. If I just had a little more time, a little more caffeine, just, you know what I mean?

And it's just not there. Help, help, help me, please. Oh, my gosh, in those moments, I love to take a beat.

And my kids know that when I take a beat and I take a breath, I'm putting my hand actually like right on my chest because that's always where that, like,

urgency, that tightness, that, like, dysregulation range kind of lives in music right here in my chest. And I have my hand on my chest. My kids know now that it's a cue to them, that, oh, okay, mom caught herself. I will, I will take a breath and I will do an extended exhale. And I do a little shushing on the exhale because there's a science around what humming or shushing on an exhale does. I'll model it for a second. So a little...

Shhhh. My shoulders immediately drop and I feel that almost like this feeling of, like, warm, lovely oil, just like rolling down my body. And it's just like, feels like this, like, warm that, like, brings my shoulders down.

And here's the thing, my might still feel like, oh, there's still some tension there after the moment.

to reflect on this. Okay, this morning, I was arranging mom.

There's data in that anger at its core, is there to be, like, hey, something in this feels like it's a violation of our boundaries or rights. Also, anger can show up as a protector or emotion. When underneath, we might feel overwhelmed, unheard.

“And so, oftentimes, in these emotions that are providing a state of, we can reflect on what am I needing here?”

And how do we reclaim presence and experiences of joy and awe and wonder and something really magical that happens in our bodies, in our relationships, and in our day-to-day lives, or we can actually be in the moment.

I feel really lucky to be a parent in an era of parenting in which I feel like it's okay to be both a parent and a person, you know,

and it's okay to want to have a life outside of my kid. I feel really, really grateful for that. And also, that mom guilt is just so loud, it's so loud. It really is. I saw this really great video that I just have to share with you. And it was about mom, math, like mental, mom math that we make up for ourselves. So, this, this, this, this content creator who I love, who was talking to a friend saying, "I'm sorry, I can't meet you for happy hour. I've already used my allotted me time this week because I worked late one night."

“So, I didn't put my daughter to bed, you know, just all these arbitrary rules that we set for ourselves. These metrics that don't actually exist, can you relate?”

Absolutely, can I relate? As I'm sure anyone who's listening, guilt is an emotion that we are wired for.

It is not bad. There are no bad parts of us that could feel bad in our body, right? Like the physical sensations that can bring the way in which it delivers the message, but again, emotions are data messengers. This job is to come in and say, "Oh, we did something here that's not an alignment with our values," right? And to this example that you provided, "Oh, we value being present and connected to our children." And so, we have come up with some sort of rulebook for some arbitrary number of, like, what we are allotted or allowed. And what I would say is, one, thanks guilt for reminding me that I value those things.

And I'm going to get back in the driver's seat, though, and I'm going to make a decision rooted in my values instead of having guilt drive my decision.

“And is it possible that this decision to go out with my girlfriend for a happy hour is actually aligned with my values and something that I would want to model to my kids that they can do one day when they're parents too?”

Am I going to be a better mom or present connected if I provide these opportunities for myself and protect them, right, as well? And a great way of thinking about it is if a friend of yours that you really love came to you and shared whatever the thing they're feeling guilty about is, right? How would you respond to them? And why is that so hard to do for myself? I'm going to say, I love doing that to my friends, I love, I love using that example for my friends, it's so much harder to do, to myself, yeah. It really is. And, you know, we're talking here about, you know, going out to dinner, a happy hour, and let's be so real that, like, when I talk about margins, I'm literally talking about margins, like, I love a good, like, staycation, like, hotel stay to yourself if you can make that happen or, you know, a girl's night or whatever the case might be.

But also, margins can look like, in my calendar, I will protect 15 or 30 minutes where I'm not allowing anything else to show up there. So I'm not going to schedule a client, I'm not going to schedule a meeting or a call, maybe it's the 30 minutes before my kids come home or before I need to go pick them up. Maybe it's, I'm driving home and I pull over. And for 15 minutes, I just thought myself sit in the car or like roll down the window or for my lunch break instead of going on emails or scrolling, I'm going to go outside and, like, what do the kids say these days touch grass, like, actually go, like, look at the trees, listen to what you're hearing around you, give your brain a break.

That sounds yummy, lovely, necessary, needed. Let's schedule it, I want you to schedule it. Okay, after this, you're going to, you're going to get on your calendar and we're going to have calendar arrangements for calendar appointments for literally everything else. Seriously, like, reminders, right? Like, have my son change his influence. Great. I'm also going to schedule and mom's mom's moment. Take away two, emotions are data in high stress moments, especially with kids, try to remember it's okay to take a pause, even if it's just a single breath before acting on that feeling.

History is intriguing, but unlike the present, it can feel far off. On NPR's through line, we bring it back to life and put you in the middle of it. Go inside the stories from then that shape the world we live in now. Find NPR's through line wherever you get your podcasts. Let's talk about after the fact, when you, you know, when you tried your best and you lost it, you know, I was patient, I was patient, I was patient the first 19 times that 20th time.

“Hey, that was me this morning trying to get my son to get to wake up and get dressed, you know, I think it was like the sixth time that I went in and I was like, dude, you're still, right?”

And I snapped and this will happen because we are not perfect human beings and I really truly believe that our children do not need us to be perfect. I had that question for you, you know, are we allowed to be in theater kids? Yes, of course, because your human and anger is a real human emotion, our kids, we need them to show them what it is to be in perfect that they're going to have big feelings to, they're going to lose it to

And how to come back and repair repair is the most powerful tool and our parenting belt.

And we need margins to not just figure out that we're going to come back and say, sorry, but figure out, gosh, where did that? Why am I triggered? What is it? Where is this coming from? And what's so cool is that the more that I've done that and I figure out where some of this comes from, I share stories with my kids, especially as they've gone older, I have some of the things that like are my stuff that I'm working through and giving them stories about it. Kids love that, they want to see you as a human being, they want to know you.

And so the more that we can share those moments when we lose it or we come back, they have that context too, you know, like, oh, this is something that moms talk to me about before and she's human. And so am I, it turns out, you know, and we get some model that for them, too. Because kids do margins too, you say, oh, yeah, they do.

“My son is three and he, I don't remember teaching him this, but he'll ask us for a space. I need some space, please.”

Yeah, but you know what girl? You probably modeled it. I mean, he heard that somewhere. And with all of this information we have, that we're also feeling overwhelmed by, we're understanding more about the emotional landscape of a child. And how to support a child in emotional literacy, emotional intelligence. I love this for us for our species. Me too, you know.

I'll take his little breath. He's little breath. I'm feeling my gosh. I love it. He has a name for the feeling that's huge.

Take away three.

You and your kid aren't always going to get it right.

That's okay. Makes space to make up. Repair is the most important tool in your toolbox. As Cassidy says, context is a bridge to compassion. So don't be afraid to let your kids know what's really going on under the hood.

What was scaring you? What was stressing you out earlier that led to that unnecessary reaction over spilled broccoli or the toys left on the floor. And finally, take away four. Create space for community. Everyone needs one.

We were never meant to do this alone.

And if you're partnered or you have other adults in your life that are supporting you in raising your children, there's a lot of information out there on this idea of the invisible mental load that oftentimes falls disproportionately on moms. You know, knowing what's coming up on this schedule, the calendar, the appointments, knowing like all the paperwork, knowing who their friends are and building relationships with those parents, planning the play dates.

“It's the anticipating, the planning, the preparing, right?”

The noticing, all of that. And how do we integrate other support people and dads into the fold of this? And what I had to unpack first was a lot of times both for myself and for my clients. There's also this sort of difficulty in letting someone in and letting some tasks go. The fear that the ball is going to be dropped, you know, and that it's just going to fall back on us.

And how do we bring in somebody to not just come in and help a little, but really take this load and carry it from beginning to end without you needing to come in and rescue or continue to monitor? Because I feel like margins can be a hard cell, you know? I love this idea, but how can we have those conversations with, say, the grandparent who is foreign to getting that kind of time?

And I was raising my kids, that kind of thing.

“Unfortunately, not every person in our life is going to show up in the way that we're really wanting them to.”

I will say that if it's a relationship that feels emotionally safe, the best opener to really having someone here, what you're needing, is through vulnerability. So if this is a person that you feel like, okay, it feels like uncomfortable, but emotionally safe enough for me to say, hey, I'm feeling really overwhelmed. My mind is spinning and having a hard time sleeping.

I'm snapping at the kids, I'm feeling like just a dysregulated mom. A lot, I'm struggling. If you open up with that vulnerability,

because the person feels safe to do that with, followed with,

and what I'm discovering that I am really needing is I'm needing more margins in my life. I'm needing some support in these maybe specific ways, right? Anyone listening who's a support person, like a grandparent or the ant or the friend,

“oh my gosh, wouldn't it feel so good for someone to come to you with these needs?”

Like, I would be honored, and if they're not honored, maybe they're not your person, and maybe they're someone waiting in the wings, you know, like, to come in and support you. Cassidy, thank you. Thank you for having me in protecting this space for us to have this conversation. This has been so great.

Alright, let's recap. Take away one. Let your brain rest on purpose. Build in margins that allow you to take breaks from everything, like actually everything. Your work, your phone, your kids, your stress.

Just let yourself be and let your nervous system reset. You need it. You deserve it. Take away two. Emotions are data. You don't have to act on the information they give you in high stress moments. Take a breath, leave the room if you can, and let that living brain come back online.

Take away three. You're going to get angry now and then. If you don't have to pretend like you don't, just fix it afterwards.

Repair is the most important tool in your toolbox.

Take away four. Parenting is a team's ward. Find people that will support your margins. That was LifeKit reporter Andy Tagle talking with Cassidy Fradis. If you love LifeKit, and you want even more, follow us on Instagram at NPR LifeKit. There, you'll find video snippets from our interviews and comics featuring our favorite advice.

You can find those by following @NPRLifeKit. This episode of LifeKit was produced by Sylvie Douglas. Our digital editor is Malaga Greb, and our visuals editor is CJ Reklan. Megan Kane is our senior supervising editor, and Lauren Gonzalez is our executive producer. Our production team also includes Claire Marish Nighter, Margaret Serino, and Kayla Latamore.

Engineering support comes from Quacili, fact-checking by Tyler Jones. I'm Mary Elcegata. Thanks for listening. Okay, so you're driving to work or you're on a walk or you're at the gym or whatever, and you just need to clear your head. That's the perfect time to hit the play button on NPR's All Songs Considered.

It's not the news, it's not work, or whatever else is weighing you down. It's just a good time with good friends and great tunes. Listen to all songs considered every Tuesday in the NPR music podcast. How do products end up on big box shelves? Well, we have planted money, pitch deep in it money, board game.

We're trying not to think how much of a big deal it is and how much work has gone into it.

“It's really big, is it helpful if I remind you how big it is?”

It's sort of the whole thing. We go inside the minds of the people who decide what goes on store shelves. Listen to plant it money on the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts.