There's nothing easy going on right now. Everything seems to need an extra pull, an extra push, an extra breath, or an extra step.

Nothing is simple.

So it's not surprising that the current stay-at-home order coupled with virtual learning for the kid while trying to teach my own class and my husband working from home would feel impossible on the best of days.

And it's hard. All of it.

I snapped today. With all the fog and pressure circling around me in a vicious and constant vortex, I reached my peak and bellowed.

And after I released my ugly voice, I looked at my kid - like really looked - and I realized something.

Something I seem to forget when working with my high energy hard-to-focus child, is that while I wasn't as high energy as my son, I was a hard-to-focus child.

As an adult, I see things through different glasses. Perhaps they're more like foggy goggles.

I seem to forget what it's like to have a hard time sitting still and paying attention.
I had a hard ass time keeping centered and I wasn't able to pay attention for long periods of time.

Heck, I'm still like this at times.

But I'm an adult.
And I've lived and learned.
I have coping mechanisms my son has yet to learn.
I'm familiar with my behaviors and I know how to navigate around them.

The adult in me is frustrated that I can't get my kid to concentrate.
The child in me is pleading for a little more understanding.

I snapped because I'm tired and everything just meshed into one glob of goo.
I snapped because I'm frustrated and I don't know how to help him.

I felt awful after I unleashed, but I can only hope to do better next time and exert a bit more patience towards the smaller version of myself.

Post Originally appeared on Facebook