My 5-year-old didn’t sleep well. He has had a cold and he was up 4 times overnight after falling asleep later than usual even though we followed our usual bedtime routine well. This means I was also up 4 times with him overnight. We were both tired.

He wanted to wear his dirty shirt that he wore to bed (because he refused to change last night, and it wasn’t worth the fight) to school this morning. I said no and calmly explained why, I offered other choices, I brought the clothes to the kitchen, as many peaceful strategies as I could think of to get him in clean clothes, and nothing worked. He evolved into a full-blown tantrum. My strategies only wasted time, and I ultimately lost my cool and yelled at him in front of my older two kids who will not mimic anything good that I do but will mimic anything bad that I do so now I have to look forward to a couple weeks of trying to undo the damage I did this morning and being fearful that someday my kids will treat my grandkids this way.

This is my thought dump for this morning. I don’t want to lose my cool. I don’t want to yell at my sweet, beautiful child who just had a really rough night of sleep and who cares if he wears the dirty shirt? But I also don’t want to be allowing them to push the limits like that.

I’m sure someone else has this problem so let’s coach on it here.