In my mind I have a scale of 1-10, 1 being I'm fine/happy/nowhere near meltdown and of course 10 being in meltdown. My pre-meltdown phase of 20 minutes I'm probably about a 6-8, when it gets to 9 there is no turning back really. Using the scale this is how yesterday's almost meltdown happened for me and my daughter's actual meltdown happened for her.
I wasn't feeling well and we did our bi-monthly shop, it was pretty empty at the supermarket but it was still too bright and the smell down the cleaning products aisle made me want to heave and gave me a headache, about a 3 on the scale. We get home and start to unpack, whilst sorting out Kyoko's snack bowl I found a quite rancid piece of something by putting my hand on it (getting my hands sticky is a VERY big no for me and can have me up on the scale very quickly) I go up on the scale to a 4. Then whilst my husband was making lunch the phone goes, the guy asks for my mother in law(long story she still has some things addressed to here) I say she's not here can I take a message, he asks if I'm a family member I say yes. He then asks how old the television set is, so I say "What? what do you need to know that for?" so he repeats his question about how old is it 2, 3,4 years. So then I ask again why he needs to know how old the TV is and he said "that's none of your concern, now tell me how old it is"....straight up to a 7 and I rage at him "Don't you tell me MY television is none of my concern you f***ing scam artist" and I hung up, I then raged for a good 20 minutes about it to my husband. My level went down a bit to a 6, I felt really ill around 2.30 so I decided to have a nap, husband says he'll pick Kyoko up so I can sleep for longer, well I get woken up to pounding on the door, the dog barking her head off, that gives me a terrible headache but I'm at about 4. My husband tells Kyoko off as they come through the door for banging on it when he told her I was asleep, she starts moaning and that sends me up a notch because I'm thinking "Oh here it comes she is going to be in a strop all evening now". She's slamming doors and plodding her feet around the house, I get up trip over her boots that's she's so nicely left right in front of our bedroom door, whack my shoulder on the door frame (up to 6 again). I calm down whilst we all sit and watch some cartoons, then Kyoko asks if we can try out our knitting stuff (new how to knit magazine came out so I bought us both one, thought we could do it together). I start opening them both and of course horrendous sticky glue sticking things onto the backing card...up to 7 and ranting about why they would use such yukky glue. So we sit and start watching the dvd and following the instructions and I can't do it, it makes no sense and I can feel myself getting wound up because I'm always rubbish at craft stuff. It's made worse by both my husband and Kyoko saying "let me show you" "here give it to me" I want to scream at them both to shut the hell up and leave me alone I will do it in my own time but I just mumble to rewind the dvd. Fail a second time up to an 8 I put it all down and say I need to calm down and I go and lay in the bedroom for 10 minutes which seems to work as I get back down to a bearable 3/4. I feel okay today, bit tense but I'm hoping it will pass...now for Kyoko....
She gets up and sees it's been snowing cue super excitement and begging daddy to take her out for snowball fights and stuff before school, he tells her she has to put her uniform on ready and then they can play right up until school time. So she complains I expect she's on about a 1 or 2 because she NEEDS to play right NOW but daddy is making her put uncomfortable clothing on. We have the usual my pants/vest/leggings are annoying me, almost in tears by the time she's dressed so I expect she's on a 4. She goes out and plays for 20 minutes and then gets angry when she has to come in and get her schoolbag and go to school, of course it's not fair, stupid school etc, I'd say she's on about a 2/3 because the snow play has lifted her mood but daddy telling her off for hitting him in the face with snow after he told her not to kept her in a mood. I remind her that she's going to have lots of fun at school because she can have snowball fights and make snowmen with her friends, she perks up a bit and starts talking about who will have what job (X child will defend them whilst her and Y child will attack the other team).
This bit is all what I learned AFTER the meltdown(because when she has a meltdown I know things have happened at school). Kyoko gets to school and is annoyed because she can't play outside before starting as the bell goes as they arrive. She goes in and her hands are cold from all the snow (despite having thick gloves on) she crosses her arms so her hands are in her armpits to warm them up, teacher tells her to straighten up and uncross her arms whilst they sit on the carpet scale level 3 or so. They have maths...she hates maths, she ends up around a 5 or 6 but calms down again during playtime so is back at 3 or 4. The lunch hall seems far too noisy that day and is overwhelming, she wants to leave but she can't she has to eat her lunch, her best friend is annoying her today with her copying and she ends up falling out with her well into the afternoon. They make up again when they get outside in the snow and build a snowman together, one of the boys kicks it down, cue lots of screaming and yelling from her she is probably around a 6. They start having a snowball fight, it helps get the anger out but then rage again because she gets told off for hitting him in the back with a snowball (they have some stupid rule about only hitting legs/feet) so she's about a 7 on the way home from school. She bangs on the door like she always does (even if she knows nobody is home), the dog starts barking daddy tells her off, up to an 8. We sit and watch cartoons and then the knitting begins, she 'gets it' and does lots of stitches quickly (at this point I go calm down) then when it gets to another type of stitch she can't do it and gets angry (I come back in because I hear her yelling about the stupid stitches). She takes the knitting to daddy so he can show her how to do it, he tells her that she has done all of the first bit wrong and he pulls the wool off the needle (even I did an OMG what have you done face), Kyoko screams "why did you do that daddy?!" and throws the needles and wool across the room, she's at a 9 now. Daddy tells her off for throwing things and she shoots up to a 10 and storms off to rage in her bedroom, screaming and crying. 10 minutes later she's fine and we play, she has a bigger meltdown later that night because I put all of her books back on her bookshelf that she'd carefully stacked in the middle of the room (I tried to tell her it was dangerous as it was so wobbly but she wouldn't listen) we had 20 minutes of ranting about how I was evil, cruel, hated her etc etc, storming past me, throwing things about before she lost it in her bedroom, hitting her pillow, throwing things etc before crying and then calming down and talking through it all.
