When They're Overwhelmed and Overbearing
There's a moment every parent recognizes. Something small happens — the wrong cup, a bad grade, a plan that changed — and the reaction is enormous and completely out of proportion to the thing that caused it.
What's happening is that your kid has run out of room. The part of the brain that reasons has gone offline, and no amount of explaining is going to bring it back while they're in it.
The posts here are about recognizing that state and knowing what to do with it. Some were written when my own kids were small. The behavior changes a great deal between four and twenty. The thing underneath it changes almost not at all.