Dealing with Frustration

How many times have we seen our children struggling with frustration? All too many. Children are constantly challenged to new situations because they are so young. Everything is new to them.

What about ourselves? We are already grown up. Do we still face frustration? Of course. How do we deal with it? How do we teach our children to deal with it? 

How Do You Deal With Your Frustration? How Do You Teach Your Child To Deal With Frustration?

I have so many things on my mind lately, my daughter's 7th birthday, the new people whom I have met on the social media and of course the usual household managing. I have seen myself learning many new things. Especially blogging for now. 

I am not an expert in blogging but I went through numerous struggles trying to figure how to bring up my children over the last 9 years. I have yet to go through the whole journey but the process yielded plenty of frustration. The joys came only after I saw reconciliation between me and the children and both parties grew more mature. 

I hope I could give some useful insights dealing with frustration. All these came out from my own experience. 

1. Use your resources for help. 

The resources could be the time or money or the relationships that we have invested previously before we struggle. It sounds too easy for us to figure that out but when we struggle, sometimes we forget. In short, we are relying on other people (through paying), our family, friends or God as our precious resources. We could of course spend precious resources such as time to figure it out by ourselves (self- reliance). However, it could be hard because it takes so long that you lose time with your loved ones. In my situation, I love to do the house chores but my husband decides that I take a helper because he feels it is better time used if I do something else such as being with my children or other things. In this case, money spent could be a resource well used. 

We all know the dilema of using external help. Whenever our helper gives up on us, I feel frustrated. He then proposes to me, "Why don't you just change the helper?" He chooses to use money to solve his frustration instead of his time. As a wife, I thought, "How can money can solve all the problem?" In the end, I agree with him because time to him is a precious commodity and it is an easier way out of my frustration. I constantly tell myself that we are indeed blessed with the ability to use this resource because some families can't. 

The Joy After Dealing With Frustration

Now, let's take a look at our children again. Whenever they face frustration, what should they do? Is it to self help or to ask for help? The ideal way is they could struggle and get out of the problem themselves, in which case, there would be no frustration. But it is also okay to seek available help. I used to be very admanant on this, wanting them to solve the problem by themselves. But I realized now that it is also okay to help them if I notice they really need it. So as parents, I think the best way is to observe before jumping in to help. I'm readily available if they need me anytime. 

Now that I finish with all my explanation on human resources, I like to highlight that I turn to God for help when I am frustrated. I have placed this as a last resource to talk about because I want to deal with the topic as neutral as possible. In reality, I use this Godly resource very often. 

2. Do the things that you enjoy

For me, it's hard to enjoy if I face frustration because I'm so self reliant. But after applying 

point 1, my frustration would be half-gone. This enjoyment only applies while I wait for available resources to help. 

My children do the same. While waiting for help (usually, it is to wait for me to complete what I am doing at hand) , I ask them to take a breather and do something else. If they decide to solve the problem by themselves, it is good. But if they continue to feel frustrated (mostly because they can't wait), I ask them, "Why not do something else easier while you wait for me to come?" They usually cope better and feel less frustrated after that. 

3. The road is long but don't give up

The Road Is Long But Perserverance is Key

I take it very seriously not to give up. This is important to succeed. 

I won't call myself successful yet but with the experience of taking care of four children myself, it's an achievement.

However, being too comfortable is seldom good. I thus land myself now in the whole new world of blogging which is quite frustrating for me. Through my struggles, I learn to seek help. As a Christian, this is good because I see a need to fall back on God. We need to learn something new each day to keep going. So how to deal with frustration is such an important topic that I took 4 days to write this article and a week to publish it. 

During these four days, I invested a considerable amount of time reading blogs and exploring the social media. It takes up a lot of my time! I'm still not very good but I guess it will get better. 

I hope this article could be useful to those in the midst of frustration! 

Thanks for reading!

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And have a great day!