Things are difficult. We’ve hit the angry tween years, ones I remember vaguely well from my time going through it.

The child doesn’t think the parent understands it, the parent doesn’t understand why the child doesn’t use their head and help with things, rather than wait to be asked.

Until you’re told by the child to get out of their space, they don’t want you in there any more.

The first few times you can call it out, tell them it’s not nice to speak like that.

But you end up ground down, ground up into the smallest of pieces where you’re no bigger than a speck that is about to get trodden on. So it happens. This time there’s no means to respond. Just keep quiet and get out. Move on. I’m in my place.

Then you find space. You hope you’re doing this right. You hope you’re not royally messing up that child’s life by dealing with it like that, so they end up dealing with everyone else like that. After all, aren’t us parents the testers in life as to how you deal with angriness, arguments and more? We teach the calm way to deal with things in the hope that it passes on to their peers in similar situations.

This isn’t the first time, it won’t be the last time, I’m so ground down I don’t have the emotional capacity to be upset by it any more. I just switch off.

Space, we all need space. Headspace, life space. Give each other space.