A pleasant surprise (realization) that I wanted to share.
My DS21 (non-BPD) has been trying to sell his old car, it has been sitting in the driveway for close to a month. It isn't worth very much, however he is trying to get more $ than the junk dealer will give him. We (I) posted it on craigs list and FB market place for him - but no serious buyers yet.
Yesterday morning I was very tired...only 3 hours of sleep the night before (due to DD16 - a story for another post) . I told DS I was calling the junk guy that afternoon to take the car. He insisted that he had one more week to try and sell it. He said I had given him one full month - which would be on Saturday. I was not very pleasant , and started to go into "Burn the house and kill the cat" mode
, as my loving husband likes to say. I told him fine, but he could call the junk dealer, it was his car, his responsibility, etc... He calmly looked at me and said, "Mom, you seem seem really tired, maybe now is not the time for this conversation, let's talk about it later" . Stopped me dead in my tracks...and I said your right. Later in the day we had a much more productive conversation and good compromises regarding the car.
We have been trying hard to practice our skills with both our kids, and I realized that it's working and this was evidence of that. 2 months ago DS would have yelled at me and we would have been mad at each other for the entire day.
FYI - It is very rare now that I revert to "Burn the House and Kill the Cat" mode, it was the lack of sleep and stress of the last week.
~SOD