A door cam caught this mom calming down her angry son with a heartfelt talk, and it’s #parentinggoals
It’s incredibly difficult to help kids when they’re angry. Children literally don’t know how to regulate their emotions yet, and a lot of times anger can be insidiously contagious. It’s so easy to lose you cool and fight fire with fire — even when we know that it’s not the best way.
Earlier this week 29-year-old Destiny Bennett was struggling with the anger of her 5-year-old son Cash, but was able to keep calm and calm him down — with lots of love and a gentle pep talk. Her sweet deescalation was caught on her door cam and then quickly went viral on TikTok, tallying over a million views in two days.
“Can’t believe I caught this on camera,” the caption on the video reads. “My 5 year old really struggles with big feelings and regulating his emotions. This morning he was dealing with a lot of anger and I felt myself getting triggered by his behavior so I decided we should take a walk. My doorcam caught this interaction between us.”
The video starts the way most of our serious talks with our kids should start: “I love you. I love you very much. Do you know how much? You don’t know how much? I love you more than this much,” she says, holding her arms out as wide as they go.
Then she starts by validating his feelings.
“I can see how angry you are, and I want you to feel better. I want you to love you enough to see how angry you are, and want to feel better,” she says. “Sometimes feeling better is getting the things that you want, but sometimes you can’t get the things you want.”
Then she makes such an important point: It’s okay to feel your feelings.
“And it’s okay to be angry, but then we have to be able to let it go. And understand that we’re not going to get it. And we need to find another way to make our body feel better. I need you to love you, okay?”
The interaction ends with more love and support — can this woman please come give us all a pep talk?
“I love you,” she says. “Let’s have a good day today, okay? Want a kiss?”
Bennett talked to Today Parents about what happened that day.
“I knelt down at the door and was like, ‘Okay, let’s have this talk,'” Bennett says. “‘Because mommy is on the verge of tears right now and I need to level with you.'”
She wants everyone to know that even though she had a great parenting moment, she’s not a perfect mom.
“A lot of people will come to me and tell me I have so much patience and that I’m an angel,” Bennett says. “But I’m not. I still have my moments when I lose it and I have to come back to my kids and apologize and let them know that I’m having a bad day too.”
She also divulged that Cash was upset after fighting over Legos with his two older siblings — how did we somehow know this was about Legos — and ending up stomping around the house and eventually throwing something. No — this doesn’t sound familiar to any of us at all. We cannot possibly relate.
“It’s hard, especially when you don’t come from a background or family that chooses this style of parenting,” Bennett said. “I come from a family where if you’re angry, you would yell or scream — very old-fashioned. So this has been difficult.”
Bennett learned about conscious parenting after her first kid started acting out as a toddler. She went on to write the book, Revised Not Repeated: A Brown Mom’s Guide to Breaking Generational Curses in Parenting, that looks at how we can parent differently than our parents did.
“It’s a journey. It’s my journey. It’s my kids’ journey,” she says. “Some people who are just starting with conscious parenting expect an overnight change for themselves and their children, so when a moment goes wrong, they automatically think they can’t do it. I think people need to realize that snapping is all part of growth. If you feel guilty that you didn’t respond the way you wanted to, you’re already on the road to growing into the parent you want to be.”
You could see people cheering on her parenting in the comments section. Some people mourned that they weren’t treated that way when they were growing up — while others looked toward a bright future where more people are raised with gentleness.
And a lot of people were like… yep, we personally needed this pep talk about anger today.
