Frustrated Mom Moment...

I'm so irritated!! Bradley, my sweet, helpful Bradley is about to drive me insane. He's usually so easy going. He's always helpful with the younger children, always willing to help Calvin when there's something that's difficult for him, always wanting to do things to be helpful for me. He does well in school and almost never has behavior problems. He wants to do what's right. If there's a child we can parent on auto-pilot, it's him. Usually. Every so often something doesn't go the way he thinks it should and he completely melts down. He becomes totally fixated on "why didn't you..."fix whatever problem has happened before it happened. Can I possible see the future to determine what my normally easy going child is going to flip out about? No. It happened about a year ago. I don't remember what it was about. All I remember was that for at least an hour, he kept asking me why I didn't do something that would've fixed whatever problem he was having before the problem ever happened. It's like I'm suppose to foresee when these issues will happen and take care of them beforehand. It didn't matter what I said, what reason I gave or how I explained, he just kept asking why. This morning, there was no milk. The kids all like to have cereal for breakfast. It's hard to have cereal without milk. Bradley always waits until the last minute to eat before going to the bus. This morning the other kids all realized there was no milk and they improvised. They ate yogurt with their cereal or they had cottage cheese and fruit or they had some toast. There were other options for breakfast. It's not like I was sending them off to school without breakfast. I'm not heartless. When Bradley realized there was no milk, he started asking me, "why didn't you buy milk?" What does it matter why I didn't buy milk? The fact remains that there's no milk. It doesn't matter how many times you ask me why I didn't buy it, there's still no milk. I offered him to have option A, B, C, D... for breakfast. No, he doesn't want to eat those things. He asks if I'll make him some eggs. At this point, there's no time for me to make eggs. I explain this to him and offer him A, B, C, D... no. "Why didn't you buy milk?" He's so upset about this that he's staying home from school. (And when the school asks is he sick? and I said no, he's too upset because there's no milk - yes they giggled.) I can't very well send him to school in tears because there's no milk and he's refusing to eat anything else. It's been about 40 minutes since this all started and he's right now sitting in his room regaining his composure. We've had a "responsibility" talk that I thought was going really well. He said he understood and I thought yes, I got through. He started to cry again and I asked why he was crying. "Because there's no milk." So he got sent to his room again to regain his composure again. Of course I'm going to go buy milk today, but I'm thinking he doesn't get to have any for a week. So that he can really understand that you just don't cry about not getting to have cereal for breakfast. 

Oh where is my sweet Bradley?