Weekend morning obligations aren’t my daughter’s favorite things. Truth be told by Captain Obvious, I feel the exact same way.

So when she came downstairs one Sunday morning, her face a frightful mask of resentment at the day’s stacked obligations, I felt her pain. I commiserated.

“I know you have homework to do, and you want to read your new book, and you wanted to sleep in ...”

Her scowl cut me off.

She stomped around in a fog of anger, just stewing in it. Rolling around in it and making sure we understood how deeply unfair her life is. No mild comment was met with acceptance. No gentle encouragement was heard with reason.

My commiseration turned sour in my mouth. I felt her fog rolling over me, tinting my thoughts with a double resentment: First, we had to be busy on a day we would all have rather been resting; and second, I had to be accosted by the mood of my teenager. It wasn’t fair.

Now both of us were stewing. Which got my husband stewing in a protective, how-dare-you-make-your-mother-upset sort of way. If you think the morning was a disaster, you’re right. We were a hot mess.

When my girl sat down on the couch to tie her shoes — with jerky, indignant motions — we couldn’t let it go any longer. It wasn’t fair, we told her, that she was ruining our day. It wasn’t right that because she was angry and irritated, she made everyone around her irritated and angry too. In life, we said, there are obligations: So get over it.

Do you ever get the feeling that something is a little sideways in your heart but you can’t quite pinpoint its beginning? Like your worry is hiding in a shadow and you have to hunt it out? That’s how I felt after we talked to our girl. I wondered if my frustration was simply a reaction to my daughter’s moodiness or if there was more to it. After all, I’ve just been learning about the concept of a 50/50 life. So if it’s normal for about 50 percent of our day to hold positive emotion and about 50 percent of our day to hold negative emotion, I should be open to this rough morning being in that negative half and move on, right?

I couldn’t untangle it, though. The more I thought about it, the more I realized I was unhappy with the way we’d talked to our daughter. With the benefit of hindsight, it began to sound like I was telling our child that she — in her immature, adolescent, developmental stage — was responsible for my thoughts and feelings. That I, a grown woman, with powers of self-control and the will to behave in an emotionally mature way, was handing that power to my child and washing my hands of my own responsibility.

Yes, she was angry. Probably there had been a moment of rudeness too. And a few spiteful words. Wrong behaviors are to be addressed, sure, but wrong emotions? There’s no such thing.

And anyway, letting someone else have control of your feelings is a recipe for disaster, especially if that person isn’t a purely rational being. I’m not trying to be dragged back into the quagmire of emotions that was middle school, OK? I’ve served my time.

I was reminded of the somewhat-appropriate quote by Eleanor Roosevelt: “Nobody can make you feel inferior without your consent.” In this case, I needed to recognize that nobody can make you feel anything without your consent. No child’s mood, no driving stranger’s hand gesture, no spouse’s forgetfulness, no sibling’s judgment, no nothing, not ever, can make us feel bad — unless we provide our consent.

If I’m in control of my feelings (and I want to be), it’s because I’m in control of my thoughts. My thoughts are in my power, not in her power. So here’s what I started thinking.

Instead of, “She’s being so immature,” I thought, “I know exactly how she feels because I’ve been there myself.” Instead of, “She hurt my feelings,” I thought, “I’m strong enough to guide my own feelings.”

Once I’d figured out where my discomfort had been hiding, there was only one thing left to do. We buckled ourselves into the car, just the two of us, and headed off into the morning.

“You know what your dad and I said a little bit ago about your grumpiness making our day bad? Well, I take that back. You don’t have to worry about my feelings, because I’m in charge of those. My feelings — and Daddy’s — are not your responsibility.”

She stared out the window in silence.

“You’re absolutely allowed to feel frustrated,” I continued. “If I was expected to stop my work or my rest to do something I had no interest in, you can bet I’d be just as upset as you are right now. But listen. We have to go, and that’s all there is to it. And if you would rather be angry, you are entitled to your feelings without worry that you’re affecting anyone else’s day but your own.”

She made the most fleeting eye contact and nodded.

“So here’s the most important part: While you’re not responsible for my feelings, you can be responsible for yours. And the way you think about your day and your obligations can help you have a really great outlook on life. That’s in your power. So I’ll continue to talk through those feelings with you because I want you to learn that your emotions are in your power so you can have an OK day. And even when your feelings are negative, I will still be close by if you need me.”

“OK,” she whispered.

The whole situation felt not unlike the time I stopped trying to convince toddler-her that the medicine she had to drink wasn’t really bad. After long, resistant minutes, I told her the truth: This medicine does not taste good. In fact, it’s awful. You’ll get to make the most disgusting face while you swallow it, though, and we will say together: This is gross! And then it’ll be over.

Maybe she felt understood. Like her feelings about the situation were valid. That her trusted parent wasn’t trying to trick her into accepting bad things as good things. That the adult in the room didn’t join the madness but offered calmness.

Maybe when a person feels heard, the medicine goes down a whole lot easier. And maybe when a parent doesn’t blame (or rely on) a child for their emotional well-being, the pressure to hold it all together doesn’t weigh so heavily.

Sarah Coyne is a parenting columnist for the Globe. Her email address is scoyne@joplinglobe.com.

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