My whole family, like many others across America today, sat down together to watch the second attempt of the Demo-2 NASA/SpaceX collaboration rocket take astronauts Bob and Doug safely and successfully into space.

My children, being young, had many questions. Mama, why are they going into space? Mama, what’s it like in space? Mama, is it safe to try to go to space? Mama, where are their families? Mama, but what if something happens to Bob and Doug?

I’m thrilled they ask. I’d much rather they get those questions out, where we can help them deal with them, than have those questions stewing inside them.

The risk to two people, you could tell that the emotional burden on the kids was large. They struggled with the question of what might happen to our astronauts. For my children this would be true of any two people; it was made even more emotionally challenging as they learned more about Bob and Doug, including their families, and that Doug’s son is not that different in age from them, and that Doug’s son was still a toddler when his mama spent almost half a year in space.

It led to good discussions for us, about what is right and wrong, vs what is personal choice and personal preference. We talked about how nobody is making Bob and Doug do these things, and that while their mama respects astronauts greatly, their mama would never want to be one and isn’t leaving them even if offered the chance to go to the moon.

So everyone was coping with the stress of launch. Bob and Doug were well into their launch. Then a green stuffed dinosaur floated across the screen. It was the zero-g indicator, the low-tech historical method of knowing when the craft has reached the altitude where they are now weightless. Which triggered a discussion about how there is usually a beloved stuffed animal, sent by the family of one of the astronauts, to do double duty of both non-hazardous indicator and emotional buoy.

And at that point there were tears. Hysterical tears. Not only are people at risk, people who may have made their own choices, but the stuffies?! How could we possibly risk stuffies? And hysterical, illogical behaviors began – they rounded up every. single. stuffed animal in the house, put it in a pile in the middle of the living room floor (where we’d been watching the launch together), covered them in blankets, and together sprawled protectively over the whole pile. Protective behavior of the stuffies continued for a good 20 minutes, after which since they were no longer watching the launch feed quite as intently, I suggested they go outside in the sunshine and fresh air to exercise off some of their emotional overload.

What’s one stuffie (or one dinosaur) too far for you? What’s your breaking point, at which you stop making logical decisions and stop having thoughtful discussions, instead reacting suboptimally? It may be just one small step that finally brings you across that threshold, but it’s really the pile-up of all of the preceding challenges. Then, once you know what you’re vulnerable to, put barriers in place so you don’t get there, and also make sure you have methods and techniques in place to help bring you back.