Overwhelmed & “true calm”

Good morning Nicholeen,

We have a 4.5, 3 & 1.5 yo and beginning home school. We have been rewatching our TSG course to try to tighten up on our own skills and understand everything better since the first time we rushed through it for "the childrens sake". We now realize that most of the power struggles, emotional drama and offense are started by us as parents & our children are just mirroring us.
So, with this round of implementing the course I have had a few days of really good success, but if anything is added to our situation (ie the weekend, a visitor or illness) it takes me several days to get the children back on track. I know my tolerances are too low so I'm working on a lot more corrections. But what I've noticed is that we get into a cycle of spending time correcting, calm down spot & helping them learn their chores, the other stuff that needs to get done doesn't, builds up and creates more chaos. What am I doing wrong or is this just part of the growing pains or are my children just young and very mom dependant?

Second question, my 4.5 yo is very strong willed and can choose to be defiant. There are days he can calmly follow instructions & show signs of being able to self-govern then there are days where it's just chaos. I think I've assessed that on those days, he not getting completely calm before getting off his spot & beginning his chore. He has learned to say "I'm calm", have a calm face voice & body and say ok to the practice instruction but that is where it breaks down. My response is to bring him back to the calm down spot. He might run from me or I have to do a soft hold while he kicks & screams. He then gets calm enough for the cycle to begin again. This can take an hour or more before he actually gets truly calm and has a change of heart. You said on the training video the other children should be getting positive attention & time while the oldest is in calm down spot. How do I do this? And you also said that it is his ultimate choice to when he chooses to get calm. How do I handle this? Thank so much.