A while back, I wrote a post about yelling. I came from a family that yelled, so it should be no surprise that I became the yelling mom, myself. I’ve been working on it for a long time, and I can honestly say that just over this past year alone, I’ve seen a huge cutback in the amount that I find myself yelling, and the trick that I learned could not have been more simple.
I’ve tried all the things. I’ve tried counting to ten, I’ve tried leaving the room, you name it, I’ve probably tried it once or twice or more, and most of those things don’t really work too well because in the moment, I forget to do any of it. On top of it, a lot of those things require you to realize when you’re getting angry, but I’ve never been able to do that because my problem is not that I’m angry, my problem is just that I’m overwhelmed and/or overstimulated, which comes across as being agitated. And it is. I’m agitated. But I’m not angry, I’m just yelling.
The thing that I noticed was that when we were out in public, I seemed so much more capable of holding it together and remembering to stay calm and speak to my children with kindness. That was really the key. I could do it in public because I knew there were people who would be seeing the way I treated my children and I didn’t want to be perceived as a bad parent. So if I’m able to hold it together in public, I must be capable of doing it behind closed doors. What I did was start pretending that I was living my life in the public eye, like I was a part of my own family reality show, and if I were to start yelling or shaking my finger at my children, millions of people would witness it over broadcast television.
Of course, I realize that I am not actually being watched by millions in the privacy of my own home, and sometimes I still slip up and treat my family less well than they deserve, at which point I am thankful that I’m not actually a reality tv star. But it really has worked for me to pretend that this is the case. And if that is what it takes for my children to get a mother that treats them with as much respect as she expects from them, then it is worth it. Even if it is kind of weird.
