This week as I was strolling through blog land I read 2 blogs that I read all of the time. The first is Uppercase Woman I think on my blog roll I list her as "so I wasted all that birth control" which was what she was called when I first started reading her blog over 3 years ago. I should mention that she describes her blog as "The Rantings of a foul-mouth liberal, feminist, fat, recovering alcoholic, mother, wife, women and writer," which describes her to a T. You might ask yourself why you are reading a blog like that but I have grown to lover her outspokenness and liberal views. You need something like that in your life to shake it up! I don't always agree with her but that is ok too. Cecil is great about responding to EVERY comment. Take a few minute to check out her blog and let me know what you think.
The next blog I was reading was Snickollet. Snickollet is a single mom to 2 year old twins (boy and girl). Unfortunately she is single because her husband died in April 2007 due to pancreatic cancer. I have been reading her blog while she struggles to be a single mom, a widow, work full time, and recover (is that the right word) from her husbands death. She recently dove back into the dating world.
Now back to the second part of this blog entry - How to Deal With Yelling. On both blogs mentioned above they had entries regarding yelling and difficulty in dealing with the kids. It just so happens that I read an article just two days ago in Parents so I thought I would recap the article "How to Discipline Without Yelling" from the December Parents magazine.
We have all been there and done that. EVERY parent has yelled at their kids when they did not mean it. Just the other day I was working on cleaning the house and I was planning on heading out in a little bit with the girls to give Daddy some quite time. Daddy was doing some sort of work on the computer. The girls were getting very noisy (especially Lily) and Daddy yelled at them to settle down. So I decided to leave the house now instead of later. Which meant getting hats, coats, gloves, library books etc... I yelled at Mikayla for being too demanding while I was trying to find something for Lily to wear. I should not have yelled at Mikayla and I felt bad so I apologized. I also find myself losing my temper in the morning because Mikayla moves too slow at getting dressed, I wished Joe would get into the shower earlier than he does, and all I want is 10 minutes to sit down on the couch drink some coffee and watch the Today Show.
Ok - back to the article. Here are some tips to reduce the yelling in your house.
1. Recognize your child's limits. Sometimes, a lot of the time, we expect are children to do things above their capability. In my house a 3 1/2 year old will get distracted while getting dressed and she is a lot slower than I want her to be. In order to solve this I need to allow more time for Mikayla to get dressed.
2. Bite your Tongue. Do nothing is another example. In this article the author mentions that her kids will yell down to her from upstairs and she will yell back. She solved this problem by saying that is she can't see you than she can't hear you. The kids have to come downstairs to talk to their mom. I have tried this with Mikayla but she is great at "Mama, can I watch my show?" and repeating the same question until she gets an answer from me.
3. Survey the Situation. Instead of a food diary, keep a yell diary. Write down when most of the yelling occurs and what can you do to reduce it.
4. Devise a Battle Plan. What drives you crazy the most and causes you to yell the most? Then write down your resolution to this situation. In this article the two boys yelling at each other causes the mom to yell at them. So instead of yelling as well the mom sends the boys one one bedroom and they cannot come out until they have spend 5 happy minute together.
5. Drop a decibel. This was my favorite. Instead of yelling, whisper. It makes everyone quite down to listen.
6. Patience. This is one of my own and I use it all of the time. In order to raise kids you have to have a TON of patience. I have learned if I stop to take a breath, even in the middle of yelling, screaming and crying, it does help.
What do you do in your house to control the yelling?
3 comments:
thanks for the new blogs to visit :-)
The thing that has helped the most is to just SLOW DOWN. Slow down directions, slow down any verbiage that is spewing out my mouth. It has helped but I am far from perfect in this area.
Great post. I've been yelling at my boys more lately, mostly during times of transition, like going to school. Slowing down would really help.
Post a Comment