Thou shalt not....

A rainy Monday afternoon, 10th June 2013 (Australian time)

It so happened that recently an online friend (a big shout out to my April '10 PR Mothers) posted an article about the effects of yelling on children.  When did I decide that I might yell too much?  Maybe it was when I didn't even want to read the article.  Because I knew that I yelled and so I knew I was going to be made to feel bad about how I parent.

I LOVE MY CHILDREN.  I don't think there's anyone out there who knows me who will deny me that.  But do I think I could be doing a better job?  All the time.  Eventually I did read that article.  I even disagreed with some of it.   But, the idea was borne within me that I really would like to interact more positively with my children, and that meant, no more yelling!

And now, a date set in stone - Monday 10th June 2013 (while I started the no yelling about three weeks ago and have not fallen off the wagon, I never acknowledged exactly when I started).   I read a blog by a woman who decided not to yell for 365 days and she posted ten positive things she'd gotten out of that.  I wouldn't say I was inspired as such, but I certainly didn't take anything negative away from it either and moreso made me feel that I had made the right decision to try to improve. From this woman's blog I did set a goal - to see whether I could go for 365 days without yelling at my children.  Found the link - hope it works! 

/http://theorangerhino.com/10-things-i-learned-when-i-stopped-yelling-at-my-kids/

So where am I at?  I've discovered very quickly that sometimes the kids would just be niggling at each other and my urge to yell was immense, even though they weren't really being that bad (more like the straw that broke the camel's back).  It occurred to me that it might often be my own need to release steam that creates my urge to yell.  

There have been times where I've had to whisper to myself "Do not yell, do not yell". 

There are times when I know that yelling would get a child to accomplish something much faster than trying to work out another way to approach things (Henry going through a stage of not wanting to go to school for example), but all in all I think I'm going okay and Jack has even told me that I'm doing a good job (thanks buddy!).

I have said to the children at various times something along the lines of, "I'm feeling angry but I'm trying hard not to yell".  I mean I'm figuring it's okay, maybe even healthy to let them know that I'm angry or frustrated but that I'm trying to find more reasonable ways to calm down than I might have previously.

Funny thing is, I'm a very non-confrontational person who will go out of my way to avoid any source of conflict.  I wouldn't have picked me for a yelling mother.  But there you have it.  We come in all shapes and forms and I've yelled with the best of them.  I'm not proud of that, but I am proud of the fact that I'm trying to make a change.

I know myself that if someone is angry at you, it's not a nice feeling.  I don't want my kids to grow up feeling scared of me because I yell.  So that's probably the crux of my conscious decision to at least try not to yell.  

I probably should add (being a new blog and all and aware that if I'm putting myself out there I'm bound to be judged), that I don't actually yell day in, day out - 24/7!  But I've raised my voice more often than I needed to and so, I'm working on that.

Ayla

x

Here's a random beach pic from April this year.  I love blogs that add lots of pictures so thought I'd add a few here and there.