I was a yeller. Whenever our boys were young and weren’t listening, I would yell. Sometimes loud. Sometimes using my mean voice. Sometimes simply with the look on my face. And the more they didn’t listen, the more I would yell.
What good did it do them?
They often did not do what I wanted anyway. I always felt terrible afterwards. And none of us were learning anything. When they say “you aren’t the boss of me”, they really are right. What right do we have to treat them worse than we treat the people we work with? Or our friends or acquaintances?
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I wish I knew then what I know now.
As Jane Nelsen, the founder of Positive Discipline says, “Children do better when they feel better.” Don’t we all?
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So here are some ideas to help stop the yelling in your house.
• Start by noticing when you yell, and what happened to set you off. Notice how your body feels as you are getting ready to yell. You can even put a quarter or dollar in a jar every time you yell. See how much money you put away at the end of a week. Take your family out for ice cream with it!
• See if you can notice your body getting ready to yell earlier and earlier. Take 10 slow deep breaths, with your hand on your heart. This may help you calm down.
• Before you yell, say to your child, “I’m feeling pretty angry about you not listening (or whatever is making you angry). I’d like to calm down, then talk about what’s going on. Okay?”
• Once you are both calm, sit and talk about what the problem is. If you are asking your child to do something and they aren’t listening, explain how you feel, and ask how they feel about being asked to do it. Work together to come up with ideas to solve the problem, and see if you can reach a compromise. Make sure you are both in agreement, then let it go.
• Here’s an example. I wanted our sons to get their homework done immediately after school. One of them always wanted to watch television before doing his homework. We reached an agreement that he could watch two shows, then do his homework. At the end of two shows, he generally came in to the kitchen. If he didn’t, I would simply say to him one word, “homework”. That worked well in our house.
• Sometimes the agreements work well for a while, and then don’t. When they stop working, sit back down together, and come up with other solutions and a new agreement.
I hope you too can become a reformed yeller!
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