I never really had much of a vision of myself as a parent before I became one. I had always assumed that I would just be a more tired version of myself — direct and open, patient, chatty, eager to help and answer questions and generally pretty mild. I was not correct about this.
There existed a time in my life when I didn’t really know what I sounded like when I yelled. Prior to children, I honestly cannot think of more than a single time when I yelled in anger. When I worked security at the university bookstore (or as they prefer to rename it “loss prevention”) I got into an argument with a slacker coworker about the fact that he was a slacker coworker and our “discussion” in the little hidden back office of the bookstore could be heard by patrons walking the aisles. People were not terribly pleased about that one. That was it. I didn’t fight with friends or girlfriends. I didn’t (don’t) really have any nemeses. Janelle and I managed to go years and years only having mild disagreements (and even now I would count the number of actual fights we have had on one hand).
That era is long gone. I am now sick of hearing myself at volumes that do not qualify as “inside voice”. Joshua started the process by being a toddler who loved to have some fairly impressive tantrums. He’s pretty well behaved now, but he put the first cracks in the armor. Matthew delivered the finishing blow. He started out as our little tiny toddler man who loved to bite and so we would end up running across the room yelling as we went, hoping to distract him with volume before trying to pry him off his crying brother. He has grown out of biting but the principle of “yell to stop Matthew short from hurting someone” remains. Slapping his brother. Pinching him. Sitting on him. Kicking him. Now there’s also stuff like making sure he’s not squeezing his sister’s face or trying to put something around her neck or hiding her under a blanket by sitting on her with it. The start of it all is his boundless exuberance. Everything seems like a fun idea and the fun escalates without stopping until he’s in trouble or hurt.
It does not help that I have found there are certain degrees of stimuli that make me ripe for explosions. Our house is a constant mess and once it reaches a certain level, I start to not be able to handle it anymore. It bothers me to be in certain areas and if I don’t have the time and availability to just sit down and start sorting things back to how they should be, then I am much more likely to be in a bad mood. An auditory mess is sure to rile me up as well. I don’t just mean noise in general. I have three children. There is always noise. I can deal with noise, even loud noise. Even different loud noises by three different children at the same time. But then there is the whining. The boys (like many-to-most children I think) have periods where they are incessant whiners. And if they bring their whining to a fever pitch around the same time that Maya is screeching at someone to pay attention to her instead of doing things like preparing food for the family or attempting to get ready to go to work for the day hoooooooo boy. I don’t do well then.
I yell. I yell to grab attention. I yell to underline my seriousness. I yell to end the sound wars and bring about silence.
And I hate it.
I hate it for several reasons. 1) On one level I know it won’t register with the kids long-term (I maybe have like two or three memories of my entire young childhood where my parents were yelling at us for something), but on the other side I’m conscious of being remembered as this curmudgeonly ogre. 2) It’s repetitive as hell. You cannot avoid parroting the parenting tropes that you have both grown up with and also seen in media. We’ve absorbed so much of them that they feel like they fit. But because you’ve seen them in so many places, it means you also know exactly what you sound and look like when you say them because you too have hated that character in a movie. 3) It means that I have lost. It says I have run out of options and I have no choice left but to tap into my id and shake the whole god damn Etch-a-Sketch until it’s all blank again and we can start over.
I may not have had much of a picture of myself as a parent, but I think I at least imagined that I would be more savvy that this. And while I want to be careful to say that I don’t think I am a bad parent (because I am not trying to trigger a bunch of sympathy commentary pointing out the nice things people have seen me do with my children), I do not see yelling as a regular weapon in the arsenal of a skilled parent.
The gap between where I am and where I would like to be is fairly wide and while making a list of things I could do other than raise the volume or remembering to always count to five before saying anything or any other trick like that might seem like it would be a gigantic first stride towards fixing things, I think the reality is that it wouldn’t do much at all because the real issue is that I have lost all my chill.
There is now a near-endless list of things that I am not very relaxed about that children exist specifically to exacerbate. Getting somewhere on time is like conducting a deathmarch. Being calm and quiet in public places takes cajoling and threats. Getting a child to wash hands instead of rolling around on the floor crying about how they don’t want to wash hands is a ludicrous series of negotiations. No matter the hassle I can’t seem to budge on standards and norms. I don’t know that I can ever be comfortable arriving late, for example, and the children simply do not get the urgency. And why should they? They are very small and everything is fleeting to them. One day when they are older they will be late to something they have finally decided they care about and then they will get it.
Some things I don’t think I’ll be able to be cool about, at least not for some time. There are levels of disrespect (I just aged 10 years writing that) that I think will always make me go twitchy. There are dangerous, persistent behaviors that I’m probably going to reflexively yell about because I’m trying to preserve life and limb. The rest I’m going to try to relax about. Boys fighting? One of them make the other one cry? Both of them crying and actively fighting? Unless they’re causing real physical damage I’m going to sit out and encourage them to figure it out. Running late? I’ll give a timeline, outline consequences and then hang out. If I’m walking my way to a car to leave, they’ll hurry up (most of the time). Hopefully while I get better they will age out of their mad little habits and while they learn to find their voice I’ll be able to get back to my old one.
Admittedly easier with only a single child, but I find myself having the same thoughts about yelling and when to employ it. Likewise, I never yelled before having my daughter. Ever. It just wasn’t something my mind went to when I got angry or in a fight. That being said, I don’t necessarily see it as a completely negative tool to use when parenting. There are times when the shift in volume is necessary to signal something needs to be done quickly or is dangerous. Especially if infrequently used, yelling can be extremely effective in having a lasting impression about the dangers of something. I’ve yelled at Inea for going to touch a hot stove and since then it has made an impression more so than me explaining afterwards that she shouldn’t touch it because it will hurt her. She says she won’t touch it because “Daddy will yell at me”.
Now on the surface that might seem like a bad thing. She remembers the yelling more so then me telling her after why she shouldn’t touch it, but in my view that is just how kids her age work. Logic, cause and effect, and reasoning are still hard concepts they are still coming to understand. You want to encourage them to approach things that way, but they just aren’t equipped yet to process the world in such a way and the quickest and most reliable way to stress something is dangerous is to associate it with something negative to them. The danger in my mind comes from relying on this too much to the point where it is viewed as the new normal or getting your child stuck in the mode of “don’t do anything that will cause Daddy to tell” rather then understanding the reasons behind the yelling as they get older.
Anyways, like I started, the 3 >>> 1 so I doubt it experiences or how we deal with this can even be remotely similar, but I wouldn’t stress about he yelling at all. It is just the language your kids understand the easiest right now. That won’t always be true and your are smart enough to know when it is no longer required. Till then, don’t worry about it.
Ugh. Mobile typos and the inability to edit a post. Bane of my existence.