I yelled at my child today.
Nothing that will put me on America's Ten Most Wanted list, but nonetheless, I did it.
I will spare you the details about why I got frustrated after telling Rowen to brush his teeth about 150 times, or to take his medicine that I put right in front of his breakfast bowl only to find it (every day) still sitting there when we are trying to run out the door for school. I also won't go into detail about how he still had to get his book bag together, shoes laced up, and jacket on in the 45 seconds we had until the school bell would ring, but instead found him playing with a squirt gun. I will also not tell you that I told him to hang up the shorts and t-shirt in exchange for cold weather clothes about a hundred times only to catch him at the breakfast table in his summer gear. Dirty from wearing them yesterday. So yeah, I will spare you the details.
Sigh.
However, despite my intro I did not swear at my child as a result of our crazy morning routine. I won't do that. But is it really drawing that much of a line when I take the liberty of yelling at him just to blow my own steam? After I calmed down, I realized I was glad that no one had been watching because I wouldn't exactly have earned the Mother of the Year award. I only say it now because it might be one of those PBS 'you-too-can-learn-from-my-mistakes' moments.
I read an article the other day about how yelling at our kids can be just as damaging as hitting them. In some cases, I suspect it can be much worse. I have often humbled myself by apologizing to Rowen for being less than cordial in our exchanges. I think that in addition to teaching ourselves that it is not ok to yell at our kids, we also have to swallow some humble pie if we ever break code. How are we to ever teach our kids to do the same if we refuse to do it ourselves?
So despite having to put "yelled at my ADHD child for being off-task" on my parenting resume, I have to face up to the fact that it was certainly not my best parenting moment and vow to do better next time. I may have to blow the dust off the old morning routine chart for Rowen and go at it again. I may have to get the boys up earlier (Whoa! Do I have to go that far?), although that doesn't seem to do any good. I may need to look inside myself and figure out a better way to do this. After all, I am the parent, right? And by looking inside myself, I should clarify that this does not mean the absence of discipline, it just means a better form of it. That is, if yelling is even considered a discipline technique.
So while I may not be in an orange jump suit any time soon for yelling at my son, let's consider for a moment that this somewhat ridiculous thought may not be so far off the beaten path. Because if we really are supposed to be the parents, don't we need to teach our children to be the best possible human beings they can be? We don't want them to walk with a limp their whole lives because of our mistakes. That should darn well be criminal.
And fret not if you've also been less than stellar in this category. The last paragraph of the article talks about how we can turn things around with a simple apology and a willingness to make a change for next time. They are worth it, after all.
Here is a link to the article: http://shine.yahoo.com/parenting/study-shows-yelling-kids-damaging-hitting-them-150200191.html#!l8n05
No comments:
Post a Comment