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The next month, the book gets circulated to all
the parents. Imagine my chagrin when James brought last month's book home, and
there—between "Mollie and her mom made brownies" and "Jeremy helped his dad take
out the trash"—was "James's mom was angry with him this morning." My temper, in
writing, laminated and distributed for all the world to see.
Worse yet, I realized that almost all our
recent mornings had degenerated into Mommy screamathons over seemingly minor
matters—dawdling, misplaced gloves, sibling bickering. I felt terrible, and
obviously James did, too. How could we break this angry pattern?
"Yelling is usually a sign that a parent has
no strategy," says Thomas Phelan, a clinical psychologist in Glen Ellyn,
Illinois, and the author of the popular 1-2-3 Magic: Effective Discipline for
Children 2-12 (Child Management, Inc.). At a loss for what to do, moms may
resort to yelling out of anger or frustration. But the end result is that
parents feel guilty and children get the emotional message that they are bad.
It's because we love our children so dearly
that they are able to provoke such strong feelings of anger in us, according to
Nancy Samalin, a New York City–based parent educator and the author of Love and
Anger: The Parental Dilemma (Penguin Paperbacks). But that doesn't make
expressing that anger through hollering or put-downs appropriate—or effective.
Samalin, who has conducted workshops for parents of toddlers through teens for
more than 25 years, says the key is to feel and acknowledge your emotions but
not let them control you and make you act irrationally.
Samalin and Phelan recommend drawing on these
following strategies when your kids are driving you up the wall:
- Exit or wait. When you feel your
anger getting the better of you, briefly withdraw from the situation until
you calm down, Samalin writes in Love and Anger. Phelan agrees: He suggests
stepping out of the room, counting to ten, going to your bedroom, and
closing the door—whatever it takes to restore your cool.
- "I," not "you." Avoid attacking
your child with "you" statements—"You are such a slob!" or "You'll never
learn." Instead, think in terms of "I": "I don't like picking clothes up off
your floor every day" or "I get upset when we're not on time." These are
less hurtful and inflammatory.
- Put it in writing. If you are too
angry to speak, don't. If your child is old enough to read, express your
feelings in writing. Sometimes just the time required to find pen and paper
will help you to cool off.
- Stay in the present. When your
child makes you angry, don't work yourself into a tizzy by listing every
offense he has committed in the past week and is likely to commit in the
future. Stick to the issue at hand.
- Restore good feelings. When you do
lose it, reconnect with your child as soon as possible. That may mean saying
you're sorry and giving a hug and kiss to a younger child. For an older
child, you may want to offer an explanation of why you were angry along with
an apology. Don't worry that apologizing will diminish your authority—it
won't. It shows your child that you respect him and teaches him that
everyone can be wrong sometimes.
- Recognize what the problem is. Is
it really your child's messy room? Or are you sleep-deprived? Feeling
overwhelmed at work? Mad at your husband or mother or boss? Be aware of when
you are more vulnerable to anger and resist the urge to transfer negative
feelings to your child.
- Make yourself—and all family
members—accountable for lashing out. Institute a "no losing it" rule to
make kids and parents aware of the times they go ballistic. But do it with a
light touch. For instance, make a chart and tack on a sticker when one of
you has an outburst. If one family member is accumulating a lot of stickers,
it's time to talk about it.
- Carry a tape recorder. When you
feel yourself about to blow, turn it on. If you explode anyway, play back
the tape and imagine yourself as the child on the receiving end.
- Use cognitive therapy. This
technique is sometimes used to calm fearful fliers. Analyze your thoughts
and put them in perspective—or, as Phelan puts it, "deawfulize" the
situation. (Fliers learn that their fear is of crashing, not flying. And
since crashing is unlikely, their fear is not reasonable.) Ask yourself—when
your children are fighting, say—if it's really that horrible. Think of the
situation as aggravating but normal behavior that merits a calm, rational
parental response.
Melanie Howard is a writer and
a mother of two. She lives in Alexandria, Virginia.
Copyright © 1999-2004 ClubMom, Inc. All rights
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