A Yelling Mom

 So I've become a "yelling" mom. I think I've written about this before. It's not my finest accomplishment and I am trying to change this, but yes I have become a yelling mom. I swore when I had kids I wouldn't yell, I wouldn't snap my fingers, I wouldn't tell them to "shut their mouth", I wouldn't tell them to "shh!", I wouldn't rush them... and then I had kids... and all that changed. For the first year things were great, the second year things were pretty good, but wow that third year... wow. There are no words except wow. The day Michael turned 2 it was like a switch was flipped. My sweet, innocent, and obedient child was replaced with... an opinionated, defiant, and stubborn child. Then his third birthday rolled around, and all I can say is I am shocked, actually shocked that we (mostly me) have survived this long. I have to remind myself daily that Heavenly Father gave me these sweet boys for a reason, that for some reason I need to be their mom, most days I'm pretty sure they deserve better, or less yelling at least.

So we're working on it. And we are praying that Michael's 4 birthday brings a slight change, a move away from the yelling his part, a move towards wanting to listen, a move away (or at least slightly away) from being defiant for absolutely not reason.

But back to me as the yelling mom, a few stories from this past week.

A few things to know. Zachary is giving up one of his naps, but he doesn't want to ditch the morning nap, he wants to ditch the afternoon nap (bad). By 10am he is done, if you leave the room (say to use the bathroom) he will try and lay down. I've been trying to help him move the nap time back but we havent been having success so far. On wednesdays Michael goes to preschool at 10am which means by the time we actually leave to take Michael to preschool Zachary is screaming to go to bed (on the other days he gets to take a nap as soon as we get home at 915 in a nice silent house). So we were getting ready for preschool. Both boys had woken up extra early (as a delightful bonus) and both were pretty agitated. Zach was screaming, Michael was throwing toys out of the toy box, and the clock was ticking. I asked Michael to put his socks on and after 15 minutes he finally went and got the socks and then he refused to put them on. He finally relented and started to put them on and then immediately gave up. He was screaming "I CANT DO IT! YOU DO IT, I LIKE DAD BETTER!!!" and I had enough. I screamed (not yelled, screamed at this point) "PUT YOUR SOCKS ON!". Not my finest parenting move. He never did put the socks on, I put the socks on. The yelling didn't solve anything, I didn't feel better, he didn't listen, and Zach was still tired.

Second story, I got some photos printed at Costco and needed to go pick them up. I thought we would just swing by on our way home from preschool and it would be easy. Wrong. It turns out the photo printer was broken, the employee kept telling me "just 10 more minutes" and in fairness I really think that she was trying, but it was broken and it was more than 10 minutes. After an hour of walking as slowly as possible through Costco (a store we had been to twice that week already) the boys were done. So we stopped and bought them some pizza (they had already eaten lunch but love pizza). Things were going great, but Michael would not sit on the bench. Instead he stood, kneeled, hopped, really everything except sitting. And guess what... he fell. He fell hard, and his pizza hit the floor. As I don't allow my kids to eat floor food anywhere but home (where they do it on a regular basis, don't judge us too harshly we mop... sometimes) I told him I was throwing it away. He was devastated. He was screaming from his injuries (and in fairness he was scrapped up pretty bad) and from the idea that his food was being thrown away. Of course people everywhere were rushing to help, which was nice, but not helpful in the slightest. I wasnt so sympathetic, he had been warned, didn't listen, and now sadly had to live with the results. Oh it wasnt a great mothering day. I told him that I would count to 3 and then he had to stop crying. I cut Zach's pizza in half, pretended it hadn't happened and eventually we moved on. Oh but we got some great looks, there wasnt any yelling, but wow. So I guess that wasnt a yelling story so much as a mother fail story. It seems there have been a lot of those recently.

So I'm hoping for less yelling (from me) and more listening from Michael. Do kids eventually start to listen? They do, right? At some point he will stop questioning every little thing and refusing to do it. At some point he will have volume control, and discipline enough to sit and listen, right? Oh Michael! Ok I must admit despite the above mentioned issues he really is great. He is so smart, and enthusiastic, and creative, and oh did I mention he really really loves his brother. He really is great... he just needs to LISTEN!