Stop Yelling! 3 Things You Need to Do
Start working on these 3 things to help you yell less with your family and communicate efficiently.
Parents are human, and therefore, we don’t always meet our ideals of perfection. Sometimes, we blow our tops! We get angry, stressed, or overwhelmed, and we yell, and yes, sometimes at our kids.
It feels awful to yell at a loved one, especially if you’re trying to be the best parent you can be. I rarely ever yell, but if I do, it’s usually with my husband, and it’s usually because I have to learn how to overcome another aspect from my childhood. Luckily, he’s patient and forgives easily.
My parents yelled at my sister and me every day. This impacted the stress and anxiety I felt long-term, and it has taken years for me to conquer this aspect of my childhood. Thus, on this subject, I have the education and training, but I also have successfully overcome this facet of my behavior so I can be an effective parent.
Plus, I grew up in the New York City area, and we’re all crazy. Watching The Taking of Pelham 123, the older version with Walter Matthau, reminded me of all the yelling I experienced outside of my childhood home. Back then, movies all contained a bit of “slice of life” so you felt well-grounded in the world of the story. The movie helped jog my memory of the realities of growing up in New York City at that time, and I couldn’t help but laugh. Everyone would get into yelling matches. Many of the teachers yelled. Cranky neighbors yelled at the kids. Nearly everyone yelled. The priests yelled. Yes, New Yorkers would boo the mayor every time he made a public appearance just because they could, just like in the movie.
Let me share what I did in order to banish yelling from my home so I could be a kinder, loving, efficient parent. I wanted my behavior to reflect my love and good intentions rather than reflect abusive behavior patterns I learned in the past. In follow-up articles, I will discuss each of these facets in more depth.
I Took Responsibility for My Own Behavior
This one took some time, but I had to realize that when people let loose on others, it’s their failure to regulate their own emotions. You see, the abusive behavior patterns I learned from my childhood family taught me that when our parents yelled at us, it was always the kids’ fault rather than due to the parents’ lack of communication skills.
This skill treads on recognizing “healthy boundaries.” This means that you know where your responsibilities lie when you deal with your family, friends, coworkers, etc. and what their responsibility is. This can be thought of in terms of what you can control versus what you cannot control. If you’re taking responsibility for someone else’s poor behavior (except for your kids), this means that you have some work to do on developing healthy boundaries.
However, in order to change my behavior, I had to acknowledge that I was taught the wrong things as a child. I might make mistakes, and I might be in a bad way or not feeling well enough to communicate well, but I can learn from those instances and try and do better next time. Never, ever, is it anyone else’s fault that I yell. That’s on me. No one can “make” me lose my temper or yell.
I Examined the Way I Process My Emotions
Those in the field of psychology call this “emotional regulation.” My parents had none because yelling was a part of their normal, everyday communications, and because they could not offer me this life skill, I had to work with others to help me learn how to manage my emotions.
I found that my daily emotions were affected in a number of ways:
My past experiences were affecting the way I perceived the present and were therefore not a real representation of what was occurring at the moment.
I was experiencing interactions with people that reminded me of past verbal abuse.
I was stressed about something I could not control.
I Worked on Handling My Stress
Stress is related to emotional regulation, but it possesses an added factor.
The reasons why people feel stressed are wide and varied. While writing an article on stress, I was reminded that stress begins with perception. If we perceive stress, we become stressed. (By the way, the article I linked to was quoted in international academic journals.)
It took many years to untangle my reasons for feeling stressed and in what situations, but with steady and dedicated work, I am a lot better at managing my stress. We may not be able to prevent feeling stressed, but we can learn how to manage it when it does come up, and we can channel that energy so we can remain productive.
As parents, we need to worry about how our stress affects our interaction with our children. Stress affects the tone of your voice, the expression on your face, and your word choice. Your kids can mistake your personal stress as anger toward them.
For instance, if you had a tough day at work, your boss is acting like a jerk, and then you come home to your kids arguing and running amok, the kids’ behavior bothers you on that one day. Your stress cup is already pretty full at that point, and then all it takes is that one thing to send it over the edge.
The Little Things You Do Every Day Can Add Up
Over the next several installments, I will be discussing these grander ideas in more detail. I believe so strongly in doing little things every day to become a more efficient parent because I have done them, and over a month’s time, all those little realizations, all the daily progress, really add up big time.
Until tomorrow.
