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June 25, 2007
Cutting out the yelling
We're done yelling... not that we were big yellers before, but when the yell ever came out, chaos ensued. Gus would become overly defensive, we would feel like crap, and whatever we were yelling about never really had a great conclusion.
We're starting to ask ourselves a lot of questions about the sudden rules we were making up, the requests that just HAD to be completed at that moment, the control of everything we were trying to maintain. We had to stop and think about the fact that Eli and Gus are people, and while there are definitely times that the kids need to do what we're telling them (for their safety or, by God, we have to get to work right now), there are usually other ways to accomplish our wishes.
Let's face it, no one responds well to being yelled at. I'm not saying we should suppress our feelings, but when Gus is in a 'moment', and we feel the yell coming on, we try to stop and quickly try to figure out how we got to this point. Does he really have to wear THAT shirt? Why can't he pick out another one? Have I really heard why he's upset? Most of the time, if we give him choices where he clearly should have them, or if we stop and repeat back to him why he's angry, he cools off... but he does have a couple of coping mechanisms for proving to us how angry he is. One is rolling back the rug in his room ['Don't clean it up, Mama...'], the other is telling me how dirty my shoes are ['Your shoes are dusty, Mama.']. I have to say his words of hurt are quite sweet.
Posted by janna at June 25, 2007 10:25 PM