The 2 younger curly girlies are on their way to losing their Hanukkah presents for tonight. Their rooms are disaster areas. I have told them multiple times this morning to clean, clean, clean, but they'd rather do any of the following: Fight with each other, pester me about snacks (I promise, I did feed them breakfast, but eating always seems like a better choice than cleaning does) or make a bigger mess in other parts of the house. Just as I felt my yell rising up, I took a deep breath, called them over to me and said their presents will be held hostage until their rooms are cleaned up. M (who I'm sure is going to end up being a lawyer) piped up with, "So, if we don't get our rooms cleaned until tomorrow, we just get them tomorrow!" I popped her bubble by pointing out that my offer has an expiration on it. If it's not cleaned by the time we light the menorah tonight, the presents become mine. . . for good. That got me 2 pairs of bug out eyes and M turned to L and said, "Come on, L! Let's go clean our rooms, or Mommy's not giving us our presents!" So. . . One would think that the idea of losing Hanukkah presents would be enough to get them to clean, but M then came up with the grand idea of having a cleaning race. L is not having it at all. She has been yelling, crying and whining and I'm fairly certain there isn't any cleaning going on in that little snot fest.
I have a feeling this is going to be one of those days where the girls are in their (messy) rooms and right before we light the menorah, there will be a lot of, "Wait!! I'm still cleaning!" and "Don't light yet! I'm almost finished!" in attempts to set their presents free.
No Yelling count: 2 Days Yell Free!
Saturday, November 30, 2013
Friday, November 29, 2013
First post= Thanksgiving Thoughts
I have been doing a lot of thinking the last few days. For about the last seven months I have been following a fellow Mom who calls herself The Orange Rhino. The Orange Rhino is all about yelling less and she managed to go an entire year (plus!) without yelling. Last April, I set out to do the same. I started off great, but I'm nowhere near perfect. I still yell, but my claim to fame is I yell a lot less now than I did before. I know I'm not a perfect person (Laurie Berkner's "I'm Not Perfect" is one of my main ringtones), but I want to be as close to a perfect Mom as I can be. I had a real eye opener the other night and things are finally being put into place for me to cut out the yelling for good.
There is nothing worse than feeling angry at a particular person and yelling at your child because you cannot yell at the person with whom you're angry. This was me 2 nights ago. My sweet M (8) was acting like a typical 8 year old and she got the brunt of my frustration that had built up after a fight with my mother. It took my wonderful, darling husband to point it out to me. I think my wonderful, darling husband knew how M was feeling given the fact that as soon as I had hung up the phone with my mother earlier that afternoon, I turned to him and started yelling at him.
After he pointed this out to me, I was immediately transported back to my childhood in which both my parents yelled at me ALL. THE. TIME. I am certain I deserved to be yelled at more than a handful times, but I distinctly remember feeling that I was being yelled at because they couldn't express their frustrations to the person who was causing them to feel that way. I promised myself I would never do that to my kids. . . Yeah, add that to the list of things I promised I would never do when I had kids.
A few weeks ago, my wonderful husband pointed out that my Orange Rhino challenge wasn't going as great as I made it out to be. I think his words to me were, "If you aren't going to actually try to stop yelling, than stop buying all this orange s*it!" It was then I decided that come January 1, I was going to start the challenge again, only doing with out yelling at all.
After what happened 2 nights ago, though, I have decided that if I'm going to do this right, I need to start now. It's like a smoker who says he'll quit smoking after he's smoked his last pack of cigarettes. What happens when you find a new pack? If I try to wait until Jan 1, what are the chances I'm actually going to remember about my grand plan? What better time to start than the most stressful time of the year?
I got through Thanksgiving Day without any yelling at all and if you met my family, you'd know that's no easy feat. If I could survive Thanksgiving, surely all the days after will be easy peasy lemon squeezey, right? They certainly can't be any harder.
There is nothing worse than feeling angry at a particular person and yelling at your child because you cannot yell at the person with whom you're angry. This was me 2 nights ago. My sweet M (8) was acting like a typical 8 year old and she got the brunt of my frustration that had built up after a fight with my mother. It took my wonderful, darling husband to point it out to me. I think my wonderful, darling husband knew how M was feeling given the fact that as soon as I had hung up the phone with my mother earlier that afternoon, I turned to him and started yelling at him.
After he pointed this out to me, I was immediately transported back to my childhood in which both my parents yelled at me ALL. THE. TIME. I am certain I deserved to be yelled at more than a handful times, but I distinctly remember feeling that I was being yelled at because they couldn't express their frustrations to the person who was causing them to feel that way. I promised myself I would never do that to my kids. . . Yeah, add that to the list of things I promised I would never do when I had kids.
A few weeks ago, my wonderful husband pointed out that my Orange Rhino challenge wasn't going as great as I made it out to be. I think his words to me were, "If you aren't going to actually try to stop yelling, than stop buying all this orange s*it!" It was then I decided that come January 1, I was going to start the challenge again, only doing with out yelling at all.
After what happened 2 nights ago, though, I have decided that if I'm going to do this right, I need to start now. It's like a smoker who says he'll quit smoking after he's smoked his last pack of cigarettes. What happens when you find a new pack? If I try to wait until Jan 1, what are the chances I'm actually going to remember about my grand plan? What better time to start than the most stressful time of the year?
I got through Thanksgiving Day without any yelling at all and if you met my family, you'd know that's no easy feat. If I could survive Thanksgiving, surely all the days after will be easy peasy lemon squeezey, right? They certainly can't be any harder.
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