No yelling on the bus!

In the Adam Sandler movie, Billy Maddison, there’s a scene where Chris Farley plays the role of a loud, sloppy school bus driver. He’s the last man that should be working with children but he takes a classroom of fifth graders on a field trip. After he impatiently rushes all of the kids to take their seats he screams at the top of his lungs, “NO YELLING ON THE BUS!!!”

I feel like Chris Farley every day. I get frustrated at the kids for various things. Making messes, fighting and not listening are the most common. I eventually blow up at them and immediately feel terrible about losing my cool. Why can’t I calmly convey a message or feeling? Why am I so quick to escalate things? There’s a better way to get my kids to behave but I just keep repeating the aggressive behavior that I know is ineffective.

Thinking back to my childhood, my parent’s methods of discipline were polar opposites. My mom was always loving and calm. I don’t have any memories of unjust anger. The most angry I ever saw her was when she found out about my underage tattoo. She saw the tramp stamp peak out from my pants as I bent to pick something up. She asked, “April, did you get a tattoo?” and with a disappointed look on her face, left the room and didn’t talk to me all day. By that evening she was over it.

My Dad on the other hand, was pissed off ALL of the time. I don’t have any good memories. Everything we did that started out fun ended in him yelling his frustrations, and with me in tears. His anger would come frequent, unexpected and for no reason at all. I hated it. Today, I still get extremely upset if someone is angry with me and often worry my actions will make somebody angry.

I know all of this, yet I still yell at my own children. Why would I discipline like my father? Ken and I have discussed this a lot. He grew up with loud and aggressive discipline and hated it too. Still, he yells at the girls all of the time. It makes no sense. Our number one goal as parents is to create a calm and loving environment for our children where they feel safe.

We’re currently kind of on vacation mode with the Shelter-In-Place order. We rented a couple of houses with lots of outdoor space to alleviate some of the stresses of being stuck. I’ve been so proud of the girls. They play really well together and have such great imaginations. They spend hours entertaining each other. The only downside is the messes they create. Ken and I are enjoying our spacious temporary environments and spend the days playing cards, exercising (as much as we can motivate ourselves to), eating and drinking.

There’s really no excuses to be so frustrated with the girls and things came to a head a few days ago. It was clear we were out of control with our outbursts. All of our messages were said, repeated, repeated some more, and then shouted angrily. We were sick of yelling and listening to each other and ourselves yell. We couldn’t continue this behavior so we vowed right then and there to not yell anymore. We would calmly discipline and no longer lose our cool!

With the decision made, and a clear, “why”, neither one of us found it difficult. The second day brought a whole new discovery to parenting for me. I have always wanted to create built in discipline for the girls. Like, if they don’t turn off the TV when I say to, they lose their TV privileges the next day. But I have always struggled to come up with a good consequences. On this day, I had a breakthrough.

We just arrived at our second rental property, the girls excitedly explored the place while we unloaded and unpacked. They are sharing a room and when I went in to check on them, they had taken everything out of their suite cases; Clothes, toys and books were spread across the entire room. This would typically enrage me and result in a very loud rant about their lack of respect for their belongings, the house, and me. I didn’t scream at them. I very calmly asked them once to put everything back where they found it. They didn’t listen. I then slowly put the items back myself, hoping they’d start to clean with my help. They looked at me, confused for a second, and then left the room one at a time. I didn’t lose my cool. I finished cleaning up and moved everything to my closet. I told them that they lost all privileges to their belongings, and everything would need to be earned from this point on. When Hendrix said, “but you never do that.” I knew they understood a change had been made.

The vow we made has changed everything this past week. Not only are we all happier, but I feel like I enjoy my daughters more than ever. It’s like the new lightness in our house has made them sillier and more clever. I notice a maturity in Hendrix. She’s incredibly smart and knows us well. She perfected pushing our buttons and I swore it was her favorite thing to do. Now, I treat her with respect and she shows me respect in return. Imagine that. We’re modeling good behavior and they’re responding well.

We’re not fighting back urges to scream either. Telling one of them to put something away almost never happened on the first ask. Now, they actually do it! I’ve become better at coming up with built in consequences too. While I know they are not gone forever, we haven’t had the typical daily meltdowns and the sass and attitude isn’t there like before.

I don’t think there is anything Ken and I have done together as parents that I could be more proud of. I’m so grateful that Ken is my partner and that our goals are aligned. I can’t wait to see how this continues to affect our family and look forward to learning more ways to better ourselves and our daughters.