Mean Mommy

I found this article at Stroller Derby and it struck a chord.  Read, then come back here.

Why it's good to scream at your kids

Maybe you found that title interesting as well?  Probably.

Now, here's my parenting philosophy.  Ahem.  I don't actually have one.  HA!  Perhaps you thought I was going to share some earth shattering parental amazingness.  Not so much.

So, I have (and probably a lot more lately than usual) a short fuse.  I get angry.  I get frustrated and I have been known to yell.  For lots of reasons.  For doing the one thing I ask my son 34095843095840398 times nicely not to do, then he looks at me with that look, and does it anyway.  Hitting his baby sister.  I get really angry.  I usually feel pretty shitty about it, too.  Like the author mentions, I do not want my children growing up remembering a mother who was always angry, who was always yelling and frustrated.  I agree, that I have seen some overly permissive parents who have barely pooh poohed some rather nasty toddler/child behavior, but, like one of the commenters mentions (read the comments) there is a middle ground.  I'd like to think I find that most of the time.  Especially when I am, myself, doing well.  If I'm exhausted, stressed out, feeling unsure of things, etc, my fuse is shorter.  If I'm well cared for, then it tends to be longer.  That's probably not a huge revelation for anyone.  So, I try to take care of myself with as much (try being the operative word here) with care and respect so I don't regularly flip out on my family.

BUT, in the trenches of parenting, I've clung to a few floats here and there in the form of various books about discipline and child-rearing.  In general, the ones that favor gentle discipline and attachment parenting speak to me more (as in, ring true to whatever is in me that goes "aha! Yes!" when I read it) than more rigid, rule following, scheduling, etc.  Not that I don't have rules.  I do.  But they're frequently broken, and that's usually okay.  I try to remind myself, especially when I am about to launch a rocket attack of anger at my 2 year old (okay, he's like three weeks away from being three...) that he's TWO, still a baby, still learning boundaries.  It's my job to guide him, not kill his love of life and natural joy and curiosity.  I mean, I can kind of remember what it was like being a kid.  I wanted to DO STUFF.  All the time.  I was always trying to play, wander, explore, etc.  I was by no stretch of the imagination a difficult child, but I can recount lots of instances where my natural curiosity pissed my parents off.  I've read about "consequence free parenting".  This makes NO sense to me at all.  Even when the proponents of it try to explain it.  I lurk around gentle discipline forums picking up little nuggets of wisdom when I can, yet, often find myself lifting a disbelieving eyebrow when I read about some of the ways people discipline, or rather don't.  I'm not a firm believer in punishment.  I'm not sure time outs serve to do much more than make that kid stew in anger and hurt over their punishment, not reflecting on how they could behave better.  Um, and this is not to say we haven't, and do not, use time outs.  Sometimes it's all I can think to do without going ballistic.  And, while I'm not a big fan of punishing, I do think that life has consequences and children should learn them.  But how?  Basically, I'm always trying to figure out how to show my kids that what they did was wrong (when they do something wrong) but not be a total witch from hell in the process.

I don't want my children to grow up always trying to avoid conflict, and become namby pamby people pleasers.  I also don't want them to grow up to be sociopaths and capital J jerks who've never been told "no".  On some days I feel like I am super mom, chilled out and relaxed and my kids totally match that mood, but being HUMAN, that is just not my daily reality, and so, on crap days, things just get pretty crappy and moods and behavior spiral the drain.  Some days, I'm a kill joy.  Other days, I'm awesome.

I truly feel that what we do as parents HUGELY influences how our children turn out.  I don't think the onus is TOTALLY on us AT ALL, but parenting plays a major role in the kind of person we turn out to be.  This has been seen time and again.

Well, once again, I'm pretty sure I've rambled on without making too much sense, but if I've made any point, it's likely that parenting is effing hard and I have no idea what I am doing, but I'm doing the best I can at any given moment!