A Year of No Yelling Day 18 Featuring a Three Year Old Reminding an Adult to Use Time Outs

I'm sleeping in a different room while Drek sleep trains Tabs. Last night I slept well except for the tickle in the back of my throat; it kept waking me up. I'm hoping it doesn't get worse.

Today went well. I'm the Troop Leader for Ash's Girl Scout Troop and today we did training for cookie season. Everything went great until we got home. Because of Girl Scouts we arrived home just a half an hour before Drek was due to arrive home and the house was (as always) a disaster. I turned on the music for the girls to do their chores and things were going along with the usual frustrations. I was trying to have the kitchen clean by the time Drek came home and was stressing about it when Tabs got ahold of a ceramic mug and dropped it on the floor. It shattered and for some reason I thought this an excuse to yell at her. I angrily shouted her name, to which she responded with surprise and then tears. I quickly picked her up and started to sweep the kitchen. Alexa quietly informed me that I wasn't supposed to yell and that I needed a time out. 

I agreed with her, but could't take a time out because I had glass to clean up from the kitchen before I could finish cleaning it. 

It's not the first time a glass dish has been broken in our kitchen and it won't be the last. It really isn't a big deal to me and I never want my kids to think that a dish is more important than them. I'll try again tomorrow.  

A Year of No Yelling Day 17 Featuring Skywalker Gibbons AKA Star Wars Monkeys and Dracorex Hogwartsia AKA Harry Potter Dinosaurs

Some success today!

I had a bit more energy today although my mind is still enshrouded in fog. I've had a tickle in the back of my throat for the last week. I'm hoping I'll fight off whatever it is instead of succumbing to it. Maybe that's where all my energy  going.

I tried to be loving and kind today and had sucess! I spent a few minutes one-on-one with each child with the goal to make them laugh. We had a fun time together today.

The house was in shambles right before Drek came home and I needed their help in cleaning up the huge mess they had made in their rooms. Thanks to recording what sets me off I now know that cleaning with my children is stressful for me. So I came up with a creative way for them to clean:

I told Ash she was a scientist who was trying to study a rare animal. The animal's natural habitat is clean, so the animal will only stay in a place that is clean. She and I raced to clean our rooms (or labs) and when the animal (Daddy) came it would go to the cleaner room/lab. If it picked her room/lab, she could study it and since she was the first scientist to study it, she could name it.  It gave us a chance to talk about Skywalker Gibbons and the Hogwarts Dinosaur, Dracorex Hogwartsia.

I told Alexa there was a unicorn coming! Unicorns like clean places. She and I raced to clean our rooms (or castles) and when the unicorn (Daddy) came it would go to the cleaner room/castle.

It worked out surprisingly well. I kept Tabs in my room while I cleaned in relative peace and the girls worked hard to clean their room. When Daddy came home we informed him he was a unicorn/unnamed animal and the girls thought that was so funny.

Of course, the kitchen was a disaster, but you can't win them all.

After the girls went to bed Drek and I left them with a babysitter so we could go to a ballroom dance class! It was wonderful to be alone together and so much fun to be doing something as fun as a ballroom dance class! It was just a one-time class, but it was so spend some time together.

A Year of No Yelling Day 16 Featuring A Successful Nursery Day and a Theory about Sugar and Depression

Yesterday worked out. I'm a Nursery Leader (toddlers ages 18 months-3 years) in my ward, so I spent the day preparing for and the being at nursery. It's the smallest nursery I've ever been in; just ten kids, so it's not very stressful and every week I find myself delighted by something. Those little kids are just so cute!

I tried to be patient and kind with my kids and it went well. I made it through the day without yelling! 

After the kids went to bed  Drek and I talked a lot, so I feel like we have some plans to make the future better. 

First, I need more sleep. I'm moving out of the bedroom for the next week. Drek is going to take Tabs and train her to sleep in a pack and play. Hopefully it will only take a week. Hopefully it will stick. 

Second, I really do need more me time. This last week I've been great on giving the kids individual attention and making them feel loved, but I really don't focus on giving myself alone time. We're making plans to change that. 

Today was better. I'm very, very tired today (Tabs was just awful last night, I suppose she knows it's her last night of freedom) but I'm not depressed, just tired. I did yell once, it was a warning "No!" which seems to be a weakness of mine. I'll have to think about how to control my volume when issuing warnings.  This article has some really helpful parenting strategies, including getting physically close to your children and talking softly so they have to really listen to hear you. 

I've realized a pattern: I eat sugar, and in two days I'm depressed. I'm not sure if this is (A)  a coincidence (B) an emotional reaction my breaking my goals or (C) a physical reaction to sugar. In the case of the latter two, It's just more motivation to avoid sugar.  

A Year of No Yelling Day 15 Featuring a Pit

Back in the pit of depression.

Why am I doing this, again? Not the no yelling thing, the whole kids thing. I used to love being a mother. I thought it was challenging , but fun. I thought it was difficult, but worth it. I can't remember the last time I felt that way. Now it's just hard.

A Year of No Yelling Day 14 Featuring Talking to Yourself Creates Success

Last night Drek and I put the kids to bed, then got a babysitter to come and sit in our living room while we sneaked out for an hour to go to an open house good-bye party for one of my dear friends.

They had treats there. I ate them. Because I am an addict.

This morning I was really surprised I gave in an ate sugar. It wasn't even chocolate! What in the world was I thinking? Why would I break my goal like that?

I think it's because I've lost focus of my priorities. Getting up in the morning and saying aloud "Today is a No Sugar Day" really helped me back in November. I said it my husband, I announced to my kids, I texted my friends and asked them to hold me accountable. Now, it's just another thing I'm working on.

I think applying the same thing to yelling will also help a lot. Today I think I yelled...I'm really not sure because I didn't lose my temper, and it wasn't done in anger, but I think I did raise my voice a few time, again because I think I'm losing focus of my priorities.

So tomorrow I will start the day by announcing to the mirror, or to my family, or to whomever or whatever is listening that  Today is a No Yelling and No Sugar Day.

A Year of No Yelling Day 13

Today was better! Once again Tabs woke up at 2, but she was only up for 30 minutes or so. I'm hoping she'll get better.

I woke up with some energy, which is great. I'm still on the mind fog, but I'm hopeful I'm coming out of sugar withdrawals. I feel like I can see light at the end of a dark tunnel.

A study of long therm effects of yelling on adolescence is giving me motivation to try harder.

The study was in 10 public middle schools in eastern Pennsylvania over a two-year period, working with 967 adolescents, most from middle-class families, and their parents.

The study showed a few very interesting things. First, rather than minimizing problematic behavior in adolescents, the use of harsh verbal discipline may in fact aggravate it.  Harsh verbal discipline occurred more frequently in instances in which the child exhibited problem behaviors, and these same problem behaviors in turn were more likely to continue when adolescents received verbal discipline. “It’s a vicious circle,” The author of the study stated “Problem behaviors from children create the desire to give harsh verbal discipline, but that discipline may push adolescents toward those same problem behaviors.”

This reinforced something I had already read: Yelling at children teaches them to yell. Yelling is an ineffective form of communication. The parent yells, the child yells, neither communicate and the situation just gets worse and worse.

Second, the negative effects of verbal discipline (increased levels of depressive symptoms, more likely to demonstrate behavioral problems such as vandalism or antisocial and aggressive behavior.) were comparable to the effects shown over the same period of time in other studies that focused on physical discipline. So even though I think it's better to yell than to hit, the long-term effects aren't so different.

And third,  the researchers also found that love, emotional support, and affection between parents and adolescents did not lessen the effects of the verbal discipline, and neither did the strength of the parent-child bond. So if I only yell once a day, or even once a week, and shower my children with love every other time, they's still have the damaging effects of yelling.

So, what I gathered from this study is that It's not ok for me to yell at my kids.  It isn't productive. It doesn't result it better behavior, it results in worse behavior. It teaches them ineffective communication and stunts them learning how to communicate in a healthy way. There are no excuses for yelling.

The researchers of the study said a much better approach than yelling is for parents to communicate with their adolescence on an equal level, explaining their worries and rationale to them. I think that to a point, that will also help with children. If I try to communicate with my children, they will try to communicate with me. If we are communicating, we can problem solve.  The best book I have read on communicating with children is How to Talk So Kids Will Listen & Listen So Kids Will Talk by Adele Faber, Elaine Mazlish. I feel this book opened up a whole new world to me and it's something every parent would benefit from reading at least once a year. In fact, after reading this study, I think I'm going to try and read a chapter of it a few times a week, just to keep in my mind how to teach and learn effective communication, since the study points out that that is critical to healthy, well behaved children. Hopefully that will help me to stop yelling.

A Year of No Yelling Day 12

Once again Tabs was up at 2am and would not go back to sleep. Once again I woke up depressed.

Today I tried to get myself out of my depression. I tried to play with my kids, I tried to smile, i tried to be grateful. It didn't work.

Today we went grocery shopping. A few months ago the store had a sale on gift cards and we bought a few. I took the never before used gift card to the store with me. While I was pulling Alexa and Tabs out of the car and looking for my shopping list and grabbing my shopping bags Alexa found a gift card on the ground and handed it to me. I praised her, thanking for finding it and thinking how awful it would have been if I had lost it.

When we got checked out I handed her the gift card. It had a quarter of the amount that was supposed to be on it. When she said it would only cover have the bill panic rose in me. It then occurred to me that maybe that wasn't my gift card. I dug in my pocket and pulled out another gift card. I handed it to her and sure enough, that one had the correct amount. I realized that I had just used someone else's gift card to pay for my groceries. I thought of asking the clerk to reverse it and put it back on the gift card, but the store was really busy, my line was long, and the clerk was young and inexperienced. I rationalized that a gift card was like cash, and I would never be able to find the owner. We finished loading groceries into the cart and I started to walk away,

I felt awful. I had been depressed all day, but this was different. I rationalized that I should feel grateful. We had gotten half of our groceries paid for! God was trying to tell me he loved me! But it didn't feel like a blessing. I stood at the front of the store and looked around at the busy clerks, the long lines, and the crowds of people. I glanced around for a manager, but couldn't see one, and Tabs had started crying. Alexa was anxious to get going and was starting to wander off. I was busy, I had my hands full, and the store didn't want to be bothered.

Still.

I sighed. I went to the nearest check-out stand and asked the busy cashier if there was a manager I could talk to. She informed me she was the manager. While she checked out someone else's groceries, I told her what had happened and asked if I could put the amount back on the gift card. She said she could, and that they could track to whom the gift card belonged my the gift card number.

So I took and extra 5 minutes out of my day to do that.

On the way to the car I explained to Alexa that she had been someone's angel; that she had found the gift card that someone had lost and because of her, they would get it back.

I was still dead tired, but no longer depressed. I yelled a few times, but I was able to tell myself that I needed to keep trying.  I think in that case, service was helpful. Next time I'm depressed I'll try doing some small service to see if it will help.

A Year of No Yelling Day 11

Today was a miserable, miserable day.

Tabs is not sleeping. For the past several nights she wakes up about midnight and goes back to sleep, but then wakes up at 2 and does not go back to sleep.

At 3am I lost all patience with her. I yelled, I name called. Drek came in and took for the rest of the night.

In the morning I woke up depressed. I'm so dead tired. I'm frustrated that I'm STILL going through sugar withdrawals. I know that usually it takes two weeks to go through sugar withdrawals, but last time it only took me 8 days, so I'm very impatient.

I was upset that I yelled at a baby. I was upset that I'm not getting any better at not yelling, and in fact, getting worse. I felt like my goal of not yelling was an impossible task that I had given myself to torture myself. I had no hope, and no desire to even try.

I yelled a lot today. It wasn't angry yelling, or lost-my-temper yelling, just yelling to get a point across, yelling to end the conversation, yelling for the sake of yelling.

A total fail.

A Year of No Yelling Day 10

Tabs is not great at sleeping through the night. She's really awful, actually. Sometimes it's fine and I stumble through it, and sometimes it's assuredly NOT fine.

Last night she was awful and so this morning I woke up feeling ornery. I knew right away is going to be a tough today, so I rolled right out of bed onto my knees and said a prayer asking for help.

I felt better while I was praying, but it did nothing to lift my black mood. During breakfast I had to hold my tongue and breathe several times. I said another prayer asking for peace, but my mood remained unchanged. I thought about Balgram's comment of lifting her mood by forcing a smile, singing a happy song, or counting good things. I tried to think if one would help. Immediately I thought of being grateful, so I started telling my kids that I was grateful for them, for their dad, for our house, for breakfast, and said several prayers of thanks in my head. It helped. We did our morning chores and got Ash off to school with no yelling or angry speaking.

 The day was still rough. I'm having serious sugar withdrawals this time. I ended up taking a nap just to make it though the day.

After the kids went to bed I went out to my once-a-month book club. I had a great time, but I stupidly ate sugar. I made it through the day without yelling, but I did mess up and each sugar.

A Year of No Yelling Day 9

Why am I still having sugar withdrawals? Hasn't it already been forever? Why I am so dead tired? I was over the exhaustion by day 9 last time. Of course, last time I hadn't eaten an entire king-size candy bar by myself just before I detoxed. But it was an Oreo candy bar! And it was covered in British chocolate! I don't regret it.

Ok, maybe a little.

I am tired and cranky and don't want anyone or anything to touch me.

Today was just a giant test of my patience. I tried so hard to be calm, kind and respectful. I mostly succeeded. Right before lunch Drek realized I was about to explode and carefully tried to defuse me. Other than that little episode I think I did a good job. Today I didn't yell and I didn't speak with anger.

Mostly I tried to avoid talking in general.

I'm really holding on the memory of how awesome I felt in November when I was off all sugar. I remember feeling so patient and alert and full of energy. I keep thinking that as soon as I feel that way again, this goal to go a year with no yelling will be so much easier. I just have to make it a few more days.

A Year of No Yelling Day 8

Yesterday was my fist stressful day of the year. My schedule was packed: In the morning I had to get all three girls dressed in Sunday best , hair brushed and styled and shoes on their feet so we could attend a baptism at 10am. Everything went well for that part of the morning.

Ash and I had tickets to attend a showing of The Nutcracker an hour away. Several mothers and daughters from Ash's Girl Scout Troop were also going. One of the moms contacted me at the baptism and said she had hurt her back and asked if I could take her daughter. I said yes, as long as they were at the house at 11am, as then was when we needed to leave. We rushed back from the baptism, dropped Alexa and Tabs off with Drek, changed clothes, and jumped back in the car. We were ready to go at 11. The girl didn't show up until 11:10. We hurriedly transferred her car seat over, buckled her up, and we were off!

Three minutes later I realized our car was completely out of gas. What a responsible adult I am.  I pulled into a gas station and put my credit card into the machine. The machine beeped and the message "card expired" flashed on the screen. I had never seen that message before. What could it mean? I tried again and the same thing happend. I looked ta my card. The expiration date was dec of 2016. Ah, my card had expired. That is what the message means. I reached in the car and looked though my wallet. I had no debit card, no other credit card, and no cash. All of these were supposed to be in my wallet. Every single one was gone, I had taken them out at various points and hadn't returned them. Such a responsible adult.

I sighed in frustration and climbed into the car. Right before I closed the door, the gas station worker stood in front of my car and announced "Your card has expired."

I paused, confused at why he was telling me this, and why he had come out of the gas station to announce this to me. "Thanks, I know." I answered angrily. I shut the door and drove off, become more and more angry as I drove home.

When I yell at my children I immediately regret it. Sometimes it takes me a minute to calm down from my anger, but I'm always immediately sorry when I am mean to my children.

But to this stranger, whom I didn't yell at, but did speak to with anger, I only got more and more angry. The entire three minutes home I thought of all the mean things I should have said to him. We pulled into the driveway, I transferred the girls to Drek's car, I ran inside, grabbed the keys to Drek's car and off we went again. It was only then that I realized I had spoken with anger and broken my resolution. I also realized how strange it was that I was angry with him at all. I was frustrated, stressed and embarrassed, and reacted with anger.

In the book Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand (if you have not read this book it needs to jump to the top of your to-read list immediately.)  an American who survived a Japanese POW camp said that afterward he never got angry because he just didn't see anything that was worth getting angry over. I wish I could find the exact quote, but that was the idea. Anyway, I thought of that. Why in the world was I angry? Was that really worth breaking my goal over?

I changed my attitude, said something to make the girls laugh and felt my anger melt away.

Three minutes into our drive I realized I didn't have my phone. I had no way to navigate to the theater. I turned the car around again and drove home, frantically searching and feeling more and more stressed, upset, and like a failure.

I finally found my phone, and were finally able to leave at 11:30.

Yes, we were late, but again, was that really worth being angry over? Is being late really worth getting upset over?

There were a few other very stressful thing that happened yesterday, including a stressful dinner out in public with just me wrangling not 3 but 4 children who were bursting with energy and not wanting to listen, but I am happy to report that I stayed patient, calm, and respectful through it all. It is possible,  If I could only keep that up.

A Year of No Yelling Day 7

Yesterday was a good day.

The book Mission For Mother by G. Hugh Allred talks about how when children act out it is because they are trying to find their place in the family. They are trying to figure out where they belong. The book says the best way to stop children from acting out is to spend time with them.

So Drek and I scheduled "date night" with our kids. We did this during the fall with great success, it just fell a little bit on our priorities. If we did it the way we should, every Friday Drek would take one daughter out on a date, while I took the other daughter out on a date. The next week we would switch daughters. It's a way for us to spend one-on-time with our kids and have positive interactions together.

For those confused by the math, yes, we do have three daughters. Tabs is little enough that she tags along on one of the dates.

Drek took Ash to see the new Disney movie in the movie theater and I took Alexa to get frozen yogurt. Alexa and I ended our date by singing "Let It Go" and dancing around the house.  We were silly just to be silly.

It was fun to spend time with her and to just be silly with her. I hope she remembers her mother like that instead of as a scary yelling monster.

A Year of No Yelling Day 6

This sugar withdrawal is brutal. I really had too much sugar in December.

Yesterday started off with Alexa hitting. It really bothers me when she hits because she is so articulate. Her speech is advanced for her age and she communicates exceptionally well. I think that this should mean her behavior should also be advanced, but that's not the case. Just like any 3 year old, she hits when she gets frustrated.  I deal with it by calmly explaining that she needs to use her words.

She kept hitting. At different times during the day she hit her sisters. I did time outs, I explained, I hugged, I lectured. And then, I yelled. Basically, I became frustrated and yelled just like she became frustrated and hit. I have the same maturity as a three year old. Yelling at her made her cry and made me feel terrible. Ash whispered that I wasn't supposed to yell anymore, which made me feel worse.

I apologized to them both, then talked to Alexa about how both of us had made a sad choice. I told her next time I would make a happy choice and hope she would too.

In thinking about writing this blog post, I've thought a lot about what to about Alexa's hitting. She hit her older sister just a few hours after that, so yelling did nothing. As I thought about it, it occurred to me that she just might need more touch. The book Touch talks about how toddlers and preschools can hit each other and themselves simply because they aren't getting touched enough. In the book it talks about a study done by Tiffany Field: "The American parents watched and touched their children less than French parents. The American children played with their parents less, talked with and touched their parents less, and were more aggressive toward their parents than French children. During peer interactions, the American children also showed less touching of their peers, but more grabbing of their pers' toys, more aggression toward peers, and more fussing."

Last night I cuddled with Alexa and rubbed her back. This morning I did it again. I'm hoping consistently giving her small massages and continually giving her positive attention will help curb her hitting. The great thing is that instead of just getting frustrated, I have a plan of attack. We'll see if it works, but just having a plan will help me control my temper.

A Year of No Yelling Day 5

I lasted 4 days. That's 3 days longer than I thought I could go, so, yay?

I'm detoxing from sugar. I was so tired yesterday, so unmotivated, but tried to be productive anyway. We're babysitting a pair of guinea pigs and as a project I cut out a little hut for them out of a sturdy cardboard box and let the girls decorate it. I told them they could use Sharpies for the project.

Sharpies are a big deal in our house. Only Mama and Daddy can use Sharpies. The children are not allowed to touch them. I explained that this was a one-time exception, and that they were to use the Sharpies to color the box. I told them they could ONLY use the Sharpies for the box. They were not allowed to color on anything else. I went over this several times in several different ways.

While they colored I cleaned the kitchen. They stated to fight, so I used all my awesome techniques learned from Siblings Without Rivalry to get them to work it out. I patting myself on the back for not yelling, even though I was so tired, when I turned to pick something up. I looked back to the table and Alexa was coloring the table with the Sharpies.

"No!" I yelled.

I yelled.

Exasperated. exhausted, and feeling guilty that I yelled, I whispered to Alexa to not color on the table. Then I sat down with them and watched until they were done.

Two hours later we were in the bedroom. Ash and Alexa are running around, jumping on and off beds, screaming, chasing, and having a great time. Tabs was also having a great time, until suddenly she wasn't. I went over to see what was wrong. She signed "potty" and as I slipped off her pants (She's potty training so no diaper) realized she had both pooped and peed in her pants. I left the pants on the floor and took her to the potty. I came back into the room just in time to see Alexa jump off the bed, fall, and land face first...yeah, you know.

"NOOOOO!!!!!" I yelled.

I believe crap is an appropriate expletive.

So while I'm getting Tabs and Alexa into a bath and trying to comfort poor distraught Alexa, Ash jumps off the bed and hurts her leg. You have not seen drama until you see Ash get the slightest minor injury.

It was a few minutes after that had been dealt with and settled down that I handed Ash the phone and had her call Daddy to come home 30 minutes early.

A Year Of No Yelling Day 4

Yesterday we had friends over all day, the amazing type of friends where there are little to no fights to break up all day, so while I was with my children all day, I actually had minimal interaction with them. It was a fun, pleasant day. While putting them to bed I gave them extra nose kisses and snuggles. I tried to treasure each one for a few seconds.

I attribute this to a talk I had just finished reading in which it says: "Heavenly Father sees His children, created in His eternal image, with magnificent and glorious potential...We want to use the light of the gospel to see others as the Savior does—with compassion, hope, and charity."

I did run into a question: Does calling count as yelling? When I needed my kids to come in to the kitchen, I called their names. Is that yelling? My voice was raised, but there was no anger at all. Does it count? If yes, how do I get them to come without calling? We had a dinner bell in my house growing up. Maybe I'll buy a dinner bell...

A Year Of No Yelling Day 3

Yesterday was another low-stress day. We're still on winter vacation. We had no where to go today and nothing that HAD to get done. So we hung out in the morning until I got frustrated stepping over piles of...What is all this stuff?! in the hallway and had the girls clean their room.

Ash is at this magical age where I can ask her to do something simple and she does it. If she wants to. Alexa is 3. Sometimes she pretends she can't hear you. Sometimes she cries. Sometimes she hits. Sometimes she just wants help.
Tabs is destructo baby 3.0 and loves to mess up whatever you have just cleaned. Her favorite is to dump our a box of toys her sisters have just cleaned up.

I started out cheerful and happy, playing and eye-spy game to get them to clean. That deteriorated quickly into a game of me calmly repeating myself over and over. And then I was about to yell, but remembered, closed my mouth, took a deep breathe, and whispered instead.

I read somewhere that children can easily develop a filter for yelling; when you yell, they tune you out.  I'm currently reading a book called Two Thousand Kisses a Day: Gentle Parenting Through the Ages and Stages by LR Knost in which is says "Yelling silences your message. Speak quietly so your children hear your words instead of just your voice."

So I started to whisper. The effect was interesting; my kids stopped what they were doing and strained to hear what I was saying. They were trying to listen to me! Amazing!

Several hours and a playdate later we did our before-dinner chores. My kids do this every single day, so they know what to do. Ash has it down, and every day I find it miraculous that she goes and does her chores. Alexa, on the other hand...

"What's your chore, Alexa?"  (It's always set the table)
"Um..."
"What's your chore?"
"Set the table?"
"Yes! Hooray! Go get the plates....go get the plates. Alexa, the plates are in the cupboard. Walk to the cupboard. Alexa, Alexa, focus. Walk to the cupboard and get the plates.  Great! Now put one plate at each spot. Alexa, put the plates in the right place. Alexa, look at the plates. Put them in the right spot, please. Alexa. Alexa. Please turn off the TV. What are you supposed to be doing? Please put the plates in the right spot." continued for five more minutes.

 I asked my husband at what point yelling is my only option. He patted my back.

 Alexa is three and full of imagination. While she was supposed to be putting the plates in the right spot, she ran back to her room and put her pajama pants on, both legs through the same pant hole.  "I'm a mermaid princess!" She announced.

This is where my yelling instinct kicked in. Miraculously, instead of giving in, a spark of light pierced my anger. I remembered my goal, and remembered that she, after all, is only three. I grabbed spoon from her fairy tea-set. It is shaped like a flower/magic wand. I sung a silly song and tapped her "mermaid tail" and announced in my best impression of Glenda the Good Witch that she was turned into a human princess for one hour." I then helped her get both legs into different pant holes. I used that same Glenda voice to direct her back to the kitchen, I where I told her to put the plates in the right spot.  She listened! She pretended she was a princess setting the table.

Ash noticed, too. "Why is mama using the silly voice?" she asked her dad.
"She's trying not to yell" he answered.

And so we go through dinner time chores. And somehow, day 3 ended with no yelling and hopefully a few lessons learned.

A Year of No Yelling Day 2

Yesterday I didn't yell at my kids once. This is huge. It was also a low-stress day.

I told my children my goal. I asked them to try an be respectful (whatever that means) and said that if they thought I might yell, to please send me to time-out. We had a great conversation about using time-outs to cool down and how we need to problem solve.

I love the idea that I'm teaching my children instead of controlling them. I love the idea that by working on my temper, it will help them with theirs.

Jim Hutt, Ph.D., creator of counselorlink.com; says "[yelling is] not a good strategy for getting good behavior. Yelling is scary, so it activates a child's emotional "fight or flight" response while shutting down his logical thinking. "If I yell at a kid, he's going to stop processing information, and if I want him to learn why his behavior is inappropriate, I need him to be able to understand what I'm saying, When parents raise their voice, all it teaches kids is to do the same when they're upset. "If we hit, they hit; if we yell, they learn to yell. If we are calm, they learn how to be calm,"

After all that success, the night was rough. My 16 month old has no sleep schedule. She's been erratic since she was born. I've tried to work with her natural rhythms, but I suspect she has none. About a year ago I forced a nap time on her to limited success. Several months ago we switched to a morning nap, which works a lot better as far as routine, her morning behavior, and getting her to take a nap.  It falls apart after that: because she naps so early in the morning, she sometimes falls asleep in the car in the afternoon. if she does, her mood is better in the evening, but it also means she might not go to bed, or that she'll wake up in the middle of the night and think it's playtime. If she doesn't fall asleep, she'll be cranky in the evening and become to intolerable that I'll put her to bed an hour early, which means he'll wake up in the middle of the night and think it's playtime. I'm really not sure how to fix this.

Last night she woke up at 2am. We tossed and turned. I broke down and nursed her (theoretically she's been night weaned for three months), I hushed, I soothed, I cuddled, I ignored, I used stern words. At 4am I was done. She is 16 months old, why is she still sleeping like a newborn? I swaddled her tightly and spoke in an angry, sleep-deprived, hushed whisper/hiss. "GO TO SLEEP NOW" I had my arm over her so she couldn't move. She screamed for two minutes then fell asleep. I was up for another hour feeling guilty.

 Clearly, this is going to a problem in the future. I need to figure out a better way to deal with it.

A Year of No Yelling

Happy New Year! I'm grateful for 2017 and the fresh start it brings! This year  I want my resolution to be huge and life-changing. I thought about if for several weeks before deciding on my goal:

Go an entire year without yelling

In October that goal would have seemed completely unattainable, In November I learned so much about goal setting, self control and how much better I feel off of sugar and I feel that now I have the tools to undertake such a monolithic task. 

I have 3 children, ages 7, 3 and 16 months. It seems they only listen to me when I yell. I don't yell all day, but I definitely yell everyday. Am I going to reach Jan 1 2018  and think how great I was to not yell for a whole year? Goodness no. I know I will mess up. I know I will lose my temper. I know I will forget my goal for a few seconds and resort to instinct. I also know that I will keep trying. 

The rules: 

I can be stern, strict, and firm. 

I can't yell or speak with anger at all, to anyone. 

Exception: Life-threatening situations such as the house being on fire. 

How I am going to accomplish this goal: 

I'm going to use this blog to chronicle my journey. a record of how and why I succeed and how and why I fail, will help me improve. 

I'll research ideas about parenting and studies on the consequences of yelling. Continuing to learn will keep me motivated.

By making my goal public I'm holding myself accountable. Please feel free to ask my how I'm progressing. 

I'm going off sugar again. To be honest, the least two weeks in December I ate giant mountains of sugar. It was delicious. It was also a great eye-opener: headaches, tiredness, crankiness, all could have been avoided by avoiding sugar. I can do better! I can feel better! I can BE better! Starting today, I'm not eating sugar until Valentines Day. I know that this will increase my patience, clear up my mind and help me focus on what is really important. 

I'm going to asking for help from my Higher Power. Putting it in a brutal way; yelling is an addiction of mine. It's how I deal stress, frustration, anger, and depression. The vital step in breaking any addition is getting help from your higher power. I intend to spend time every morning and every night on my knees, begging for help.  I know my Heavenly Father will help me in this task, because these are His children I am raising. I also feel that the idea for my no-yelling adventure came from Him. He wants me to do this, and if he asks me to do something, he will make it possible to accomplish it. 

So, here we go. I just need to start, right? This overwhelming journey can be taken one step at a time.

I was doing great with my new no-sugar plan until Thursday, the 8th. After t he kids were in bed I went to a Girl Scout Meeting to be trained on cookie season 2017. Of course, they had Girl Scout Cookies there. One of every kind! I debated if I should eat them or not, if the benefits of no sugar could stand up to Girl Scout cookies, and made a compromise. I took one of each kind of cookie and left them in my napkin. After the meeting I took the cookies home, put them in a ziplock bag and stuck them in the freezer. Frozen Girl Scout cookies are AMAZING! I decided to save them for another day. No point in eating sugar in less-than optimal circumstances. 

The next day was my wonderful husband's birthday. Drek likes pies, not cakes, so I made his favorite pie, sugar, red dye and all. We enjoyed it that night with a glass of egg-nog. 

Saturday I was back to no-sugar and pleased that the effects of the sugar from the day before were mild. Saturday night we got a babysitter for our kids and Drek and I went out to eat. I'm sure the delicious food was  soaked in sugar to make it taste so good, but since I rarely eat out it was justifiable, although I am starting to look forward to January, when I know I will be less wishy-washy about my stance on sugar. 

The Aftermath

On Thanksgiving I ate the rolls. I ate the cranberry sauce. I ate the stuffed mushrooms. I ate the stuffing and I ate roughly several slices of pumpkin pie. It was wonderful. 

We had our feast a little before noon. We snacked for the rest of the day. By 5pm I felt drained. i also felt...edgy. I was irritable and moody. At one point I was about to throw a tempter tantrum, and the only reason I didn't was because my inner monologue was something like this: 

"WHOA! Calm down! This is the sugar you are feeling. Just breathe, this will go away. you are really not this angry over nothing. Just calm down. Oh look! Another slice of pumpkin pie!" 

Because I had such a strong reaction I was excited the next day to go sugar-free again. But...you know...leftovers! I had all my in-laws over and I was not in charge of my meals. My meals were Monday and Wednesday's dinners. I could have made myself my own meals, but...excuses. So I secondary sugar. And also two snack packs of oreos. And also pumpkin pie. 

And once again, my mood lost all stability and I almost threw a temper tantrum. 

And repeat on Saturday. 

Come Sunday I was actually excited to go back off sugar. Sunday was a hard day, maybe because I was coming off of a sugar high, maybe because we packed so much fun into the week and I was dead tired, but I was so, so, so tired. 

Monday was great. I was back to clear thinking and high energy. No detox symptoms this time! 

And thus my lesson is learned: Is sugar evil? No, sugar is delicious. But my life is way better when I'm off of all sugar. I do think I want to indulge here and there, but is there a way to do that without destabilizing my mood so severely? Also, is this why my kids throw tantrums? Because of sugar? 

So I suppose I'm just finishing up No Sugar Day 4. To be honest, I am worried. The holidays are all about sugar. I did great leading up up Thanksgiving, but I am attending at least 3 different Chrsitmas parties over the next two weeks. Do I eat sugar at all of them? Do I not eat sugar at any of them? 

Drek brought home Eggnog yesterday. I LOVE eggnog. I didn't have any. There is still half a gallon left in our fridge. It is calling for me. I wonder if I can make a healthy sugar-free eggnog. What is eggnog made from, anyway?