Hi all, I’ve just been reading the previous thread about yelling at kids with a lot of interest, thank you to the OP for raising the subject and being honest about your challenges. It made me realise though that I don’t really know where the line is between “not great parenting behaviour that most people still do every so often” and “stuff that will actually harm your kids”. My girls are 7 and 9. With yelling in particular, I don’t see myself as someone who loses it with their kids frequently, but I do sometimes do things I’m not proud of. The last time I remember actually yelling at them was maybe 4-5 months ago when they just took soooooo long to get into the car for an activity and it made us late and I was so frustrated that I was apparently the only person who cared about that even though it wasn’t even my activity…. Anyway I yelled at them then. More recently, like a few weeks ago, I didn’t yell “at” them but a LOT of minor things went wrong one day and then there was kind of a “last straw” thing and I went into my bedroom and rage screamed into a pillow and the girls heard me and were quite scared. That, again, is an infrequent occurrence but not the literal first time it happened. Eg I remember doing it about a year ago too, and they were scared then too. Obviously I don’t think this is a very good approach but also… I guess what I want to know is whether fairly infrequent losses of control like that are that big a deal. I want to know if I’m normal haha.
Contextually, I know a lot of what is driving these losses of control is stress/anxiety. My life is definitely a lot and I keep it together most of the time but sometimes it’s just too much. This is going to sound very dramatic but my husband was killed in an accident a few years ago and not having another parent to tag in at those points is very challenging, plus also being by myself just means that my baseline of stressful stuff to deal with is higher and my buffer is lower. Still, I want a good life for my kids and I don’t want them to be harmed by my behaviour in this regard even if the wider world would be extremely sympathetic! (I should add that they both seem pretty happy and settled in spite of the significant trauma of their dad’s death so things aren’t THAT bad.)
My kids also have a problem with me talking to them in a “mean voice” which is absolutely not yelling but tone-wise certainly conveys disapproval haha. I do try to keep my voice loving even when I’m delivering some sort of corrective message but honestly sometimes that feels worse because it comes out as sarcastic. I feel like I’m ok ground with the mean voice thing though, like I am pretty confident that most parents have a sterner voice than their usual sweet tones and there are appropriate contexts to use that in!
I put in a lot here but really what I want to know is the first paragraph, like where is that line between not being perfect and being actively harmful. Am I doing ok or do I need to do more work here?
Kat
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