Truth for the Trenches

I wouldn’t allow him to have four bowls of cereal for breakfast. Riding his bike in underwear was against the rules and coloring with Sharpies on his grandmother’s Pottery Barn couch was out of the question. In an attempt to ignore the yelling and having a stuffed animal thrown at my face, I was buried in Instagram. Surely enough scrolling would make me numb to the name-calling. My five-year-old was furious at me. He threw a Costco-sized glass grinder of Pink Himalayan Salt on the kitchen floor. Shocked that it shattered, he ran upstairs crying "I'm stupid. No one likes me."    Being screamed at by my children was becoming an hourly battle. “How does that make you feel?” my mom asked me over the phone as the tears rolled down my cheeks. Their reactions revealed a thunderous roar of my own fears that I had been trying to ignore. The story I had been telling myself was: “I never get anything right. They are angry at everything I do. I messed this entire motherhood thing up....

             I have been there…that place where you say ‘yes’ to everything because you are trying to just survive. You are trying to just survive through breakfast, just survive until naptime, just survive until daddy gets home. I have been there, in that place where staying home all day with kids felt impossible, insurmountable. It felt so hard you couldn’t get out of bed or you did, but you never took off your pajamas. I have been in survivable mode where we turned on a show after each hour because it was a celebration of them eating breakfast, me sweeping one floor or I just needed to nurse the baby without the two-year-old eating the dog food. I didn’t say “no” other than in response to “Can I run through the parking lot?”             I tried to say “no.” I said “maybe”, I said “not right now”, I said, “I will think about it”. But, those answers were never clear and they just produc...

When I call my kids names I am met with silence. My voice no longer makes their ears turn on, in fact it might do the complete opposite! They don’t hear me over the TV show or playing or reading books. My voice has lost some power. Their lack of response makes me unsure if my directions are going to be followed. Often, they leave the room so I have a false sense of certainty that they are following directions. When they return thirty seconds later it becomes obvious they heard the noise of my voice but not the words. It’s time to take the power back! We need to get their attention before we start giving them tasks. We need to allow them to stop what they are doing so they can listen. Kids don’t multitask, they cannot think or play and take in extra information. Parents cannot remain patient and kind when completely ignored. I am always surprised when visiting my kids classrooms at how the teachers keep things quiet and calm. How they aren’t yelling over the volume of t...