I'm All Bark

I had a realization. The louder I yell at a kid's offense, the lesser the offense really is. Strange, I know, but I'm grateful for this.

If the kids piddle and poke while getting ready to head out the door, I'm all "For crying out loud, can you move faster than a snail?! Pick up the pace already!" (I didn't say it was rational. Or even acceptable.)

When the toddler overturned an entire tray of planted seeds, undoing an hour's worth of work and $30 worth of seeds and soil, I sighed and started all over again.

My kids have come to realize that I'm all bluster and blow. If I'm yelling, they simply move out of my range of hearing and lay low for a while. It's just mom, destressing.

This very weird anomaly has turned out to be a good thing now that I'm the parent of teens. When they do stupid things like blatantly disobey us, they'll get yelled at royally. But when Big, Bad Things happen, I turn on my listening mom ears and let the kids talk. Even if it's summed up in just a sentence or two, teens are almost always saying something behind their actual words when they've got serious things to share. The thing is, I can't even begin to pick up on the vibe of these hidden words if my own words are drowning out anything else around me. Also, nobody wants to divulge dark and scary secrets if they're going to get yelled at for it.

Parenting. It's never what you think it is.