I was a yelling mom. A mom who flipped out, freaked out, went crazy on my kids. Especially my son. Which completely breaks my heart to say that. Type that. Whatever. After years of healing my broken heart, a heart that started to shatter before age 5, I now know why I yelled so much.
I didn’t yell for just one reason. There were many.
Firstly, my dominant sign is Aries — ruled by Mars, we are the passionate ones, some would say, the hotheads. I was a total hothead.
With five planets in Aries, you chose a lot of fire when you chose me as your mama, Handsome. I’m sorry, and also, you’re welcome.
Then of course there’s the ‘I married my father’ piece. And the piece where I ran full-speed away from my deep and gnarly childhood wounds until I just couldn’t run anymore.
I was a co-dependent, broken-hearted mess of a mom, and I didn’t even know it.
You’d think a college-educated woman with a Master’s degree would have studied or read something on co-dependency by her 40’s. Nope.
I could go into ten thousand stories, yet, what it all really boils down to is this — I was desperate to feel safe and be seen.
I was significantly unnoticed, unsupported, and unsafe as a child. All of those experiences created a deep imprint on my psyche that followed me well into my 40’s.
In true dominant Aries form, I’m going to be really honest with you
Yelling, or raising your voice at your children on a regular basis causes damage—damage to your relationship and even damage to your child’s brain.
And yelling doesn’t “fix” their behavior “problems”, it actually makes them worse. I’ve worked with countless parents who tell me “they only listen when I yell”. If you’ve said that yourself, take a deep breath and think about it— does your yelling create the long-term solution you’re looking for? It totally does not.
Here’s what’s actually happening when you yell.
When you yell, you send your child into a heightened level of stress, and in this day and age (it’s March 19, 2020 as I write this), your child is already experiencing higher levels of emotional stress than any generation of children in the last 50+ years. Sadly, the average child today doesn’t play outside or even play, as much as their brains and bodies require for balanced physical, mental, and emotional health. They spend more time on tablets than on bikes, with devices than face-to-face with friends, and on homework than on creativity and exploration.
And now we’re in the Coronavirus days. Stress levels are at an ALL-TIME HIGH for parents, so guess who’s feeling it, too?
Your child’s nervous system is stressed to capacity even before you yell.
Before you get to the point of yelling, it’s quite possible your child’s nervous system is already in Fight or Flight mode which means your child’s ability to process (your) speech is reduced, and high-frequency sounds like yelling, cannot actually be heard, or cannot be heard as well as lower-frequency sounds, like a calmer, softer voice.
Read that last paragraph again. It's beyond important.
So your child isn’t “listening”, because their brain cannot process (hear) what it is you’re yelling.
When you're yelling, your child literally cannot hear you.
Not only do they not hear you, their brains and bodies aren’t processing much of anything other than "Mommy is scary as f*ck".
What is it that you want deeply in that moment?
You flipping out about your child not putting on his shoes is not about the shoes. Yes, you need to go places and get things done, but what’s most important and what will allow you to be that safe presence for your child in those stressful moments? Your deep understanding (mind and body) that you are safe, seen, and heard whether he puts on his shoes or not.
