Digging New Grooves — What I Discovered 6 Weeks Into My Yell-Less Journey

So I haven’t yelled in six weeks.

It feels good.

It feels good knowing I have maintained control over myself.

It feels good knowing that I have set a good example for the kids (not in every department, but at least in this one).

And it’s not like it’s been easy or that it’s become automatic.

But it’s definitely getting easier, though.

Last week I wrote a post about being positive and I explained something my therapist told me:

My current therapist explained behaviors to me as grooves in your brain.

The longer you’ve been doing them, the deeper the grooves are.

You can make new grooves in your brain for new behaviors. Just like digging in the dirt, the more you dig, the deeper the grooves get.

Digging is definitely hard work.

It takes perseverance to make a dent.

But there is a payoff.

When you dig a new groove in your brain, that stuff you dig out fills in those old grooves until, eventually,

they disappear.

So anyway, digging the new grooves isn’t just about getting out the shovel and beginning to excavate. I’ve begun digging new grooves, and some of my old grooves are starting to fill in.

You have to know where to dig.

And this past week I found a pretty good location to break ground; I discovered another yelling trigger.

And I’ve learned a couple things.

I’ve realized that when I give my kids a suggestion or a piece of advice that really makes sense yet they choose not to follow it that I have a pretty strong reaction.

Even when it’s not a life or death situation.

Take last week, for instance.

I told Number 3 I’d go throw the baseball with him.

I didn’t tell him this because I just wanted to do it for the fun of it (which is part of the problem), but because he had two games coming up this weekend and it’s been a while since he’s practiced.

I had an agenda.

I wanted him to do well in the game.

If they put him in to pitch, I wanted him to kill it.

I didn’t want him to be rusty and do poorly.

I didn’t want him to feel bad about himself.

So when I gave him the opportunity and he couldn’t find his glove immediately and basically said screw it, well, I didn’t like that.

I found myself feeling the need to convince him that he should practice.

That is was for his own good.

That he needed to listen to me.

I tried once.

He wasn’t having it.

I found myself getting really annoyed.

In the past, I would have kept going.

I would have forced the issue.

Until it turned into a battle of the wills and I was yelling at him and he was yelling at me.

So this time, I stopped.

It was only a little baseball practice in the backyard.

It wasn’t life or death.

And that’s when I learned something else.

I think I’ve thought that old let them learn by their mistakes motto has only applied to older kids.

That a nine-year-old is too young to learn this lesson.

I don’t know why I decided this to be the case.

Because it’s not true.

It wouldn’t be a bad thing for Number 3 to have a bad day on the field and realize on his own that he might want to practice.

And so, this clicked after my second attempt to get him to change his mind.

I stopped.

And I let it go.

My blood pressure remained in the normal range.

Number 3 wasn’t crying or yelling.

And as it turned out, the next night we had our chance to practice pitching, and everything worked out.

Funny how the outcome of a recurring situation changes when you break out the shovel and start to do a little digging.