Two weeks of no yelling. How I did it.

I have done some pretty impressive things in my life.

I’ve put myself through graduate school and am the first member of my family to not only graduate from college but also get my master’s degree.

I’ve given birth multiple times.

I’ve trained for and completed the New York City Triathlon and Marathon in the same year while keeping seven children alive under my roof.

I’ve been married for almost ten years.

To the same man.

But none of those really compare to what I have been able to do in the last two weeks.

Or should I say not do.

I haven’t yelled once in the last two weeks.

Not once.

It’s a fucking miracle.

Actually, it’s not a miracle.

It’s due to hard work.

Last week I wrote about how I made it through my first 24 hours and then,

how I made it through my first week.

The second week wasn’t exactly a cakewalk.

But the hard work is already starting to pay dividends.

So now it doesn’t seem so much like hard work.

Or at least I am really feeling like the work to change my perspective and habits is totally worth it.

Because being mindful of the words I am using is much less work than when I was doing all the yelling.

Let me explain.

Two weeks ago, I was having the same conversation almost daily (sometimes multiple times a day) with Number 3, 4, and 5 (who are 9, 7, and 5 years old).

It went something like this:

When you are done with breakfast, I want you to clean your room.

Then I would start cleaning up in the kitchen, or go put laundry in the dryer, or pick up my phone and check my email.

Or Facebook.

Or both.

The kids would continue to sit at the counter.

They would take advantage of me not paying attention and start bugging the shit out of each other or fooling around.

Annoyed, I would turn the volume up from 2 to 10.

Stop fooling around and finish your breakfast!

They would stop fooling around and eat.

And I would go back to whatever it was that I had decided to focus on before.

Then they would take advantage of me not paying attention and start bugging the shit out of each other or fooling around.

More annoyed, I would turn the volume up from 10 to 50.

If you do that to her one more time I am taking your food away!

They would stop fooling around and eat.

And I would go back to whatever it was that I had decided to focus on before.

Then they would take advantage of me not paying attention and start bugging the shit out of each other or fooling around.

Even more annoyed, I would turn the volume up from 50 to 200.

That’s it! What is wrong with you? Why can’t you for once follow the directions at breakfast! YOU ARE DONE! GO UPSTAIRS AND CLEAN YOUR ROOM UP!

Then, the three of them would go upstairs  to their room.

I’d be sure that after that tongue lashing they’d feel awful and obediently go upstairs and clean their room as quickly as possible, wanting to show me that they felt tremendous remorse.

Two minutes later, I’d either feel the entire house shake or I’d hear a really loud thud. Or a smash. Or someone crying.

So I’d go to the bottom of the stairs, crank the volume up from 200 to 400, and yell,

WHAT IS GOING ON UP THERE???

It would take another two rounds of me yelling up the stairs, threatening to either lock them in their room for the day or throw away every single one of their toys, and reaching the maximum volume level of 999 before I would actually walk up the stairs, at which point I would storm into their room, do some more yelling, throw around empty threats, tell them they were staying in their room for a very long time, and then try to catch my breath.

And they would look at each other and laugh.

And then after yelling,

DO YOU THINK THIS IS A JOKE???

and screaming about how they would never do what they were doing at school or to their teacher, I’d multiply their semi-solitary confinement sentence by about 10, and then I’d storm downstairs.

And then, after all that, I’d be exhausted and feeling really shitty about myself as a mom.

Because ultimately, I hadn’t changed their behavior.

I also hadn’t actually avoided walking up the stairs like I was trying to do in the first place by increasing my volume.

And I hadn’t saved time by yelling.

In total, this whole yelling routine usually lasted about thirty minutes from start to finish.

And at the end of the thirty minutes, rather than having 3 well-fed kids whose room was clean,

I’d have three kids who probably didn’t get to finish their meals stuck in a bedroom upstairs that was still a shit hole for an indefinite amount of time, and a blood pressure reading that would require large doses of either alcohol or medication to get back into the normal range.

About two days into the no yelling, I thought about this Groundhog Day meal time situation I often found myself in.

And I also thought about the definition of insanity.

Mealtime had become insane.

So had I.

My kids know the rules.

They understand what the expectations are.

They are not confused.

They don’t need reminders.

So I stopped doing the same things over and over again, and I changed two more things:

1) I chose to be present at meal time.

I’m still working on this.

But I’m trying not to kill two birds with one stone and get a chore accomplished during lunch or dinner.

I wasn’t really killing two birds, anyway.

I was throwing one stone, but I was doing it like thirteen times.

And I’m also trying, and admittedly struggling much more with this one, to stay away from my phone or the iPad while the kids eat.

This may take longer than two weeks to fix.

But I realize that I am engaging in a behavior at meal time that I would not allow the children to do.

One of those do as I say, but not as I do kind of things.

But being present and not giving the kids opportunities to screw around has cut down a lot on my need to correct inappropriate behavior.

Plus, it’s possible they are being douches at dinner because they want my attention during meal time.

And they deserve it much more than my phone does.

2) I stopped giving second chances, and I started following through.

I have stopped saying, If you do that again…

We have a counter with stools at it where the kids eat.

We also have a little table in the kitchen with two chairs at it.

Nobody really wants to sit at the little table. They all want to sit at the counter.

I used to give the kids about fourteen warnings before banishing whoever wasn’t following the rules to the little table.

Now I give none.

One strike and you are (quietly) relegated to the little table, with this line:

When you touch someone else’s food/don’t keep your hands to yourself/etc., you sit at the little table.

Not surprisingly, this has had a much bigger influence on the kids’ behavior than the screamfests I’ve employed in the past.

Of course, they still test the limits.

But not like they did two weeks ago.

Eating breakfast has become a much calmer experience.

And now, rather than dreading meal time, I’m almost starting to look forward to it.