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A No-YELLING Challenge ~ Working to become a kinder, gentler mom

By Michelle Marine

on Jul 12, 2013, Updated Jul 11, 2018

23 Comments

Would you believe that I have a hot temper? I do. I am ashamed to admit, but see those 4 little angels above? They sure are cute, but boy do they know how to push my buttons and spin me up. I’m afraid I am often the mother I do not want to be – impatient, loud, and sometimes, downright mean – yelling hurtful things at my children that I always end up regretting.

A No-YELLING Challenge ~ Working to become a kinder, gentler mom

A while back, I introduced you to two Canadian bloggers – Savannah and Cheryl – when we posted our end of the year homeschooling reflections. Savannah is a mom of 4 little kiddos 5 years old and under, and Cheryl is mama to 6 children of her own! Between the three of us, we have 14 children!! Turns out, I’m not the only mother who has ever yelled at her children out of anger.

Savannah, Cheryl, and I thought it would be a helpful to start a 30 day No-Yelling Challenge: Keep Calm & Carry On. I know I need to work hard to become a kinder, gentler mother, and I’m sure other mothers can use some encouragement too. So, for the next 30 days the three of us will encourage each other {and you, if you want} to stop yelling!

No-Yelling Challenge ~ Keep Calm & Carry On

Before my kids were born, I had no idea what to expect, but I knew I wanted to raise my children in a loving home. I practice attachment parenting ideals {when I’m not yelling} and was never angry with my babies. When I first gazed my daughter’s eyes after her birth, I had no idea what would happen as she got older, but I did not believe my sweet, innocent little angel would ever be capable of making me angry. Three children later though, sibling rivalry and competition for my attention has changed a lot of how I initially saw this motherhood job going down.  And I do get angry, often. It’s hard to tell my children to control their temper when the very example I sometimes set is out of control! I really need to take charge of my behavior during the next 30 days and work hard to become a kinder, gentler mama.

Yesterday’s events illustrate my need for this challenge perfectly. We moved into our barn a few weeks ago and I promptly took the children and ran off to Missouri without putting the house in order. I came back to quite a disorganized mess and have been trying to get things put together correctly ever since, but it’s slow going. The weather has been hot and sticky and flies are everywhere in my kitchen. That chaos alone is enough to make me really grumpy.

But yesterday just kept getting worse and worse. My 7 year old and I walked out to inspect our fruit trees mid-morning and found a baby apple tree being devoured by Japanese beetles. Really – I have never seen anything so vile and disgusting. We spent an hour and half in the 10 am sun picking hundreds of beetles off that tree and drowning them in a pot of water without a thought to the sun overhead. Of course, I burned my shoulders and upper back pretty badly. And that hurts. Every time we went back to that tree, it continued to be inundated with beetles. Seeing all of those beetles on my poor, defenseless baby tree made me really, really grumpy.

If that’s not enough, my poor 9 year old got into poison ivy a few days ago. She’s itchy and grumpy too, and I feel really sorry for her. She sometimes has a tendency to take her frustrations out on her siblings, though, and yesterday was no exception. The 7 year old was not helping matters out either, because he really likes to annoy his sisters. He usually accomplishes that by stealing their toys or shooting them with nerf guns.

The 5 year old dropped her favorite dolly in the sticky yellow fly trap {trying to rid the kitchen of flies…} and got the nasty stuff all over the doll’s hair – which created another really nasty mess that I had to try to fix. And the 3 year old woke up super grumpy from a late nap {on my bed} soaked through with urine. Yes, she was sleeping on my bed without a diaper and peed all over my blankets and sheets. Dumb, on my part. Really dumb. Anyway, at one point, all 5 of us were yelling at each other and if a stranger had walked through my barn door at that moment, well…I’m pretty sure that person would have turned around and run off really quickly.

And stuff like this seems to happen around here more than I care to admit. Hence the need for an intervention.

Please join Cheryl, Savannah and I during the next 3o days for the No-Yelling Challenge! Next Friday, in Week 2, we will all discuss triggers – what happens that makes us yell. I’ve been thinking about that a lot the last few days. Understanding the triggers and working around them will be really helpful for me. In Week 3, we’ll discuss coping strategies – things that are working well {or not so well…} in our challenge. And in Week 4, we’ll wrap up the challenge and see how well we all did!

I hope you’ll pop over to Cheryl’s post at her lovely blog, On the Old Path, and Savannah’s post at her lovely blog, Ramblings of a Christian Mom , to see what they have to say about the No-Yelling Challenge! We all have our own reasons for participating and I am excited to follow along with them to see their progress and read their tips.

What do you think? Is a No-Yelling Challenge for you? I’d love hear your thoughts!