Before I had kids, I swore I would never yell as a parent. Well… I clearly didn’t realize what parenting teens would actually be like. It’s hard!
There would be times I found myself throwing all my parenting skills out the window and yelling at my kids when I was overloaded with frustration. It felt like the first time I ordered Ikea furniture and thought it was such a great deal. Then I got it and realized it was going to be much more work than I thought.
I remember a time when my son (Palmer… you may know him 😉) was a teenager. He wanted help on a school project. I said that I was free to help until 10pm, at which time I was going to bed. After dawdling all evening, guess what time he finally got around to working? 9:40pm. I was irritated before we even started. I knew that if I kept my word and stopped at 10pm, I was going to be the “bad guy” and Palmer was bound to be mad. I kept going. I was tired; he was cantankerous and unappreciative. Every time I said I was going to bed, he convinced me to stay. (Sometimes I’m a sucker for being sweet-talked.) Things went south. By 11:30pm, when I was working harder than he was and he was being a jerk about it, I’d had it. I lost my cool. I yelled. I stormed. I was appalled at myself for yelling when I swore that would never be me (and this wasn’t the first time. 🫠🙃)
I knew I didn’t want to yell at my son who I love so much, but it still slipped out in the heat of the moment. Do you ever feel that way?
This has been a topic I have spoken with clients about for years and have done a lot of my own learning about as a marriage and family therapist and as a mom. It is also a topic Palmer spends a lot of time on in his training to be a marriage and family therapist at Northwestern University. We want to share what we have learned with YOU so you have the skills to break the yelling cycle. 🙌
We hosted a webinar on recently. You can view the replay here.
