We’ve all been there. The moment your child does something that is the last straw and the flood gate of yelling opens. You are so mad you just yell. If you were to step outside your body and watch yourself you’d stop. Inside your yelling body as you face down the offender you can’t and you yell and yell.
Then you finally hear yourself, you stop and walk away.
You dish out whatever the consequence is and tell both yourself and the child that it’s over and you’re moving on. And as you do five minutes pass, ten and try as you might you can’t move on. You are now finally listening to all the things you said. All the yelly, loud, scary things that flew out your mouth with no thought whatsoever. You feel your heart breaking and you look over at your child whose tear stained face is sitting there eating his snack and reading a book and you break.
You begin an internal monologue that is not kind. You try to see how the offense really did call for the yell you handed out and you just can’t see it. You play over and over the one angry mad response from your child “IT WAS JUST A HUMAN MISTAKE” and remember all the human mistakes you have made, today. No one yelled at you because it had already been a day.
No one took out their stress on you.
You wait; you wait until you can get a moment with the offending child. Holding your hat in your hands you snuggle up close and apologize. You explain that sometimes you start yelling and can’t stop and that you were upset but in no way are you THAT mad. You explain that there is no excuse for making him cry. You let him know that you understand how scary it must be when you yell. Explaining how its scares you too. That he’s right it was a mistake and those happen and they don’t ever stop happening you just make different ones over time. Some are small and some are big and this, this was a small one. You hold him close and remind the both of you that Moms make mistakes too. He looks up at you his eyes now dried and asks if he can go back to his book.
As he sits a reads his book you know, he’s not broken and neither are you. Learning from your mistakes is the hardest part in this mom journey. Its happening, slowly but surely.
