So we are on day three of Summer Vacation with Kennedy. I finished the week before her and so I had a few days to unwind and get my bearings. I got to attend her Kindergarten Fun Day, which she loved, and her summer kickoff carnival (and by the way: being at both of these showed me my child is wildly different in school than she is at home; more reserved, a little standoffish, even somewhat clingy). It was so nice to be able to show up for my kid, though there was a fair amount of guilt attached to it as I realized that this is more of a regular thing for many of the other parents, and I made a silent vow to myself that I would do more of that next school year for her…and me. We finished off the last day with a little get-together at our house for her friends and their parents that have become our good friends. It was a great entryway into the summer months I yearn for all year long.
All of that carried me through until about two o’clock Monday afternoon. We met two of my girlfriends and their kiddos at the park and the moment we got in the car to head home Kennedy started complaining that she was bored and ‘what were we doing next’. I immediately started yelling at her that she was not going to bombard me with boredom declarations all summer long. Part of the problem is I generally jam-pack our weekends and so when you are six and used to either school days or days filled with all of the things you are in this constant what’s next mindset. The other part of the problem is my kid, God love her, can be a bit of a pain in the ass (if I’m being honest). When I called my sister to whine about Kennedy’s pain-in-the-assery she countered with her own tales of annoyances. Being that she has a brand new baby on top of my other two nephews, she wins, but we seem to be rowing in the same boat.
A day later she sent me a text if she thought our grandma and grandpa were yellers. She went on to say how she feels terrible that she yells so much. Here’s the thing: my mom and dad were yellers. They are two loud people; they talk loud normally and when they were angry with us they yelled loud. None of us were afraid of it; in fact it became somewhat of white noise to us as we grew up. You were able to recognize the varying degrees of anger in the yelling and so many times it was just another mode of communication. Flash forward to today and my sister and I seemed to have inherited that lack of control in the volume of our voices. I thought about her text for a while, all the way into today. I yell a lot, I do. I too am a loud person with a strong inherent desire to be heard and I am learning that as a mother that is, often, hard to come by; sometimes inadvertently, often very intentionally. And so I yell. I yell to make sure she heard me, to make sure the message is delivered, to make sure she remembers my voice the next time. I yell.
I yell at her for being fresh or rude when she is speaking to me, her father or another adult. I do this because I would hate for her precociousness to be a trait that overshadows her kindness. It is a kindness that lights up the room and will make her the kind of kid that people want their children to have as a friend. I don’t want anyone to hear the sarcasm that comes frighteningly easy to a six year old and decide she isn’t welcome at their dinner table before they get to know that she would do anything to see people laugh and smile and that’s what the intent is. So I yell.
I yell when she isn’t nice to her baby brother (I’ve caught her twice this week being mean to him). I remind her no one treated her meanly as a baby because I would never allow it. I yell because I need for her to learn that your siblings are your tribe. They will annoy you and steal your thunder, get you in trouble or blame you for things. But they will also protect you on the school bus, lie for you to keep you out of trouble, and hold your hand through anything. She had a late start in navigating the sibling waters and we have a lot of ground to cover. My kids will be no different than anyone else’s: sometimes they will treat each other badly- I accept that but I will teach them that at the end of each day it is the two of them. And so I yell.
I yell when she does something dangerous. I yell when she rocks on a chair too close to a glass window after being told nicely, twice, to stop. I yell because the thought of anything bad happening to these two babies literally makes me feel like I could vomit (no joke-I feel sick right this moment typing about it). I have already seen the worst side of parenting and do no think I could survive anything else. I hover by the playground, and freak out during near choking episodes, and bring my kids to the pediatrician and urgent care much more frequently than I need to. I shout be careful at least fifteen times a day. I’m scared; there just isn’t any other way to explain it. So I yell.
I yell when she says bad words or uses potty-talk. I yell because there are millions of beautiful words to be spoken and she has to learn to use some of them before she mixes in the words that will bring her down to the level swear words come in. I say this as someone that loves words. I also say this as someone that loves the word shit. It’s about balance but she’s six and balance is not something she can manage yet. And so I yell.
I yell when she doesn’t listen to her dad or me. Not because I can’t tolerate disrespect (I work with middle school kids for crying out loud) but because I need her to understand that we are her parents. We are not her friends. We will laugh with her and joke with her and forgive her all of her imperfections but when it comes down to the line what we say goes. And so I yell.
Do I feel like shit about this at the end of the day? Absolutely. I go to bed trying to count how many times I had to yell at her, often stopping after I get to ten because then I feel downright lousy. But here’s my thought (and maybe its just be trying to rationalize my own bad behavior and parental shortcomings): yelling can be just another sound of love. And so while sometimes I worry all I am doing is yelling I stop to remind myself of all of the moments where there wasn’t just no yelling, but instead honest-to-god awe that a child could be so amazing: When I watch her mother her little friends so effortlessly, or hear her tell me how excited she is to have the special needs students in her class next year (“One of the boys has Down syndrome, Mama. Like Jack. Isn’t that awesome?”), or plan to ambush her dad with Nerf darts as he comes through the front door from work and giggle because it worked. There is no yelling there. There is praise and telling her how proud I am of her, and laughter-so so so much laughter. Love is the language I speak. Every single syllable I speak to my kids is spoken in love. My goal in life is to make sure that even if I am yelling at them that they can translate it into love.
