Of all the parenting challenges I've come across so far, gentle discipline is by far the hardest. I try so hard but when the anger and rage build up inside me, I feel like a volcano that's getting ready to blow. It seems to come so naturally for most of the other moms I know, but for me it's like navigating in a foreign country. I go in circles, take a lot of wrong turns and some days I'm not sure I'm even going to make it to my destination. I know what some of it stems from, issues in my past that are raw and painful even to this day. I wasn't raised with yelling and screaming but events since then have made it difficult for me to handle anger and frustration, I tend to default to yelling and screaming.
Today was a good start, I think. The kids decorated the floor in Brandon's room with lovely blue bath tub "finger paints". When I saw it I stopped, breathed slowly for a few minutes, then just said "I see a lot of blue paint all over the white (well, beige) carpet in this room. That makes me very frustrated and angry. What can we do to get the blue stuff off the carpet?" Then we got some towels and Brandon helped me clean it up as much as we could, I still need to steam clean the rug.
I like the way I handled it - described what I saw and how it made me feel, but tried to make it clear that it was the situation that made me angry, not the kids. Not yelling "Noooooooo! What are you doing?" Not to make them feel that they were bad or scare them or feel that I was angry at them or didn't love them or anything. The whole spiel just felt so unnatural, though. Like answering a question in a foreign language or trying to write with my left hand. I hope that it becomes more natural with time. I guess gentle discipline is more of a journey than a destination.
2 comments:
I never thought of it that way. It has never felt natural to me either. Everytim something happens that I handle well, I pat myself on the back for sollving a problem w/out losing it. I don't expect it to feel natural to me ever, but if the girls have a better time with it, it makes it worth it. I am so extrememly impressed with your handling of the situation though:)
Way to go! I feel the same way...maybe we all do, huh? After I finished siblings without rivalry, I tried implementing some of the same stuff and find it really difficult, because it feels so much like I'm reading a script and not like my normal reaction. But then, I guess that's it, like crazymamma says, maybe it will never feel natural because it's not. We are trying not to react but rather to act in a way that will help our relationship with our children. It's so much easy to be ap when they are babies, isn't it?!
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