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When Mom Has a Temper Tantrum

Each month, my five-year-old son's kindergarten class compiles a "book of
days" in which the children share their daily home experiences with one
another. The next month, the book gets circulated to all the parents.
Imagine my chagrin when James brought last month's book home, and there
between "Mollie and her mom made brownies" and "Jeremy helped his dad take
out the trash" was "James's mom was angry with him this morning." My
temper, in writing, laminated and distributed for all the world to see.

Worse yet, I realized that almost all our recent mornings had degenerated
into Mommy screamathons over seemingly minor matters dawdling, misplaced
gloves, sibling bickering. I felt terrible, and obviously James did, too.
How could we break this angry pattern?

"Yelling is usually a sign that a parent has no strategy," says Thomas
Phelan, a clinical psychologist in Glen Ellyn, Illinois, and the author of
the popular 1 2 3 Magic: Effective Discipline for Children 2-12 (Child
Management, Inc.). At a loss for what to do, moms may resort to yelling
out of anger or frustration. But the end result is that parents feel
guilty and children get the emotional message that they are bad.

It's because we love our children so dearly that they are able to provoke
such strong feelings of anger in us, according to Nancy Samalin, a New
York City based parent educator and the author of Love and Anger: The
Parental Dilemma (Penguin Paperbacks). But that doesn't make expressing
that anger through hollering or put downs appropriate or effective.
Samalin, who has conducted workshops for parents of toddlers through teens
for more than 25 years, says the key is to feel and acknowledge your
emotions but not let them control you and make you act irrationally.

Samalin and Phelan recommend drawing on these following strategies when
your kids are driving you up the wall:

* Exit or wait. When you feel your anger getting the better of you,
briefly withdraw from the situation until you calm down, Samalin
writes in Love and Anger. Phelan agrees: He suggests stepping out of
the room, counting to ten, going to your bedroom, and closing the door
whatever it takes to restore your cool.

* "I," not "you." Avoid attacking your child with "you" statements
"You are such a slob!" or "You'll never learn." Instead, think in
terms of "I": "I don't like picking clothes up off your floor every
day" or "I get upset when we're not on time." These are less hurtful
and inflammatory.

* Put it in writing. If you are too angry to speak, don't. If your
child is old enough to read, express your feelings in writing.
Sometimes just the time required to find pen and paper will help you
to cool off.

* Stay in the present. When your child makes you angry, don't work
yourself into a tizzy by listing every offense he has committed in the
past week and is likely to commit in the future. Stick to the issue at
hand.

* Restore good feelings. When you do lose it, reconnect with your
child as soon as possible. That may mean saying you're sorry and
giving a hug and kiss to a younger child. For an older child, you may
want to offer an explanation of why you were angry along with an
apology. Don't worry that apologizing will diminish your authority it
won't. It shows your child that you respect him and teaches him that
everyone can be wrong sometimes.

* Recognize what the problem is. Is it really your child's messy room?
Or are you sleep deprived? Feeling overwhelmed at work? Mad at your
husband or mother or boss? Be aware of when you are more vulnerable to
anger and resist the urge to transfer negative feelings to your child.

* Make yourself and all family members accountable for lashing out.
Institute a "no losing it" rule to make kids and parents aware of the
times they go ballistic. But do it with a light touch. For instance,
make a chart and tack on a sticker when one of you has an outburst. If
one family member is accumulating a lot of stickers, it's time to talk
about it.

* Carry a tape recorder. When you feel yourself about to blow, turn it
on. If you explode anyway, play back the tape and imagine yourself as
the child on the receiving end.

* Use cognitive therapy. This technique is sometimes used to calm
fearful fliers. Analyze your thoughts and put them in perspective or,
as Phelan puts it, "deawfulize" the situation. (Fliers learn that
their fear is of crashing, not flying. And since crashing is unlikely,
their fear is not reasonable.) Ask yourself when your children are
fighting, say if it's really that horrible. Think of the situation as
aggravating but normal behavior that merits a calm, rational parental
response.

Melanie Howard is a writer and a mother of two. She lives in Alexandria,
Virginia.

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