Shouting!

When I was undergoing teacher training I was told that shouting as a form of discipline is generally ineffective and that whispering was a far more effective way to control the class. Shout, and you add another loud voice to a room full of thirty clamouring teenagers; whisper and everyone suddenly quietens down to hear what you're saying.Initially sceptical, I realised within a few weeks that my voice was the best tool I had in the classroom and that whispering did indeed calm things down more effectively than shouting. And so throughout my teaching career I very rarely needed to raise my voice.


Fast forward a few years and I decided that the same techniques would work with parenting too. How naive! Not that it doesn't work with one's own children: I still believe it does and still find that when I speak calmly to my toddler he responds far better and situations are diffused much more quickly. No, naive because I was totally ignorant of the fact that one's own children have an uncanny ability to get under one's skin; that they push buttons until all the calm and whispering has been squashed inside of us and the only release is a big ranting shout!


After a particularly shouty morning this week (all before we'd even sat down to breakfast) I felt unbelievably guilty and vowed to try and revert back to the calm conversations of my previous life. Cue an unruly toddler this afternoon, and it all goes out of the window. He shouts, then shouts again, and again and again. I shout. He shouts some more. I shout. I leave the room. He cries (I'm not proud of this by the way!). But the next bit is the thing that I am trying to work on. I go to him, cuddle him and say sorry for shouting. He says sorry too. We cuddle some more, then he drags me off to show me his car. Incident forgotten.


I would love to be able to say I'm not going to shout at my children. But that would be a lie. The truth is that I will try to not shout at my children; but know that I will fail. The truth is also that I will make a point of saying sorry when I do shout. I will introduce them to the idea of sorry and forgiveness. And as I know that I am forgiven by God after each 'sorry' I pray that they will grow up knowing they are too. And that we will all learn to try again with a clean slate.


And I also pray for just a little bit more whispering!