The other day, I shared this meme to my Instagram stories.
A few friends (and one person I don’t actually know) responded, remarking that it seemed out of character for me, that they don’t see me as the yelling type of dad.
Well, dear reader, I’m here to correct that micromyth, to tell you that yes, I yell. I yell loud, as do most of us, whether we want to or not. I yell with verve and vigor and, sometimes, profanity.
I yell too often. It’s something that I’m working on as a dad. But it’s hard, sometimes close-to-impossible to not.
Why?
Because kids are fucking crazy. Because they’re tiny emotional terrormachines who themselves spend most of their time bordering on mania. Because they have a unique capacity treat us like absolute dogshit. In fact, Emily once said to me in the confidence of our bedroom (which is why I’m posting it here) that if any adult treated her the way our kids sometimes treat her, she would remove them from her life.
Am I victim blaming? Absolutely. Does that mean kids deserve to be yelled at? Absolutely not.
So what about the perpetrators? Can’t we find another way? Why do we yell?
We yell because we’re exhausted and we haven’t slept in years and every day is one giant sequence of negotiations and our homes are often a mess which adds to the frustration and we’re often barely hanging on by a thread and sometimes yelling is the only way to rise above the din of live.
Here’s another meme I recently saw and shared, albeit with a much smaller group (it’s a video; you have to click it):
Like so many others seem to, it misses the entire idea of the “gentle parenting” movement (probably because it’s a meme and we shouldn’t be turning to memes for things like parenting insight). Gentle parenting isn’t about being a pushover. Rather, it’s predicated on recognizing that kids are complex humans just like us, who deserve equal amounts of respect as any adult in the world.
Gentle parents can be firm parents. In fact, I think anything but firm parenting is a recipe for failure as a parent. That said, I don’t think gentle parenting leaves much space for yelling. And maybe that’s for the best.
Still, the video made me laugh and think of my own childhood.
I was raised by a yeller. Granted, I don’t think I elicited yelling in my father until I got a bit older than my kids are now. In fact, rumor has it that I was as placid a little boy as there ever was. But once I was eight, nine, ten years old, once I was prepubescent, once I was a teenager, whoa boy did I get yelled at. And, if memory serves, I deserved it. I was a Grade-A pain in the fucking ass. I was the kid who did his homework but didn’t turn it in, because fuck him, that’s why (“him” being my teacher, not my father). I was a master button-pusher and there were no buttons I enjoyed pushing more than my dad’s. Why? No idea. Maybe something Oedipal. Freud would’ve had a field day with young Mikey. Whatever the reason, my father yelled at me.
“Michael, you piss me off on a daily basis,” was one of his go-to’s. That and the legendary-to-our-family, “Your head is buried so far up your own ass, it’s a miracle you can even hear me.” And the semi-related, “Before you do anything else, I need to you pull your head out of your asshole.”
(Judge lightly, ye who judge. My dad was and remains an amazing father and there’s nothing I would change about my childhood.)
But if you ask him now, he’ll tell you that one of his biggest regrets as a father was that he yelled too much. In fact, as I wrote this, I called him to see if he objected to me including some of his all-time pissed-off quotes in this newsletter and he again apologized for how much he yelled at me as a kid.
I told him, as I always do, not to sweat it. I’m not damaged because of it.
“Still,” he said—he always says, “I should have found another way.”
Whenever my dad tells me this, I can see the pain on his face. His remorse is visible. And on that call, I could hear it in his voice. But I don’t begrudge him for yelling at me. Again, I’m pretty sure it was hardly unwarranted. Still, watching his brow furrow with a two-decade-in-the-making apology forces me to see myself at his age, after my kids have grown out of these difficult phases. It’s a face I don’t want to make; a regret I don’t want to have to reckon with. You’d think that would be enough to make me less of a yeller.
I don’t want to yell. I try not to. I’m working on ways to deal with my frustrations, to express to my son that me asking him twenty-three straight times to pick his fork up off the floor is twenty-two times too many (this is a true story) in a way that is quieter and kinder than me, a 6’4” 255-pound mass of very large human, yelling at a tiny five-year-old will be. I wish I could be more of a gentle parent, in the true, quieter sense of the term. And maybe I can. I just have to keep working on myself.
Is there a place for yelling at our kids? Maybe. I don’t know. What I do know is that I don’t want my brow to furrow with regret the same way my dad’s does when he tells me he yelled at me too much. Even if I had it coming.
Keep doing the big work, it's tough. My dad was also a yeller. I've adopted the quiet demeanor when my kids upset me. I've noticed that the quieter I speak the more then listen because they know it's about to get ugly.
I love this so much.