Old Yeller

Being a parent is as much about deciding the kind of mother you don't want to be as much as it's about being the mother you are... and I decided a long time ago I wasn't going to be a yelling mom.  I was going to be all mellow and zen and 'Honey, your feelings of anger are pure and valid and crucial to your brain hemispheric development but please don't take them out on the dog.'  Then my kid threw a fresh hot plate of pasta all over the newly mopped floors and I hollered like, well, like my mother.

I grew up in a yelling house. Mom yelled at us, Dad yelled at us, Dad yelled at Mom and we all yelled at the dog.  Yelling was what people did in the sixties and seventies. Hitting and spanking your kids was extremely acceptable, unless you had a family that didn't read Dr. Spock.  Those un-Spocked families parented free-style, wherein they incorporated hitting and yelling.  Don't get me wrong my mom tried to hit us, but she was short and we were fast- so she had a long wooden spoon that she whacked at us and when it connected with a calf or a shin, it stung.  I seem to recall some belt-snapping too, but again, it didn't reach us all that much.  Our father was massive, so he never laid a finger on us, but would punch holes in doors or throw boots through walls to make a particular argument linger in our memories.

My sisters became parents long before I did. My younger sister has a senior in college, I have a two year old in diapers.  Guess who planned out her life and married smart, early on. That's right, not me.  This sister is also a Ph.d, a clinical psychologist who raised four daughters almost completely single-handedly while her husband worked crazy long hours building a successful law firm.  I have never heard this sister yell at any of her girls, all of whom are wonderfully polite, adorable, funny and excellent at their studies.  My sister's girls adore and obey her so thoroughly that they cower and beg for forgiveness at the calmly delivered threat of potentially being yelled at.  I thought I'd be like this sister.


My older sister has two teen boys. These boys are each delightful, charming and deeply creative, imaginative and talented at many artistic disciplines.  My older sister yells. She is simply a yeller.  She doesn't hit her boys, but speaks calmly when she says that in order to shape her boys into unfailingly polite young men, she stood on their necks from two until... well, I think she's still standing on their necks.  But these boys will agree with her, and amenably tell stories about how she disciplined them like General Patton- and they never say (even when she's not around, standing on their necks) that they disagree with her parenting style. They have grown and thrived despite or because of how they were (and are) raised. 

My father went on to have two more children with his second wife.  Big yellers. Both of them. Even when they are happy, it's all yelled.  Yelling and interrupting are hallmarks of this family.  Stunningly, their older child, a boy, is quite soft-spoken. I don't think I've ever heard him yell, but his sister thinks yelling is speaking.  She's a calm, friendly, smiling yeller.

I never thought I'd be a yeller. But I also thought I wouldn't be menopausal while changing diapers.   My husband does not come from yellers. His parents are studious, blinking Unitarians- the kind of people PBS was invented for.  Hence my husband is soft-spoken and mellow to the point of prodding him occasionally to see if he's still breathing.  But when Clementine dumped a hot cup of coffee on his head early Saturday morning, he yelled like, well, me. 

The night that I yelled at my daughter, we went on to have a rather emotional bath, with her sobbing and furious as I rinsed the unwanted bubbles from her hair.  She ran away from me, all the way up the stairs to my bedroom, crying until I stopped her and calmly said, "Look. I'm sorry.  I'm sorry I yelled. I don't know what I'm doing most of the time.  But I'm trying. "

She climbed wet and naked into my lap and gave me a hug.  She knows I'm an old yeller and she loves me anyway.  But honestly, what choice does she have? Until she is strong enough to open the refrigerator, she had better forgive me.  Because I forgive her at least fifty times a day. And I love it.