Anxiety Aunt: Help! Every morning I end up yelling at my children, how do I stop it?

Dear Aunty,

Before I had children, I pictured myself as that kind, caring, patient mother. One who doted on her kids and spent hours foraging in the open air for feathers, shells and stones. Now, I feel all I do is hurry my children along and yell and scream at them to move faster. I feel the pressure particularly bad in the mornings when we are getting ready for school. I start patiently asking my youngest to get dressed or my eldest to comb his hair, but by the time the morning unravels I am screaming at them both to do what I first asked them to do 15 minutes ago. How do I stop this cycle of yelling at them and learn to be more patient?

Yours, Impatient

Dear Impatient

Ah dear, this does sound familiar. Every morning, your Aunt can hear an overture drifting across the back fence. It starts with a gentle, “Lily, put on your shoes please.” Five minutes later, it’s: “LILY! Shoes, please”. Five minutes after that: “Lily, I told you 15 minutes ago to put your shoes on, what have you been doing? GET YOUR SHOES ON! Please.” Five minutes after that: “LILY! SHOES! NOW! Or so help me.......”. At this point, your Aunt turns Sunrise to full volume so that Harry and Megan, One’s parakeets, don’t pick up any more inappropriate phrases to whip out when One has guests over.

Often One will bump into One’s neighbour a little later that day. “I’m so sorry if you heard me yelling at the kids this morning,” she often says with a sheepish little smile. One always gives the same answer: “What? Oh no, the old hearing is not what it used to be so One did not hear a thing, my dear. “

Sometimes if she is looking particularly downhearted, One will add: “Besides have you heard they way One one hollers at the parakeets when they decide to use their flying time to turn into little fighter pilots, swooping at your Aunt’s head and dispatching black and white bombs all over the living room? Even Buckingham Palace has probably heard the exclamations of: “MEGAN, stop pooping on the carpet! HARRY, that was my hair! Stop swooping! One ought to turn the pair of you into parakeet pie!”

She often responds to this with a quick chuckle before heading down her driveway.

One doesn’t know this neighbour very well. But sometimes as One watches her retreat, One feels like calling her back and telling her this: parenting is hard. Keeping children clean and fed and engaged and teaching them manners and helping support their learning and making sure they get where they need to be when they need to be there, is all encompassing and these days women do this while also balancing all the other hats as well — successful career woman (who crams a full working week into three days part-time), housekeeper, laundry worker, wife, friend. The pressure is immense, the stress constant. Go easy on yourself.

While having to yell at children to get them to do what they need to do is not an ideal situation, it is life. Children need to get to school on time and they need to participate in getting themselves ready. If they falter or fail to follow instruction, repeatedly, then it stands to reason that the person giving the instruction is going to get frustrated and that those feelings will escalate the longer the situation is not rectified.

One could tell you that you should set your alarm earlier in the morning so things aren’t so rushed or that you should step away and take deep breaths before trying again to get your child to do as they are asked but, it is not One’s place and One is fairly sure the results would be the same or similar regardless. The best advice One can offer is to be sure to decompress by taking time out for yourself regularly and believe in that old mantra: This too shall pass. And it will. And odds are that one day, you’ll look back and smile as you recall this crazy, chaotic, wonderful time in your life.

Now, One must dash, One has a pie in the oven.