Staying in control.

My kids push my buttons. DanPar sitting on the potty for ten minutes, then pooping his pants minutes afterwards. DanPar pushing his brother out of the way when he's running around. DanPar screaming because he isn't allowed to eat nothing but Nutrigrain bars and kefir all day. DanPar... okay, I guess only one kid really knows how to make me mad. Crash Boy is good at wearing down my patience, but it takes a kid doing something that he knows is wrong to get me steamed.

I like to picture myself as emotionally in control. Because wouldn't that be great? There's some axiom about "People have to have your permission to make you angry." It might be true, but it gives the wrong impression, because by default, people have that permission. You'd have to work to take that permission away from someone. It makes it sound like there's some sort of waiver you're signing to give someone permission to make someone mad.

But it all takes work. And staying in control of yourself takes work. Currently, I can list the situations my sweet magnificent boy does that really gets my goat. So, the plan is to visualize these situations beforehand, and have a plan to fall back on. If Daniel takes things away from Crash Boy, and I'm caught without a plan, I resort to anger.

I'm not proud of it, and luckily, I've had my first year of teaching to fall back on. For the first couple months, I maintained order by volume. "SIT DOWN." It worked. It worked when I lost my cool and put a bit of temper behind my words. But, inevitably, this became the new norm, and the students rose to the challenge. So, to reestablish that order, I turned it up to 11, and yelled. Yup. Yelled them into submission. But kids are adaptable little tykes, and so, by the end of the year, I went home with a sore voicebox, emotionally drained, and little actually accomplished.

It's important for me to have a system in place, even if it's just to make sure I don't lose my cool. Because today, with a rejuvenated spirit, I dealt with my sweet eldest kid after he dirtied his diaper after a long session sitting on the toilet. When I went in with a gentle reprimand, he clapped and said, "Yay! You're not mad at me!"

Whoops.

I'm certainly not a perfect parent, and goodness knows I'm just making things up as I go. But if there's one stratagem that works for me, it's to have a list of canned responses to the things that test my patience, so that if I'm out of patience, I've got a stock of acceptable things to say, and always be working on being a better parent, friend, and human.

These boys love their kefir!