Props to you if you understand the movie reference in this blog title 🙂
This time I wanted to talk about yelling and discipline as it’s fresh on my mind thanks to recent events in our household. I’ve mentioned before how I’ve noticed a much better response from my son when I speak calmly and rationally with him rather than yelling at him…but unfortunately in reality this is hard to do. And of course it makes me feel super great raising my voice to a two and a half year old who simply doesn’t have the mental capability to control all his impulses yet.
It’s not that I think yelling is awful, I do believe there is a time and place for yelling and raising your voice, but I also believe I go to it more often than I should. There are a lot of good alternate methods I gleaned from reading “The Whole-Brained Child” I referenced in my earlier post. My son  is an amazing and wonderful little boy, AND he fully embodies everything that goes along with the word toddler…good and bad 🙂 He deserves better and I know what I need to do and how I can improve. It’s time for me to get back to “connecting and redirecting” and to treat him like he deserves.
(By the way…”connect and redirect” is a great tool from the book…the basic gist…you respond to a child’s emotional “right-brain” outburst with a tender, loving “right-brain” response, i.e. “I’m sorry, sometimes it’s really hard to be little isn’t it?” then, only once you’ve connected with the child on the emotional level that is totally overwhelming their brain at the moment and you’ve helped them calm down, only then can you redirect them towards the behavior you want them to take with a logical “left-brain” response)
I’ve found that this parenting thing is not for the faint of heart. It’s quite difficult actually and if I’m not  constantly analyzing and assessing what I’m doing and trying to improve, I’m doing my amazing/frustrating/adorable/headstrong little boy a serious injustice.
This is discipline…
This is real-life parenting…
This is the terrific/terrible twos…
This is fatherhood…
This Is Fatherhood 