I don’t like to yell but I yell.

I yell when I’m upset with my children. I yell when I’m frustrated with my husband when he asks me about a bill that I already reminded him to pay two weeks ago. I yell when I’m disappointed with my bank’s call center representative because she can’t understand my point.

I have expressed time and again that patience is not my strongest virtue. I don’t think it’s even in my resume of virtues at all.

When Paul wrote to the Corinthians that “Love is patient, love is kind” (1 Corinthians 13:4),  I know he wasn’t referring to me. Because I’m not patient, and I’m not very kind. But Jeff came along in my world and he made me understand what love is and that’s when I learned about patience, kindness, and contentment. 

But that didn’t stop me from NOT YELLING. 

I didn’t want to yell but I do.

I tell myself not to do it again but I still do it again.

It’s a vicious cycle, a power struggle with myself.

But last night, I attended a positive parenting webinar on “Get kids to listen without nagging, reminding or yelling” and it opened my eyes to my own faults as a parent and as a person in general.

The speaker, Amy McCready, a regular parenting contributor on The TODAY Show and book author of “If I Have to Tell You One More Time….: The Revolutionary Program that Gets Your Kids to Listen without Nagging, Reminding, or Yelling”, caught my attention when she said that yelling to your children when you want them to do something does not get things done. You will only end up more upset and more frustrated. And children, especially the strong-willed ones (like the ones I have), will only take it as a challenge.

So for close to two hours, I listened to her talk about positive parenting solutions which include the “5 Rs of Rock-Star consequences” which basically talks about how you make consequences work for children.

She said it’s applicable for children 2.5 years old to teenagers because you will need the children to be able to be verbally able to speak and repeat what you said. This means my children are about five months away to this level but… it is never too early to start. 

She talked about the importance of the First “R”: using a calm and RESPECTFUL voice when giving consequences for misbehavior. If you can’t deal with it at this moment with a calm and respectful voice, don’t deal with it; deal with it LATER!

The second “R” is RELATED to the misbehavior, which means when you give a consequence, it has to be connected to the misbehavior done. For example, if the child didn’t brush her teeth, tell her she won’t be able to eat her sweets. Do not say that she won’t be able to watch Winnie the Pooh because that’s unrelated. Children, McCready said, need a daily dose of power and attention – and giving them the choice to CHOOSE how the situation works gives them that power. 

The third “R” is on REASONABLE duration. Give a time frame, she said. Do not just say that she won’t have sweets FOREVER. Because even if the consequence is something that they don’t like, they still need to feel that it’s fair.

The fourth “R” says that a consequence should be REVEALED in advance, and not a surprise. The child should know what the consequence awaits him or her if he or she commits a certain misbehavior.

Lastly, the fifth “R” tells parents to have the child REPEAT back the consequence after all the other Rs have been said because that creates a verbal agreement between you and your child(ren) and that puts you on the same page. 

After attending the webinar, I talked to Jeff about this program and I told him that I want to sign up for this because there are a lot of questions I have in mind that involves specific situations that I want to learn more about. My husband was very supportive and we agreed that we should do this together.

It’s not a cheap program but it’s very practical. Being parents to our children is our most important job and as with any other bills and trainings in life, you pay them and invest on them because they’re important. Our children are very important to us and we want to be good at our job. I want to be good at this. Or at least try to be good at this. 

But I have to be honest, the main reason why I want to do this is because I am tired of yelling. 

I want to stop yelling. 

I want to wake up one day and tell myself that I can’t even remember the last time I yelled. 

Writer’s note: I wasn’t paid by Amy McCready or her company to write this post. I just thought that it will give readers or parents a general view of how to deal with their children. If it works, then head on to her site here.

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T30WC or The 30-minute Writing Challenge is a writing exercise born out of this blogger’s need to maintain a habit of writing. Subjects of each writing challenge is just about anything but should ONLY be written within 30 minutes.