Yesterday I ran an errand during Evan’s nap while Will watched the girls as he worked in the yard. (So nice to have some good weather, finally!) I sent the baby monitor outside with Ruth before I left, and she cranked it way up and set it on the back porch. It’s a pretty sensitive baby monitor, picking up sounds from all over the house, and Ruth had turned it up loud enough that the neighbors could easily hear it in their yards. But I didn’t think much about it, knowing it needed to be loud for Will to hear it at the far end of our property, that everyone who was awake was outside, and that I would be back before too long. After I returned from my errand, we had lunch and then continued on with our day, forgetting all about the baby monitor.
As the day went on, we had the usual amount of screaming, yelling, and crying from the kids, with one really long, loud bout from Rachel (a pro screamer—she can do dozens of screams in a row) in the evening. And, I must ashamedly but truthfully admit, I probably did my share of yelling too, especially right around bedtime, trying to get kids to quit goofing off and get ready for bed. I’m racking my brains now, trying to remember exactly how much yelling I did, because as I checked doors and locked things up for the night, I discovered the baby monitor, still loudly blaring all of our goings-on for the neighbors to hear. Ugh. I was mortified. (Why couldn’t the stupid batteries have died? No, they will wait and die next time I really need the monitor to be working.) What must all the neighbors think? Not that they don’t know we yell over here—I’m sure they can hear it without the baby monitor on occasion. But if there was any hope at all of giving them the impression that we are a nice, calm, perpetually loving and happy family, it has been thoroughly blown out of the water now. Will got a (slightly embarrassed) kick out of it and suggested that we crank the monitor all the way up and install it permanently on the front porch, where the whole neighborhood can hear it—he thinks that might cure me of my yelling. (That might not be a bad idea, actually, if it weren’t for the screaming children.) But I pointed out that we would still have to move and start over with a new set of neighbors.
So I got to wondering: how have I come to be a yeller, anyway? In my single days, I only remember raising my voice a handful times—and it was always to an inanimate object, never a person. (And because I was always alone when this happened, I would usually apologize to the object afterward.) But shortly after child number two came along, I found my volume rising. Maybe part of it is that children talk at the top of their lungs for some inexplicable reason (probably why Dora the Explorer is a natural friend for them—she and her sidekick monkey talk at the top of their lungs, too), and I have to compete with the noise to make myself heard. Couple that with the well-proven fact that children have selective hearing (a gentle “go get your pants on, please” doesn’t evoke a response, but I can go into my closet and whisper “chocolate chip,” and they all come running). I have lots of excuses for needing to yell. But the truth is, I used to be a nicer person, and I’d like to get back to that.
In the end, the whole episode led me to make some comment to Will about my growing “mommy guilt.” Will asked if that was a common phrase, and I said “google it,” which he did. Sure enough, it brought up a list of references, and right there at the top was an article on “mommy guilt,” listing the top five reasons for it. They surveyed moms all over the country to find out why they feel guilty. Reason number one? Yelling. Aha! Not that it should make me feel any better that it’s common; but still, knowing that I am not alone in my boat is somehow comforting. Nonetheless, this is one mommy who is going to work harder at rowing that boat without so much yelling, and, despite Will’s suggestion, without the aid of a mommy monitor!
Thanksgiving 2017
8 years ago