Is Yelling The New Spanking?

(Kate's is new. Laura's is new...check them out! And FYI, Laura will be writing her VERY FIRST movie review this week for 'A Christmas Carol' with Jim Carrey. I'm anxious to hear what she has to say...I'm feeling dubious.)

Jesus...can you believe this was a headline recently? And when I say it was a headline....what I mean is that it was one of the little subject lines on Yahoo. But still. It was right up there with 'Janet Jackson Blames Doctor For Michael's Death' and 'Michael Moore Attacks Canada'. So pretty newsworthy.

I guess the whole idea is that yelling is awful. Terrible. Capital letters SHITTY parenting. If you have to yell at your kids, you're doing it wrong.

I call Bullshit on this one. BULLSHIT! It's not like I'm screaming at my kid's all the time, not really. But yelling is a useful tool in my parenting arsenal. It's right at the top of my weapons, just ahead of threatening-to-throw-away-their-toys and my raised eyebrow, terrifying stare. The one where I think I can willfully dilute my own pupils until they're pinpricks just to get me point across.

Yelling is what I do to get my point across. To make myself heard over the terrible din that is four boys in the middle of a 'You were looking at me!' 'No I wasn't!' 'Stop picking on him!' 'Mind your own business!' fight. If I didn't yell to get their attention, our little society would devolve into Lord Of The Flies-like chaos, pig's head on the stick et al. Yelling means I mean business.

I think I've heard just about all I can take from this whole 'gentle parenting' movement. Your kids need you to be gentle sometimes, of course they do. But they need you to prepare them for the world too. And the world...it ain't so gentle. The world will kick the crap out of you, we all know it. We've all been there.

Here's the thing. I think we live in such an educated world that we've conned ourselves into believing we can educate ourselves into being perfect parents. If you read a million parenting books or try to remind yourself of everything your parents did that you hated or just keep a little checklist of everything you think doesn't work, you'll raise a bunch of super humans. If they have this many lessons or eat this many vegetables or never taste an ounce of sugar...you've done it right.

And if you never raise your voice...they'll be in a beautiful meditative state their whole lives.

Bad news - I don't think there's ever a point when you get to say you've done it right. You've succeeded. Because parenting isn't a job. It isn't something you apply for or can set deadlines for. It's a life. A whole long life, with any luck. You can't train yourself to do it perfectly because you don't know who these people are going to be. It's like going on a lifelong blind date - you just don't know what's going to work and what isn't.

Four boys live in my house. They're all different. They all need different things from me. The one thing they all need, though, is to know that i'm invested enough to give them heck if they need it. It's my job. It's how I love them. And it's how they'll (hopefully) all grow into productive, happy people.

Although you really just never know, do you?