The girls immediately stopped in their tracks, looked up at me with mouths open and we all stared at each other — and then we started cracking up. My alternative to yelling was enough to deflect the energy in that moment, which changed the course of how the rest of the afternoon unfolded.
A common misconception with mindful parenting is that it’s always calm and collected. While calm is what we all hope for, the reality is we are all human, and difficult emotions — irritability, anger, sadness, frustration — are all part of our natural human experience.
It’s our ability to pause and respond rather than react in those heated moments that make all the difference in how our children feel and respond. Our emotions don’t disappear, but we can choose to let the “yell” out in a different way.
Many of us have given ourselves a “parenting time-out” or taken deep breaths, which are tried-and-true ways to re-center. Here are a few fun(ny) alternatives to yelling that use the energy that’s present: