cecilleWB wrote::(How am i going to become patient and nice to my second son? How can i stop yelling? I am getting frustrated. I feel like a failure and a bad mother. That i dont deserve being a mom. It pains me when i whip and yell at my child all the time. Sometimes I cry and slap my face, "what kind of a mom am I? I get mad all the time. i wasnt like this with my first son. I dont know what to do. I cant control my anger.and sometimes i whip my son too much that he will really cry so much..it really hurts me so much.. Am i crazy? Why am i like this?
Hi Cecillie (what a beautiful name).
Yes, you have a problem. Why with your 2nd son and not your first? Well, it could be just that he is so different…. The first son was mild and quiet while the 2nd son is more fussy and prone to bouts of crying and tantrums. Or maybe you wanted a daughter and so this 2nd Son seems to be annoying to you from the very start. If it is a question of the First Case, where the child is simply more fussy, well, you never had to really answer back with the first son because he was not so demanding, but when the second son challenges you, well, you give as much as you get, so to speak. “You think you can whine and cry and put up a fuss and get everything you want!?… well, ‘you must have been born yesterday because you ain’t seen nothing yet’. But, yes, it is greatly disturbing to you that you are apparently following the little baby’s lead. He is in charge of the big Chess Game, and you are playing reactively… defensively…. And defensive players always lose. You know this. So you are coming here to get advise on how you can be more Proactive… how you can start taking the initiative, and not just follow some little baby’s lead.
Well, that might be tough. Little Babies, and their Mothers have evolved to be very closely bound up in Action and Reaction, Stimulus and Response. Indeed, my first instinct here is to say that if the Baby is getting particularly nasty and naughty, and thinks that tantrums and wailing hysterically will get it anything it wants, well, the ‘correct’ evolutionary response of a Mother would be to meet fire with fire. “No! You little Brat! Cry your little eyes out all you want, but until you learn to be nice and polite like your Big Brother, all this fuss you make will just bring more and more contempt from the Civilized World you have been born into... So, be a Big Boy and stop acting like a little Baby.” Yes, it pains a mother to have to put her foot down. What mother doesn’t just want to pick up their little darlings and smother them, almost, with kisses? But a mother has got to do what a mother has got to do.
BUT! Feelings and emotions can definitely get out of hand. Impulsive behavior is often not the wisest. You do not want to scream and shout. You do not want to ever swear. If corporal punishment seems to be called for, then it must be the most thought out and controlled and deliberate smack upon his little bottem… nothing impulsive. When he is in a Tantrum and flying into his little screaming rages, he must look up at you and see something like a Huge Impassive Stone Wall. If you react in a frenzy like himself, well, the little thing will think he has you hooked, he is getting a big response. You need to shut that down. Yes, now that I think of it, you can of course try to comfort him in the usual ways – give him food or change his diaper or rock him to sleep (some infants seem to hate the feeling of drifting off to sleep and will cry and scream only because they get tired). But give them no reason to believe that you come rushing to them any more quickly because they have acted more and more badly. Tell, them frankly, “you know, I would have come sooner but you were making such a frightful racket that I honestly wanted to stay away until you quieted down a bit”. Be honest with them. Tell them that being nasty and naughty will not work for them in Your household. You’re the Mom. That makes you God.
But, yes, this is all great advice, but you will still react with feelings and intensities that you cannot seem to control. Well, it takes practice. Rome was not built in a day. Go on line and buy some anger management books. Many books have worthwhile tips and procedures to follow. You can learn to be more calm and deliberative… not so given to wild impulses, screaming and such.
Here: this is my ‘cut and paste’ book recommendations:
Book Recommendations:
All the personal skills required for successful Anger Management, well, they cannot be learned overnight. Of course, you can go to a Therapist, but even I have gone to therapists and the first thing they do is recommend that you read Anger Management self help books. It easy to understand why. If you do some daily reading of anger issue books… making it something of a ritual behavior, then it helps you to always stay aware of your potential problems with anger. Ordinarily we might do some intensive work on ourselves in regards to our anger issues immediately after we have had some serious episode, but then as time passes, we begin to forget that we have a problem, that is, until we explode again. So we need to keep Anger at the forefront of our attention, or at least to the extent that we have some daily reminder for ourselves that we must keep up our guard and maintain all of the good practices that we had learned.
Of course, you could find your own books. Go on line and just buy the ones with reviews that seem to show that the books would appeal to you. But I have a few suggestions of my own. One book I recommend, because I found I had given it a splendid review on that Big On Line Merchandizer’s Website is “Angry All The Time: An Emergency Guide to Anger Control” by Ronald Potter-Efron (my review is on the 3rd page of the 5 Stars). I had said that it is the one book most likely to bring anybody back ‘from the edge’. Also, check out “Rage” by Ronald Potter-Efron (the same author as the previous book). I think it is the best book on the subject of extreme rage. Then there is a book about Cognitive Behavior Therapy. The premise behind cognitive behavior therapy is that when people are angry or depressed because of their negative thinking, well, it makes the most sense to address the problem by addressing the Thinking behind the problem. No, there is no churning up the past and talking about Mother and Childhood – all that is ancient history. The Idea is to simply learn how to turn off the negative thinking, or learn to think of something else instead. It also involves reevaluating your thinking in regards to whether you have been nurturing misconceptions or exaggerating generalizations. Anyway, the name of that book is “Cognitive and Dialectical Therapy Unleashed”, by James Ashley. It’s a good book and very affordable. And finally there is one book that is a bit of a favorite of mine: “Anger Management” by Peter Favaro, in that it seems to be more complete and organized than a lot of the other books.
Anyway, until your books arrive, or you go to the local bookstore and buy some, you should look over these pages. Especially, you should look at some of my posts here. I am relatively new here and so my catalog of posts is not all that extensive, and I have dealt with problems not unlike your own, using the knowledge that I have distilled from all of my reading, and also from my own experiences of dealing with my own anger issues. Good luck, hope to hear from you soon.