I think we yelling mothers are still good moms. We do love our kids even if we sometimes lose it and I think they KNOW this at every level of their being. Don't be so hard on yourself.

We're only human! We need to cut ourselves some slack. It is really hard to raise kids - especially difficult kids. Focus on your strengths and forgive yourself for being a person. I think everyone loses it (except those people who are born saints and they're very rare). I yell at my kids and when they complain how mean I am I remind them that neither they nor I am perfect and I love them even though they are flawed and they should love me despite my flaws too.

It doesn't matter if millions and billions of people yell at their kids; it doesn't matter if it's perfectly "normal." It doesn't mean it's not awful. Death is also very common and normal - 100% of all human beings do death. But so what? It doesn't make it any better for their victims, they're loved ones who are abandoned upon their loss. Just saying something is normal doesn't help. I'm not saying this to make you feel bad. I'm just saying that trying to feel good about somehting that really is bad is bound to fail. You yourself know deep down in your heart that you're hurting your kids. But even if you didn't know this for some reason, the results of your behavior will speak for themselves. The more you yell, the more your kids will hate you (see Sarah Chana Radcliffe's explanation about the costs of parental anger in her book "Raise Your Kids without Raising Your Voice."). The more you yell, the more problems your kids will have of every kind - school problems, social problems, health problems, behavioral problems and mental health problems. So go ahead and pat yourself on the back if you want, but there are some natural consequenves for excessive parental anger - including on-going, even life-long problems in the parent-child relationship.

One thing we might do is have compassion for ourselves at the same time that we work on improving our parenting skills. It IS human to get upset with our kids and to lose it sometimes. However, it is possible to shorten the expression of our rage (stop speaking after we notice that we've been yelling), lower our voice (once we've noticed it's raised) and remove all traces of abuse ) once we notice that we're speaking or acting harshly. We can offer ourselves rewards for holding back our rage and punishments for letting lose. These will affect our neural pathways and help us to do better in the future. No good comes from beating ourselves up. But we owe it to our children and ourselves to NEVER give up working on maintaining calm, respectful communication even when we're provoked, challenged, tired etc. If we need to take medication to help, that's O.K. too. We must exhaust all possibilities including life style changes, alternative medicine, psychotherapy, parent counseling, support groups or whatever else we might need. And while we're doing all this we can encourage ourselves by noting that only "good" parents work so hard at their job. We can try to understand the reasons for our anger, including a compassionate analysis of our childhood, lack of healthy models, natural, inborn-tendencies and genetic dispositions and all the other things that contribute to our frustation and inability to manage it. These are not excuses - rather they are the real reasons for our challenge with rage. Once we understand, we'll see that we're not "bad" but rather, we have been challenged. We can rise to that challenge, helping ourselves and our families at the same time. Our anger may not be our fault, but it IS our responsibility.   Sarah Chana