There’s a blogger called The Orange Rhino who wrote about her decision to stop yelling at her kids on iVillage earlier this year: “January 20, 2012. I will never forget that date. Thinking I was home alone with my four boys, then ages 5 and under, my handyman caught me in a full on, red in the face, body shaking, throat throbbing scream so bad that all my boys burst into tears. I was mortified. Mortified! And so sad; this was not the mum I had ever dreamed I would be! The next day I decided enough was enough and I promised my boys I would go 365 days straight without yelling. Soon thereafter I discovered that rhinos are calm animals that charge when provoked; I was so a rhino (I even have lots of stretch marks and saggy body parts to prove it.) I just charged with my words instead of a horn. I quickly started calling myself The Orange Rhino as a reminder to no longer yell, but instead to be calm like a rhino and warm like the color orange. I proudly share that I am officially an Orange Rhino! I haven’t charged with my words in over 400 days …”
Bully for her.
Actually, that’s not true. I think it’s an admirable thing she’s done. I’m just incapable of doing it myself. Once a month something in me just SNAPS. (I suspect hormones are involved. Actually, I don’t suspect. I KNOW.) And I scream and scream for a few seconds before having a quiet weep and feeling like the worst mother in the world.
It happened yesterday. Husband is away on a work trip so I’m Sprog wrangling on my own. I had to be out of the house by 7.45am to drop the kids at a fellow school mum’s house. I laid all their clothes out downstairs – to avoid the “I can’t find my sport shirt” wails – and told them to get dressed, while I dashed upstairs to clean my teeth and grab my handbag.
I came back downstairs to discover the eldest lying in front of the heater reading a book.
I TOTALLY lost it.
How dare she! I had told her how important it was she be ready! She had disappointed me! I was furious! I couldn’t believe she’d let me down like this! Etc etc etc.
And then I levelled her punishment – no reading in the car or at the school mum’s house. That might have been the point where she started sobbing.
As I tweeted later: “The thing you always forget when you yell at your kids is how terrible you feel afterwards.”
I didn’t get to work on time anyway because of an awful accident on my bus route, an elderly man killed on the footpath when a ute went out of control. Tragic.
Things felt pretty bleak at that point.
Before picking the kids up that afternoon, I bought them chocolate milks as love-me bribes.
And they seemed relatively unscathed by my she-devil outburst.
There were some hilarious conversations in the car on our way to swimming lessons. (Speaking of she-devils, slumping on a plastic bench at swimming lessons for an hour in sauna-like heat is akin to hell in my mind.)
Conversation 1:
Eldest: “Mum, you need to sign my medical form for music camp.”
Me: “Medical form?”
Eldest: “If I need medications or I’m allergic to something or I can’t eat something.”
Youngest: “Tell them if she doesn’t eat cake she’ll DIE!”
Conversation 2:
Me to youngest: “You get in the shower and I’ll be back in a minute to wash your hair. I need to go to the loo, I’m busting.”
Youngest: “No mum, it’s BUSTED!”
Eldest: “No, we just call it that because you do. It is actually busting.”
Youngest: “Oh.”
Husband has been empathising via email from Dublin, agreeing the eldest “is bloody infuriating in the mornings”.
But generally he’s too busy having fun: “I ended up at a couple of the local bars – the Temple Bar founded in 1840 and Gogarty’s – very touristy but really very good fun in the slowly fading long-lasting summertime sun as live bands pushed out Irish classics like Kenny Rogers’ The Gambler (yes, people were singing along) and Bruce Springsteen’s I’m on Fire.
housegoeshome 
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