NOVEMBER 2016 MIAMI for web

7 LIFE-
CHANGING
THINGS
I LEARNED
FROM 30 DAYS
OF NO YELLING
HEALTHY KIDS
I'm a yeller. I started out my motherhood with the
promise not to yell, but quickly broke that promise. To
be clear, I'm not talking about verbal abuse here. I'm
talking about raising my voice to make a point, reacting
out of my anger or frustration. I came to the conclusion
that yelling is a normal part of motherhood and a piece of
who I am. Plus, when a Cuban girl and an Italian boy get
married and have four kids in five years, it's a loud house,
and yelling is essential to survival.
That's what I told myself; that's what I believed, until a few
months ago.
You know how God slowly changes your heart without you
really even noticing? Then all of a sudden a topic comes up
one day and you notice you feel way differently about it than
you did a year ago? God has done that to me multiple times
with some pretty important issues, and that's what He did
with yelling.
I remember exactly where I was standing in our tiny two-bedroom condo that rainy day. We had just moved from sunny Southern California
to beautiful, but very different Northwest Arkansas. We were living in this tiny place for six months to give us time to become familiar with
the area and find a rental house. It was stressful, tense, and incredibly frustrating. I was adjusting to living with no familiar people around
me, the kids missed their grandparents, and I was waiting for God to show me why He called us out here. I stood between the front door and
the staircase and yelled at him. I yelled so loud and so hard that I felt it in my stomach. When I met his eyes, everything changed.
My small, but strong-willed five year old
looked back at me with a little bit of fear
and a lot of desperation in his eyes. I could
tell he wanted to say something, but knew
he'd be met with more screaming from the
tyrant who had taken over his mommy.
Right there in that humbling moment of
motherhood failure, God tapped on my
heart and whispered, "this isn't what I want
for you. Or them."
Over the next few days, God continued to
draw my attention to my habit of yelling. I
decided to do a thirty day challenge with
myself and cut yelling out completely. When
you have a blog and a following, you have
automatic, heavy accountability, so I shared
my challenge on social media, the blog, and
started Periscoping my progress.
I found myself quickly surrounded by other
moms who struggled with yelling. Some
were already working through books on the
subject, some were in denial of how bad
it was. I felt more determined than ever to
complete the thirty days. If I could do this,
maybe they would too.
It's been one month since I completed the
thirty day no yelling challenge. Here's
what I learned from it.
YELLING IS MY ANSWER
1. TO ALMOST EVERY
FRUSTRATION IN MY LIFE.
Once I made the decision not
to yell, my eyes were opened to
how often I turn to screams as a
solution to problems during the
day. It felt like I was sucking in a
shout every five minutes at first.
I was ashamed of how often I had
to stop myself. For the first week, I
messed up occasionally. Not because
I just couldn't take it and had to yell at
someone, but because yelling had become
such a deep-seated habit for me, that it would
just come out without a thought!
HEALTHY MIAMI / 11