Sustainable Parenting

116. How to Control Your Anger as a Parent (Without Yelling)

• Flora McCormick, LCPC, Parenting Coach

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Have you found yourself yelling at your child, and being filled with regret?

Do you tell yourself often, "I just need more patient." 

Friend... I'm here to share with you in this short episode, that there are 3 MUCH more powerful P-words that can get you into a calmer relationship with your child.  And these three steps are very simple and doable.  The truth is far more liberating – and easier than you can imagine.

The root of our angry outbursts often isn't a patience deficit but what I call "time travel" – mentally jumping backward into regrets or forward into fears about our child's future. This emotional time travel amplifies our reactions, turning minor frustrations into major blowups. But there's a way out that doesn't require superhuman patience.

The solution lies in mastering the three P's: Plan, Pause, and Practice. First, create clear agreements in advance for recurring challenges like bedtime or technology use. As one mom discovered, when she established consistent plans and followed through, battles decreased dramatically. Second, master the art of pausing with the "Whoa, Low, Slow" technique – interrupting your automatic reactions, speaking calmly, and creating space for thoughtful responses. Finally, give yourself permission to practice imperfectly, approaching each challenging interaction as a learning opportunity rather than a test of your parenting worth.

These practical strategies have transformed countless family dynamics, including one where "knockdown, three-hour screaming fights" have become a thing of the past. The mother's own father noticed the change, commenting, "You've completely changed how you're parenting the kids." This isn't about becoming a different person – it's about equipping yourself with effective tools that work in real life.

Ready to break free from the yelling cycle? Download our free "Whoa, Low, Slow" template: https://sustainable-parenting.myflodesk.com/zapec71w5c. Magnet coming soon.

And join us next episode when we tackle why kids have angry outbursts at home more than in public. The transformation in your family dynamics might be closer than you think.

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1) Use this link for a FREE 20 min clarity call with Sustainable Parenting.

2) Download the FREE pdf. on getting kids to listen.

3) Buy a 3 session Coaching Bundle (saving you $100) - for THREE 30-min sessions 1:1 with ME, where we get right to the heart of your challenges, and give you small, powerful shifts that make a huge difference fast.

Speaker 1:

As you move through challenging days where your kids are testing boundaries or asking why or telling you outright they won't do what you're asking, they won't listen, do you find yourself yelling and being so frustrated and telling yourself, oh, I just need more patience. Today, we're going to talk about how to control your anger without yelling and the three P's that you actually need in order to master responding without yelling. And it's not patience that's the biggest misconception that I hear a lot of parents thinking is going to get them out of this pattern. And boy, are we going to solve your problem with a lot more simplicity today. Hello and welcome to the Sustainable Parenting Podcast. Let me tell you, friend, this place is different. We fill that gap between gentle parenting and harsh discipline that's really missing to parent with kindness and firmness at the same time, to parent with kindness and firmness at the same time, and give you the exact steps to be able to parent in ways that are more realistic and effective and, for that reason, finally feel sustainable. Welcome. So we're going to get into the three Ps that you really need instead of patience, the three Ps that are so much more powerful, so much more effective and, honestly, guys, simpler. And when parents use these three Ps, I see them coming back, sometimes within one week at the most three to four weeks saying holy cow. I'm seeing such a difference in my ability to stay calm and my ability to not get so angry and not be yelling. Let's be honest.

Speaker 1:

We tend to end up in a place of yelling at our kid. Why are you doing this? Why does this have to be so hard doing this? Why does this have to be so hard? Because A we're afraid that this means we're failing as a parent, or we're afraid that this means that they are not going to thrive as an adult or human in this world. And both of those are related to what I consider time travel. We go back in time to mistakes we think we've made and regrets, and what ifs and coulda, woulda, shouldas, maybe we even time travel all the way back to how we were treated as a child and we overly assume that their upset is just like some sort of upset we had in our past and we're not able to sort out that that's not necessarily the case, able to sort out that that's not necessarily the case.

Speaker 1:

So if we're time traveling into our own self-doubt or our own personal pain, that gets us really scared and we're more likely to lash out because of that fear. Similarly, we might be time traveling into the future and thinking oh my God, does this mean I'm raising a psychopath? Does this mean I'm raising a kid that doesn't have any respect, is never going to make it in life? Are they going to treat their future boss like this? And that future-focused panic, again based in fear, puts us in a place where we're very scared and likely to lash out and yell. So, friend, I ask you today to pause and think about am I getting angry just because of the situation or is it because the time travel of blame and fear that gets me to not only be upset about what just happened but be upset about the layer of what I'm putting on top of that? Does that mean I've messed everything up to this point or does that mean my kid is going to fail in the future? That gets us to a place of fear where we're going to likely panic and with that panic we easily could end up yelling. So, friend, one primary way to stop yelling is to notice that and to acknowledge that if we go down that road, we're going to keep being angry and we need to find a different road. So let me offer you three valuable P words that take you down a more effective road and, amazingly, put you in a space of being less likely to be so angry and less likely to be yelling.

Speaker 1:

I think of a mom, who I'll call Dana, who I've been working with with a very challenging son who's going into fifth grade, who has been getting, you know, sent to the principal's office many times during this last school year, was running away from the school, running away from outside of his house because of being so upset like severe, challenging behaviors, and, of course, as you can imagine, that was leading mom to have moments of yelling like why are you doing this? Why are you making this so hard? And this week in our parent coaching session she had this to say it is wild how much less yelling there is in our house right now. We're not having the knockdown three hour screaming fights that we were having just three months ago. My parents have spent a lot of time with us in the last two months and my dad just said last week boy, you've completely changed how you're parenting the kids and I see a difference. I'm so proud of you, so I want to help you have the same results that Dana had. And here's how we get there.

Speaker 1:

Those three P's are a plan, practice and pause. A plan practice or pause. Now if you've been with me for a while, you know hopefully you've been hearing this again and again, and it is because it's so foundational that we need to make agreements in advance to see things go better. I mean, the truth of the matter is we end up spending our parenting energy either putting out fires or in prevention, and the plan is the prevention. It's like let's not keep getting so frustrated at bedtime because, my gosh, every night it's like they're asking for one more thing and one more hug and they're coming out 15 times. It's so frustrating, I'm so angry. Then I end up yelling what we're missing is a plan, an agreement in advance that says hey, let's be crystal clear, we're going to do bedtime like this and when it goes this way, we have this reward in the morning or we have space for this many books at the end of our routine. When we don't, we don't and follow through and boy, we start seeing change. Make some more plans, like.

Speaker 1:

I got so frustrated with my son one summer because he kept leaving his bike in the driveway at the end of the night I'd have put him to bed. I'd come out to look at my plants, because I love gardening, be walking around and see, dang, that gosh darn bike is sitting in the driveway again, and I'd be pissed and I'd want to maybe yell at him in the morning like, oh, why do you keep doing this? So that frustration was solved with prevention and a plan of saying you know what, caleb, I'm not going to keep nagging you. Or as it is worded in a book I've been reading recently about raising mentally strong kids Love it by Daniel Amen. As a side note In this book he uses the wording of saying I love you too much to nag and repeat myself or yell at you. So I'm just going to be clear with you. If the bike is left out, I'm going to go ahead and put it in the shed and it won't be available for a few days. And when you put it away, it's totally yours and free to use when you want. Okay, just letting you know you choose. When we empower ourselves with plans like that boy, does it change our attitude? You get sad, not mad. You're like this is a bummer for you, that you're not going to be able to have the such and such. I'm not going to be mad at you, I'm just going to be sad for you that you have lost a privilege because of what we agreed would happen.

Speaker 1:

Step two is to work on using the tool of pause. Pause is the hardest and most effective tool when mastered. I teach a three-step process. It's one of my favorites, when kids are upset, that we call whoa low and slow, and one of the crucial pieces is that after each step of that recipe, we pause. Count to seven with some silence. Most parents tell me when they master this that whoa is 90% for them, like, ah, flora, that's so important for me because it just makes me like not start yelling but gives me space to go. Okay, how am I going to do step two?

Speaker 1:

And step two is to be able to say you seem feeling word, you seem frustrated, you seem so wiggly You're not being able to listen. Or we use the three words of I notice, and then we name the challenge we're seeing, I notice, this is hard for you. You're not wanting to leave the park. That's not really three words, I guess, but it starts with two words and then the third is like you insert what you're noticing and then we pause. We're talking in a slow way, a slow pace, with a low voice, and then we end with what can we do to make this better? Friend, if you'd like to get a magnet with this template on it or you'd like to at least have just the printout both of those are available in the show notes of this episode Be sure to look in that description and find where you can click to get a magnet of the Woe, low, slow template or a PDF to print at home.

Speaker 1:

So, first of all, we're mastering a plan. Second of all, we're using pause. And third, p is practice. Give yourself permission that it's not always going to be easy right away and, goodness, if you need help with that, reach out to a parenting coach like myself to get the help you need help with that. Reach out to a parenting coach like myself to get the help you're needing so that you can have support through that practice. But give yourself permission to be imperfect and to know that you can imperfectly be a wonderful parent that's working on progress and that's making change.

Speaker 1:

Friend, these are the three things that I see really move the needle for folks like Dana. That's how Dana got to a place where she's like I'm not yelling anymore. She's making a plan on a regular basis. She told me this about technology. She said we used to have so many upsets and yelling battles around technology. Every time we'd ask him to turn it off. Now we've just been more clear about our plan and firm and following through on that plan consistently. And what do you know? It's decreased his resistance, decreased our battles, which decreased our anger and fights.

Speaker 1:

Secondly, she's been practicing woe, low and slow and using pause and she's like I can't believe the number of upsets we've been able to move out of instead of moving into explosions. Cause I used to say, oh, you're being so difficult, why can't you just do the thing? Why are you being so upset? And that would make him more upset than I'd get more upset. But instead, when I use woe, low and slow, it deescalates things. And what do you know, when I'm able to deescalate things, I feel more confident as a mom and as I'm deescalating things, it feels so good to know we have a different way to respond to his resistance and defiance or silly wiggly body. We don't have to go the old way that led to yelling.

Speaker 1:

And third of all, she's been giving herself way more permission to just be in a practice mode and be learning, and to not judge herself when things don't go well, but instead to reflect like what okay, well, what did I learn from that and what could I do differently next time?

Speaker 1:

Not in a shoulda way, but in a I'm gonna choose next time to try this instead kind of way. So, friend, I really hope this serves you as well to move away from yelling and to actually have a solution that works. Instead of telling yourself you need to be more patient, lean into the piece of making a plan, having more pause, giving yourself permission to still be learning and growing. And please join me next episode, as we're going to be talking about why kids have angry outbursts at home more often than in public. Why do we seem to hear from the teacher and the camp counselors that this kid is so polite and cooperative and yet they come home, meltdown in the car as soon as they've shut the door or lash out on their siblings or us? We are going to answer the question why do they do that and what can we do about it? See you next time.