Why can’t you stop yelling at your child?

 

As parents, have we ever encountered a scenario where we are yelling at a child, and then after we have finished yelling, we calm down and feel that we have lost our temper and that we should not have done that? Why do we have two very different feelings? Is the ranting you the real you, or is the regretful you the real you? I’m sure almost all parents have experienced this scenario. What needs to be explained here is that the one who rants loudly is called the “ego”, and the one who calms down and can reflect rationally is the “true self”.

 

Why does our ego often appear to be controlling, demanding, and angry? We need to understand that the ego does not represent the true self. Where does the ego come from? Our ego depends on what we have been taught from childhood and our surroundings, and the ego’s reactions are rooted in fear. What are we afraid of? We fear our environment, we fear the people around us, we fear the future. So when we are filled with fear of the world around us, our first reaction is anger, and fear is linked to anger.

 

There is a word called “concern is chaos”. For example, you don’t yell at your co-worker, even if your co-worker has a small problem, you just laugh and get over it. But when you have a child, you find that you put your whole body and soul into the child, you care about him, and at the same time, your fears are mobilized, and this fear brings you countless anger.

 

So you have to be able to learn one thing, you have to know that no matter where you are, you can reach harmony within yourself. That’s when you can mobilize your “true self” instead of using this pretentious “ego” to treat people around you. For example, when our children are a little slow in their homework, our ego reacts and we think: if our children keep dawdling like this, what will they do in the future, they will not be competitive at all. You see, isn’t it fear behind this? When a child talks back to you and doesn’t listen to you, your ego starts to swell and says, “How can he do this to me? He is so rude and so ungrateful, what will he do in the future?” You see, there is still a whole lot of fear behind this. So it’s through our interaction with our children, recognizing that we are filled with a great deal of fear within us, that we are able to really separate the ego from our true self.

 

So thanks to our child, the child is the awakener, and what is the purpose of him coming to us? It is to make parents more mature. You will find that you can use your child as a mirror, like a demon mirror to reveal all kinds of fears and immaturity in your heart. You need to know that the child is originally awakened, and you should not try to change the child, you just need to let the awakened child keep his nature. He will love himself, he will be good to himself, he is full of curiosity about the world, he does things without so much utilitarian attitude, this is the original appearance of the child before the age of three. But as we raise him, we slowly turn him into someone similar to us – with worries, tantrums, a penchant for slamming doors and confrontation with others.

 

The child was originally awake, and we adults have a bad habit of what? It’s that we’re always used to taking the initiative, and we feel that if we don’t make an effort to do something, it must not be right. So, throughout the life of our children from childhood to adulthood, we are constantly doing addition. We think, “The more you do, the more you’ll get in the future. But if you really read the biographies of many great people, you will find that the phase of letting go is very important for a person. The stage of boredom, the stage of leisure, the stage of having nothing to do for a while, or even lost in uncertainty, these stages are very important for a person’s growth. However, we parents today are not able to accept these, we think it is a waste of time, so constantly active. This kind of active behavior can destroy the child’s nature, which in turn makes the child change from an awakened state to a confrontational and anxious state.

 

Too often, our concern for our children is masked under commands, for example, how do parents express their concern? It’s not about saying okay, you can play whatever you want. The way parents express their concern is “I’ll arrange something for you”: arrange something for this time, arrange something for a holiday, enroll in a class if you have some money …… always find a way to cover the order on the child. This order is closely followed by fear and despair, because we think that life is stressful, we think that life is a huge adventure, life is a huge race of zero-sum game, so we think that if the child is behind, it will be worse in the future. In fact, these are very ridiculous ideas, a little bit of life experience will know that the randomness of life is too strong.

There are three things that children need throughout their lives: the first is called “I am seen”, the second is called “I am valuable”, and the third is called “I am important”. Adults, we were once children, so we need these three things from the beginning. Sometimes what we need is not money, not honor, but to be seen, to be valuable, and to be respected, and these are the three things that children really need. But parents don’t give these things to their children. Instead, they criticize them, saying, “You’re worthless,” “You’re no good,” “You can’t control yourself, you have to let me control you. So, we now understand the conflict between parents and children, is the child wants parents simply do not give him, and parents will be very tired.

 

So many parents have a feeling that says, “My child is deliberately angry with me.” For example, he is deliberately angry with me for getting his clothes dirty; he is deliberately angry with me for not doing his homework; he is deliberately angry with me for saying he can’t do this problem when he clearly knows how to do it. Notice that the child is not trying to be angry with you, the child is just being himself. The child does not know how to do the homework, he just forgot, he just does not know how to do it, he did not even want to deliberately angry with you. But why do parents have the feeling that their children are deliberately angry with them?

The reason is simple, because we have a lot of reaction trigger points in our minds, this reaction trigger point is like a knee jerk reaction, as long as the child appears a certain behavior, parents will be lit, with a lighter like, it is so simple, is so spiritual.

There is only one thing parents can really control, and that is their own emotions and reactions. When something goes wrong with your child, when something happens, your emotions and reactions are the only things you can control in your circle of influence. But we often don’t control our emotions and reactions, we indulge our emotions and reactions and want to control what we can’t control, and that’s where the pain comes from.

Self-awareness is not easy, and it is difficult to begin to be consciously aware of our emotions at the moment they are about to explode, but with repeated practice, we are sure to reduce the number of times we lose control of our emotions.

 

As parents of children, the ability to manage and diffuse emotions is an important test. What should we do when we feel we are facing an emotional outburst? There are 3 ways.

1: Accept your emotions, managing emotions is not the same as suppressing them, we need to accept their existence, focus on deciphering the cause of the emotions, trace the root cause, and then find a solution.

 

2: Emotion management is about pulling away from the stimulus and the response, and turning it into a conscious automation, so there is a particularly important action here, called actively tapping the pause button. If you think you are going to blow up, you can flee the scene, anyway, at home, you can enter the bathroom time. You think about how I’m going to talk to my child about this, and then I’m going to recognize this anger that I’m sending to myself as an emotional signal called anger, anger.

 

3: When you have an emotion towards your child, when the emotion comes up, take a pen and write down what you are afraid of, make a list of what you are afraid of. Why am I angry? You need to know that behind all anger is fear. Write out the fear and then write out the love part, this is called separating love from fear. After the separation, you will find that the thing you should really hold on to is the love part, and the thing you should change is the fear part.

That’s why it’s actually very important for a parent to be lighthearted. We often feel joy for some inner growth, for a family meal together, for a movie together, this inner joy is a calmness that can defeat chaos, this silence is very powerful.

If you live in an awakened family, you are at ease, your children are at ease, and you don’t have a strong ego that is constantly in conflict with others, thinking all the time, “Where is my dignity,” “Where is my face,” “Do my words count? This is your strong ego. In reality, you are growing, and when you are both comfortable, the home is no longer about control, but about love, understanding, and listening, and then each person works hard to be good. What we can do for our children is to create the conditions and accept them as they are and as they will be, which is what an awakened family should look like.