A
friend of mine in our Seattle ward bore her testimony once about an
unexpected answer to a struggle she was having. Jane was trying to
run a blended family, and if I remember correctly they each had a
child from their first marriages and by this time they had had
another child together. So, she was chasing after a toddler and
parenting two older kids in the eleven- to thirteen-year-old range.
(Why
should that be stressful? We’ll pause for a rueful chuckle
here.)
She
found that she was yelling at her kids, and she had realized that
this was a problem. She knew that this was not the best way to
govern her family, this was not the pattern of the mother she wanted
to be, and she decided that she was not going to yell at her kids.
Recognize
the problem, decide to change it, problem solved. “I am not
going to yell at my kids anymore.” Then don’t. If only
that were the universe we inhabit, it would be so easy, wouldn’t
it?
She
still found herself yelling at her kids. Her resolve did not
eliminate her adolescents’ tardiness, slowness to respond to
direction, or resistance to correction. It didn’t change the
little one’s stage in life, where you have to lunge after them
to keep them from mortal danger which they are pursuing with great
gusto.
When
they were late grabbing breakfast and getting out the door to school
or to church, or when the chores had been ignored, or when the baby
was crying and needed her at the same time, she reacted negatively
and ended up yelling, and then feeling bad. She prayed for help to
do better.
Then,
she told us, a funny thing happened. She got laryngitis; a real,
total, can’t-speak-at-all case of laryngitis. She couldn’t
make a sound, for days.
This
forced her to find a different means to communicate the needs and
requirements of daily life to her family. She couldn’t
leverage them with a raised voice, with verbal threats, or any of the
normal signals that make kids know you’re serious, and
they’d better get going, and shape up.
Jane
had to think about the dynamics of their mother/child relationship.
She told us that she realized that when her decision was to stop
yelling at the kids, she still ended up yelling at the kids because
that was her focus — a determination not to yell was still all
about yelling at her kids.
She
learned a great deal through this voiceless week or so. Any time she
had a little sound coming back, she explained, the first hint of
“push” in her voice would shut all voicing down again.
She could whisper a little if her vocal cords were totally relaxed
but if there was any tension at all the strain would shut her down.
Imagine
the comic predicament of having to move close enough to touch someone
on the arm or shoulder, gesture, point, and exaggerate your facial
expressions. Most of us have been there at some point, because
laryngitis is a pretty universal experience. They probably all
laughed together at some of it, but the kids cooperated with what was
needed.
She
realized that she had to focus not on “not yelling,” but
on how she did want to treat her children.
When
she focused on being patient and encouraging, she found that it was
much easier to be the kind of mother she was trying to be, and
yelling didn’t even come up. She had to remember that her
children were just normal children, and they would inevitably mess up
or procrastinate or forget and she could work on keeping them on task
without getting angry.
After
several days of this enforced shift in her approach, her laryngitis
started to improve. The changes she was consciously making were
becoming easier; her home was more cheerful, and she and her family
were happier.
I
was a mother then of two very young children, but I knew the lesson
was applicable to two-year-olds as much as to teenagers or any-agers,
or to any part of life, for that matter. I have tried to take it to
heart.
There
are always aggravations in life. I yelled at my kids at times, too.
Sometimes I lost my temper; I let stuff get to me, I had anxieties
and fears and pain and irritations and disappointments. In other
words, I have had an imperfect, mortal, fallible, normal life.
I
realized at one point that annoyance had become a habit and I was
sometimes automatically irritated with things that were simply the
predictable stresses of having the chauffeur stage of motherhood
overlap with the baby stage. Usually by the time you’re into
the former, you’re out of the latter, but our oldest was in
high school when our youngest was born. It got crazy lots of days.
I
remembered Jane’s story, and all my corroborating experience
over the years, and worked on changing my focus to the positive. I
knew how to do this — I just had to pay attention and remember
lessons already learned. I think that’s true a lot in this
life.
With
so much strife in our world today, it helps to remember that holding
fast to what we do wish to do is more effective than directly
battling — focusing on — our shortcomings. What would a
good person do? Try to do that. What would a faithful person do?
Focus on doing that. Be kind, be patient, be loving, be gentle, and
be blessed.
Never
forget that we have our Heavenly Father’s help — we are
never struggling alone, though we stumble. I am grateful for all the
times He has helped me up off the ground and dusted me off.
As
we learn to seek and receive the Spirit, we learn to live our hopes
and our righteous desires more nearly. Every one of us is still a
work in progress, for as long as we walk this earth.
If
sometimes the answer to the gap between our desires and our reality
is the equivalent of total laryngitis, we can take the opportunity to
be tutored. Once He has our attention, He will show us the right
way; we can do it better than we think.
Marian J. Stoddard was born in Washington, D.C., and grew up in its Maryland suburbs. Her
father grew up in Carson City, Nevada, and her mother in Salt Lake City, so she was always
partly a Westerner at heart, and she ended up raising her family in Washington State. Her family
took road trips all over the United States and Canada, so there were lots of adventures.
The adventures of music, literature, and art were also valued and pursued. Playing tourist always
included the local museums as well as historical sites and places of natural beauty. Discussions
at home, around the dinner table or working in the kitchen, could cover politics, philosophy, or
poetry, with the perspective of the gospel underlying all. Words and ideas, and testimony and
service, were the family currency.
Marian graduated from Winston Churchill High School in Potomac, Maryland, and attended the
University of Utah as the recipient of the Ralph Hardy Memorial Scholarship, where she was
graduated with honors, receiving a B.A. in English. She also met the love of her life, a law
student, three weeks after her arrival; she jokes that she had to marry him because her mother
always wanted a tenor in the family. (She sings second soprano.) They were married two years
later and have six children and six grandchildren (so far). She treasures her family, her friends,
and her opportunities to serve.
Visit Marian at her blog, greaterthansparrows. You can contact her at
bloggermarian@gmail.com.
Marian and her husband live in Tacoma, Washington. Together they teach those who are
preparing to go to the temple for the first time, and she also teaches a Stake Relief Society
Institute class.