Monday, December 27, 2004

Anger: Someone Else's Problem (more of my misguided thinking)

Arrogance is a funny thing. I am generally not an angry person. Before having children I used to think that anger was a problem other people had to overcome. So misguided was my thinking that I would even skip over chapters on the subject of anger in mussar seforim. I honestly thought I had overcome the bad trait of becoming angry.

I was wrong.

Anyone with a toddler knows that you get angry. You can't help it, it just happens. All it takes is one time trying to change a diaper with an uncooperative toddler wriggling around and resisting your every effort to put on a clean diaper. There are numerous things that a toddler can get into that can sometimes just make your blood boil. I never remember yelling at anyone before having children. I catch myself on occasion, and the fact that I have this latent anger disturbs me. I am comforted somewhat when I see other parents out in public who are dealing with the same thing. It is always nice to see another child behaving worse than your own.

Raising children is the supreme challenge. It teaches us all the areas that we ourselves need to improve upon; selflessness, anger, refined speech, etc. While trying to improve the behavior of our children, we learn the need to improve ourselves.

1 Comments:

At December 27, 2004 at 3:23:00 PM EST, Blogger Anshel's Wife said...

My 9 year old gets yelled at pretty often, even when he doesn't deserve it. I feel terrible yelling at him because he is such a huge help around the house.

My 4 year old also gets yelled at a lot. She is quite stubborn and wants to do things when she wants to do them. She also doesn't deserve to be yelled at so much. What she really needs is more attention.

My 2 1/2 year old gets yelled at too much. I forget she is only 2. How can she act differently? She looks at me with her big, blue eyes and I instantly feel bad for yelling at her. She is still just a baby.

My 13 month old does not get yelled at. Not by me. (Her siblings do it.) My rule is that until a baby is 2, he/she isn't really responsible for their actions. They don't understand what they are doing. Maybe it's a stupid rule, but it saves the baby from the yelling.

I have to remember not to get mad at the kids when I'm already mad about something else. That's a terrible thing I do.

 

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