Controlling One's Anger

I'd call this a series, but I think I'll wait to see just how long I can keep this streak up. Anyway, we ended our last post with:

How does one teach a toddler to control his anger when you've finally lost control of your own anger after years of having it under control?

I've decided to first deal with controlling one's anger since I've been better at that in the past. [Never been very good at dealing with the anger, but we'll get to that when we get to it.] Here are the top 10 reasons that I can think of that have helped me control my anger in the past. They are in no particular order.

1. I understand or at least accept that I can not and never will be able to control other people.
2. I understand and accept that no one else has any control over me (whether they think/know it or not).
3. I've learned to show respect to other people without depending on my like of them or their ideas.
4. I take deep breaths EVERYDAY - usually multiple times a day.
5. I think about those I love and are loved by EVERYDAY.
6. I listen more than I talk [because talking, oftentimes, leads me into trouble].
7. I don't have (or want) a lot of friends.
8. I don't, nor ever will I, pretend to like people.
9. I'm constantly praying in my head.
10. I don't believe that I am right about everything and I'm all about agreeing to disagree.

Now, what has happened to prevent me from grabbing on to those things recently? Well, honestly - I can't put my finger on one particular thing. It's a combination of quite a few little things that just have added up over time to where I just became overwhelmed and saw darkness. I just couldn't see the light for anything and it all came to a head when I punished my son darn near all day one day. I made that child stay in his room a good hour or so and sent him back when he wouldn't do what I told him to do. He was in that room when daddy came home later. I broke down & cried while cooking dinner that night for them. {I had already shed a few tears the day or so before when I realized that my frustration with the boy was showing enough for my husband to attempt a mediation cause I didn't want to be around my own child.} So after drying my tears, washing my face, and finishing up dinner before either one saw me, I made a decision that I needed to get it together. Yesterday's post was a result of that.

So here we are. How am I going to now teach my son about controlling his anger? I'll get back to doing what I always promised myself I'd do for all those young folk watching me and especially for my child. I have to get back to leading by example. No more "dinosaur" (post to come) mom, no more "spanking" mom, no more "fill-in-the-blank" mom. I'll get back to being me - generally, calm and collected. I will show my son how I leave situations that frustrate me in order to recollect myself. I will show him how to use breathing techniques to calm himself and to regain his peace of mind.

The next step is probably to figure out what to say to deal with the situation, but I'm usually all about just enforcing a silence until such a time has come. This is not always the right thing to do, but I told y'all I've never been good at dealing with the anger issue. I did say that I'm not right about everything right? Yeah. So you may not agree with what I do, but we'll agree to disagree because I think peace of mind trumps debating you about it. I'm still growing y'all and I must say this year has brought about a lot of growing pains for me. It's alright though because the blessing continue to flow through it all. So like I stated in my first post, having my child is a blessing & a curse. I may want to curse through these trials, but I continue to see too many blessings in and around my life for me to let parenting get the best of me.

Oh did I tell y'all? Yesterday was a good day. We declared a "No Hitting" Zone - more on that later. Now that I thin about it, we (me & Jairus) declared quite a bit without daddy being present. So this weekend may be spent making our Family Declarations {... ooohhh, y'all i gotta tell y'all about something we've been working on that is about to come into play in our own home sooner than later.} and possibly deciding how we want to go about posting them around the house. This shall be fun!!

Well, I've used up my posting time allotment for the day. Post to y'all another time. Later!