- Mar 7, 2021
- 31
- 21
- Country
- United States
- Faith
- Christian
- Marital Status
- Married
I remember a time when I visited her parents before we were married. In the days before cellular telephones, they used to communicate with walkie-talkies when they went to malls and other places where they were apart. On this day, I had gone shopping with them and we were returning to their house. I had one of the walkie talkies and placed it on the kitchen table beside the other one.
The next thing I remember was her father shouting at the top of his lungs, "What STUPID IDIOT put these two walkie talkies so close next to each other!!??", and so on, that it was dangerous to do this because they could damage each other if they were too close. I was terrified and didn't know what to say, or whether to say anything. I thought that he might physically attack me if I admitted to having done this, from how loud and insultingly he was yelling.
When I told my wife (later on -- we were not married when this happened) about this, she laughed and said that it was hilarious, that he yelled like that all the time and it was supposed to be funny. I found this difficult to believe and confusing. How could a father be yelling at his children (or someone the same age as his children) at the top of his lungs be funny?
I am relating this because of an event that happened recently with my family. I have told my children repeatedly, and generally in a patient and calm manner, to open their car doors slowly so that they will not dent vehicles that are parked beside us. Today, as we were entering our car, I saw that another vehicle had parked very close to our car. Our children had run ahead, so I was not close enough to intervene, so before they started opening their doors, I repeated this statement to open their doors slowly and carefully and not hit the car next to ours.
Directly after I said this, I heard the sound of my son opening his door and the door whacking the car beside ours (it left a small mark that I would consider negligible and disregard if it happened to my own vehicle). As we drove home, I asked him angrily why he hit the car beside ours when I have told them so many times to open them carefully. When he did not answer, I raised my voice and yelled at him to make sure not to do this again.
My wife criticized me then in front of our children, telling me that yelling at children does not work, and that I should tell them gently and calmly. I replied truthfully that I had told them many times calmly and gently, and that this apparently had not worked. She started talking about books she had read and studies and such that oppose yelling at children. My child had damaged someone else's property (albeit innocently and mildly), and my wife was criticizing me for my method if disciplining him instead of criticizing him for what he had done!
When we reached home, I told her not to criticize me in front of our children, as she has done many times; it seems like she is more likely to criticize me when I am disciplining them for doing something wrong than she is to support me in disciplining our children. She said that my yelling made her and them afraid. I did not yell very loudly. She said that she was afraid when I yelled and indicated that my raising my voice made her uncomfortable (though she was, of course, also raising her voice and yelling at me), and that we should not argue when we are both stressed and angry. Considering this, I went to another room to avoid the argument. However, she kept yelling after me and even followed me into the room and continued yelling and waving expressively then while I sat in my chair and tried to focus on typing this.
This did not make sense to me. Why was she following me and continuing to yell at me when I was obviously trying to stop the argument, as she said she wanted? I explained this to her, and she said that this was how she reacted to fear -- by confronting it. I find this unbelievable; if she were truly afraid, she would not follow and confront me when I was obviously trying to avoid the confrontation. I'm aware of "fight or flight", but I had left and so that did not apply, even assuming that it applied in the first place.
Her actions seemed to indicate a person who was angry: She was acting highly aggressive and confrontational, as she hurried into my room, entered my field of vision when I was facing away from her into the corner of the room, raising her voice and yelling, and gesticulating wildly in my direction. I would not consider fear a reasonable interpretation of the emotional state behind her actions. At this point, she was still yelling and I was speaking in a voice closer to normal.
I also reminded her of the event that I described at the beginning of this note, when her father yelled at me. She said that it was different because she knew that her father loved her, so it did not count as yelling. She said that it was different also because he did not yell at a particular person, but just in general. However, I am often affectionate toward and friendly with my children, expressing my love to them. Also, when he yelled at me, even if he might not have known specifically whom he was yelling at, he was yelling at the person who did what he was asking about, and it was loud and insulting enough to induce fear to anyone nearby. I did not use any insulting words when I yelled at my son, merely a louder voice than normal. It sounded very much to me like she was making a double standard -- it was OK when her father yelled (if I remember correctly, she said that he did this all the time), but wrong when I do it.
The next thing I remember was her father shouting at the top of his lungs, "What STUPID IDIOT put these two walkie talkies so close next to each other!!??", and so on, that it was dangerous to do this because they could damage each other if they were too close. I was terrified and didn't know what to say, or whether to say anything. I thought that he might physically attack me if I admitted to having done this, from how loud and insultingly he was yelling.
When I told my wife (later on -- we were not married when this happened) about this, she laughed and said that it was hilarious, that he yelled like that all the time and it was supposed to be funny. I found this difficult to believe and confusing. How could a father be yelling at his children (or someone the same age as his children) at the top of his lungs be funny?
I am relating this because of an event that happened recently with my family. I have told my children repeatedly, and generally in a patient and calm manner, to open their car doors slowly so that they will not dent vehicles that are parked beside us. Today, as we were entering our car, I saw that another vehicle had parked very close to our car. Our children had run ahead, so I was not close enough to intervene, so before they started opening their doors, I repeated this statement to open their doors slowly and carefully and not hit the car next to ours.
Directly after I said this, I heard the sound of my son opening his door and the door whacking the car beside ours (it left a small mark that I would consider negligible and disregard if it happened to my own vehicle). As we drove home, I asked him angrily why he hit the car beside ours when I have told them so many times to open them carefully. When he did not answer, I raised my voice and yelled at him to make sure not to do this again.
My wife criticized me then in front of our children, telling me that yelling at children does not work, and that I should tell them gently and calmly. I replied truthfully that I had told them many times calmly and gently, and that this apparently had not worked. She started talking about books she had read and studies and such that oppose yelling at children. My child had damaged someone else's property (albeit innocently and mildly), and my wife was criticizing me for my method if disciplining him instead of criticizing him for what he had done!
When we reached home, I told her not to criticize me in front of our children, as she has done many times; it seems like she is more likely to criticize me when I am disciplining them for doing something wrong than she is to support me in disciplining our children. She said that my yelling made her and them afraid. I did not yell very loudly. She said that she was afraid when I yelled and indicated that my raising my voice made her uncomfortable (though she was, of course, also raising her voice and yelling at me), and that we should not argue when we are both stressed and angry. Considering this, I went to another room to avoid the argument. However, she kept yelling after me and even followed me into the room and continued yelling and waving expressively then while I sat in my chair and tried to focus on typing this.
This did not make sense to me. Why was she following me and continuing to yell at me when I was obviously trying to stop the argument, as she said she wanted? I explained this to her, and she said that this was how she reacted to fear -- by confronting it. I find this unbelievable; if she were truly afraid, she would not follow and confront me when I was obviously trying to avoid the confrontation. I'm aware of "fight or flight", but I had left and so that did not apply, even assuming that it applied in the first place.
Her actions seemed to indicate a person who was angry: She was acting highly aggressive and confrontational, as she hurried into my room, entered my field of vision when I was facing away from her into the corner of the room, raising her voice and yelling, and gesticulating wildly in my direction. I would not consider fear a reasonable interpretation of the emotional state behind her actions. At this point, she was still yelling and I was speaking in a voice closer to normal.
I also reminded her of the event that I described at the beginning of this note, when her father yelled at me. She said that it was different because she knew that her father loved her, so it did not count as yelling. She said that it was different also because he did not yell at a particular person, but just in general. However, I am often affectionate toward and friendly with my children, expressing my love to them. Also, when he yelled at me, even if he might not have known specifically whom he was yelling at, he was yelling at the person who did what he was asking about, and it was loud and insulting enough to induce fear to anyone nearby. I did not use any insulting words when I yelled at my son, merely a louder voice than normal. It sounded very much to me like she was making a double standard -- it was OK when her father yelled (if I remember correctly, she said that he did this all the time), but wrong when I do it.
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