I am...

I am an emotional person.

I am dramatic. I am loud. I flail my arms when I'm frustrated. I stress over the smallest thing.

I am tightly wound and high strung. There is so much tension in my neck and shoulders that you could bounce a quarter off them.

"It's no wonder she has a heart condition," is what you're thinking right now, right? Yeah. Me, too.

I am trying to find my ground as a parent. I am trying so hard to teach my children right from wrong and how to act like good people. I realize this is a stretch, considering they are 1 and almost 3, but I desperately want to avoid raising a monster.

I realized yesterday after watching my son play with his friend that he is picking up on my actions. I mean, it's not like I didn't notice this before, but this was in a bad way. He didn't want his friend to dance with him so he scrunched his face up in an angry manner and pushed her away.

Now, I'm not concerned about the pushing, actually. I realize this is a habit he shouldn't have, and one he DIDN'T learn by watching me. My concern was with the look on his face and how he acted in the moment.

Later yesterday, I realized that when he went to push his sister over (a daily occurrence), I yelled at him to stop and I made the EXACT.SAME.FACE.

What am I teaching him, for Pete's sake? That his response to something he doesn't want is to get angry? Gosh, that is so the opposite of what I wanted to teach him.

I am so completely stressed out lately that my response to things is to immediately freak out and get frustrated. This response was fine before, but now I'm teaching my almost 3 year old bad habits, and I've got to take control and teach him better.

I want him to listen to me, and I want him to take me seriously, but this approach is obviously not working. So, tonight I purchased a copy of "ScreamFree Parenting" by Hal Edward Runkel because I need a better way. I need to find myself teaching him better responses than scrunching up his face and getting angry.

I don't necessarily "scream" when I parent, more like a few notches above an "inside voice", but I just need to get a better focus on how to discipline and raise my child. I hope Mr. Runkel can point me in the right direction.