Love languages for children

This is likely to be a short brain dump as it's the middle of the night and I should be sleeping. However, I woke up covered in hives and started reading which triggered this train of thought. 

My dad likes to give advice. On pretty much anything. After becoming a parent, he started giving me parenting advice. Now the dad I have today is a very different man from the dad I grew up with. My brothers got this dad for the most part, but I was the oldest and most of his parenting of me was done during a time when he was in a terrible marriage so his time and energy was spent fighting with my mom or escaping to work. I've said it before, and I'll say it again, my parents divorce gave me parents, really wonderful parents whom I love dearly. 

Anyway, my dad has been offering parenting advice for a while now and I realized, as I was reading this book, that my dad is giving me much of the same advice that is in this book without actually realizing it, or attributing it to Love Languages as the author calls it. I'm reading "The Five Love Languages for Children" by Gary Chapman and Ross Campbell. It's a truly wonderful and insightful book that is full of helpful strategies for parenting. This book is a spinoff of Chapman's previous book simply titled "The 5 Love Languages" which is meant for adults. 

As I'm reading the author's philosophies, I am hearing the words of my father run through my mind and the information just hits closer to home. 

I have mentioned that I have a temper, and I yell when I shouldn't. I yell way too much, especially at the kids. Lately, Jayden has been incredibly frustrating. He isn't listening, he is being disrespectful and defiant, and his punishments aren't being taken seriously. I've been at my wits end. I was browsing through my audiobook collection when I saw this book and realized the problem may be that I'm not speaking Jayden's primary love language. His love bank is empty and he's acting out as a result. This thought prompted me to begin reading the book and already it is helping me see destructive habits I've formed and areas I need to improve with both of my children. 

The thing that hit closest to home was the following quote from the book, "The greatest enemy toward encouraging our children is anger. The more anger present in the parent, the more anger the parent will dump on the children. The result will be children who are both anti-authority and anti-parent. This naturally means that a thoughtful parent will do all in his or her power to assuage anger -- to keep it to a minimum and to handle it maturely."

This is something I NEED to work on. I'm not handling the kids maturely. I fly off the handle and I'm probably making my children feel horrible when I yell at them for the bad decisions they've made like coloring on their bedroom wall... again!! Right now, that quote describes Jayden and even the problems I've been having with him lately. Whether words of encouragement are his love language or not, the truth of the matter is that I need to make changes and try following the advice of my father, and the author. 

I'll be back soon to discuss more of the book and my fathers advice. However, my brain dump is complete and it's time to fall back asleep. 

Why are you asking?

I experienced my first migraine headache when I was in 5th Grade. I remember it clearly. I was sitting in Mrs. Puffer's English class and she was giving a lecture on something. My eyes started freaking out when I got to school. It felt like I was on the inside of an old TV screen. Everything was fuzzy and oddly distorted, which to my 10-year-old mind, was very disconcerting. However, Mrs. Puffer terrified me, so I said nothing. During the middle of her lecture, a short time after the visual distortions began, the nausea hit. I knew I was going to throw up. I tried and tried to hold it in, to keep it from happening. I clearly remember listening to her drone on and on about something inconsequential, praying to the Gods that she would just shut up so I could run to the bathroom. I knew better than to interrupt her, I was terrified of her wrath at the best of times. If I were to just jump up and run to the bathroom I was certain she would kill me, so for what felt like an eternity, I just kept trying to prevent myself from throwing up. I lost the battle. I threw up all over her classroom. Ironically, she got mad at me for not interrupting her and running to the bathroom. At the time, I just thought she would have been mad no matter what I did. Like I said, she terrified me.

Now that I'm older and have kids of my own, I realized recently that I've become a Mrs. Puffer at home. It is the only explanation I have for the reason my kids do this obnoxious thing they do. Lately, when they have to go to the bathroom, instead of just going to the bathroom and taking care of business, they dance in front of me yelling "I've gotta go potty!!! I've gotta go potty!!!" waiting for me to say "So go to the freaking bathroom!!!" Seriously, they don't have to ask permission to go use the bathroom in their own homes! So why, oh why do they do this? Every second they waste prancing around in front of me, singing their "potty" song, is a second they risk peeing on my floor. The other day, Aubrey ran out of her bedroom and began the dance while I was seated down on the sofa working on my computer. That's when it hit me. Somehow, I have become Mrs. Puffer and the kids would rather pee in their pants then risk me being upset with them. BJ and I have tried to explain to them that they need to just use the restroom, and stop asking for permission to do so first. We've tried and tried, but the power of Puffer is great. I'm not even sure what I did to make them start this ridiculous habit. I wish I knew. I wish I could stop it, because one of these days they are going to pee on the floor during their crotch grabbing potty dance while they wait for me to yell "so go to the bathroom already!!"