Does yelling at your kids make you a bad mother?

Someone did a search using that question and somehow ended up at my little ol' blog. So I'll answer it, since I am an expert in child psychology, having successfully fucked up 2.5 children. (The baby only gets a .5 since she is not yet a walking, talking mess.)

I don't think yelling at your kids makes anyone a bad mother, or a bad father for that matter. It just makes us what we are- imperfect, fallible people. I wish I didn't yell at my kids, but I do. I would put myself in the yells too much category, but do not think I am as bad as people I have heard yelling at theirs. I do realize that yelling has become moot. My kids literally tune me out as I go around screaming my head off for all the neighbours' entertainment. The thing is, I have yelled at them so often it really means nothing anymore. In fact, I get a much better response when I speak very quietly, with a certain "Say a friggin' word and I'll knock you into next week" sort of tone. Not that I ever would knock them into next week, though I may have threatened it once or twice in a very weak moment. In general they are pretty good kids who act up occassionally like all kids do. Their misfortune is that they have a slightly wound up mother who sometimes appears to go off the deep end when tormented. A mother of the year award will never find it's way on to my shelves, although I do have two "Best mom ever" wool people on the entertainment unit. One received last Mother's Day and the other the year before, both as third grade art projects. So while not perfect, and even though I yell too much, I'm sometimes a pretty good mum. So says the artwork anyway. As well as the note on the fridge that Taylor wrote me when she was 4...."Dear Mummy, me-and-Liam-love-you. Love Tay." She really loved hyphens when she first started printing.

Writing this reminded me of the maddest I have ever been at Taylor and Liam. I was so mad I sent them to their rooms and they actually stayed in them until their dad got home. Usually, they would come out of their room not even 2 minutes later begging to be allowed back into the livingroom or the basement. So anyway, I think they were 3 and 4 or thereabouts. They were playing very nicely in the livingroom and I was putting away laundry in the bedrooms. It seemed to be awfully quite and then I started hearing thumps and hysterical laughter. I went into the kitchen and saw 2 4L jugs of milk lying on the floor, and in the livingroom Taylor and Liam had made a slip and slide out of the milk and the carpet. They were having a great time running and sliding. At that moment, I wanted to kill them. Imagine the smell of sour milk in a day or two. The waste of all that milk. Today, I laugh about them doing that, but that day was very unpleasant. They went to their rooms and I had the thrill of steamcleaning my livingroom 2 times that afternoon.