training your voice

just recently i was in the store and heard a mother yell to her 3-year-old...

stop the yelling right now!

i'm not sure if she saw the irony.

when we started raising kids, there was one thing for sure we knew we were not going to tolerate:

whining.

it just was not going to happen.
i couldn't stand hearing whiny kids, and i did not want to spend the rest of my life listening to it!

i realized very quickly that it takes self-discipline and hard work to train your voice.

and what i mean by that, is i need to train my voice just as much as my kids need to train theirs.

here's the thing.
we can be disciplined and train ourselves in any area of life, but if we don't continue to train we lose it all.

for example...i train for a marathon.
i work hard. i show self-discipline. then i stop running long miles for a few years.
try to pick it up again?
guess where i have to start? i have to start slow...all over again

a 3 or 4 mile run.
and build myself back up to where i used to be.

it's the same with our voices.
maybe we learned to stop whining, or yelling, or using that ugly mean voice.

but then...you forget about working hard to control that.
your child whines at you and..what in the world?!?! somehow, you start whining back at them!

how does that even happen?

as a mom, i'm sure we have all had those days when the mean eyes, the ugly voice, or the snapping tone have come out.
we don't like it.
it makes us feel guilty.

but hopefully...it is a reminder -

train your voice!

practice responding in the right way:
to the person that cut you off when you were driving.
to the person on the telephone who just put you on hold for 15 minutes.
and definitely to your husband and children.

don't think for one second that you are going to naturally want to respond in the right way when you are irritated, tired, or wronged.
and don't think for one second that when you whine, yell, complain...that your kids are not picking up on what you are doing!

don't expect them to stop whining if you are showing them your whiny voice every day!

train yourself.
teach them to train themselves.

if you expect your children to be self-disciplined and show self-control,
you have to be showing them how you are doing that first.

it's work! it really is!
our impatience, irritation, and frustrations can come pouring out sometimes before we can even think about the lack of importance causing those emotions!

take some time today and just work on your voice.
listen to yourself and see if you catch yourself whining.
see if you catch yourself raising your voice, or rolling your eyes.

work on that self-discipline...
it will benefit everyone around you if you do!