Anger?

There is a good article over on Babble . It’s on anger management and how it used to be ok to be angry with your child and now it seems that a parent would be classified as a monster when they get angry. This is a topic near and dear to my heart because I have anger issues, especially when I am about to go PMS. I can now tell when I need to up my happy pills because I get irrationally angry at Spotty Chop. (I am sure I used to get angry at boy toy, but he deserved it). When Spotty was an infant I literally beat myself up whenever I would get frustrated with him; even if I had only been able to get 30 min of sleep in a row for days.

Now that Spotty is 3 I will admit that I still get upset over my being upset with him; and I am not talking about the PMS bullshit either. I may yell after the 40th time of asking him not to swing off the couch by my pony tail, or the 15th time of telling him that head butting me in the boobs hurts and to knock it off. When he cries it tears me up. I know at times he uses his tears to manipulate (while on vacation he watched himself cry in the bathroom because it had ceiling to floor mirrors.) It doesn’t negate the fact that it makes me want to throw up. So I read with interest as another mom admitted to thinking of holding her child too tight, of causing some pain to reflect the pain that she had been feeling. I think it’s healthy to get angry (within reason), so maybe it’s time for parents to admit that they get angry, maybe by admitting that it’s there, it would help the parents that cross the line. Thank god I never have, but it is easy to see why or how it might happen.