My kids used to tolerate plain pancakes.

Plain, bland pancakes made too densely and with way too much butter to compensate for their pathetic texture.  But they ate them because they just didn’t know any better.

Then one day Daddy made the pancakes and I was out of that business permanently.

His pancakes were fluffy and golden and not saturated with butter.  The kids loved them.  And they wouldn’t eat plain pancakes ever again because he put chocolate chips in them.  He spoiled the little people who had accepted the sub-standard rubber turds I made.  We no longer speak of plain pancakes.

Then there was that time I left Little Miss Thing with her Daddy so I could rest while the baby Sheep napped — around 9:30 AM.  I asked him to give her a snack so that she wouldn’t get hangry and start losing her shit.  (Even Daddy admits that’s his genetic material at work.  I don’t get hangry I just get desperate and look for marshmallows.)  I figured he’d give her cantaloupe or some sliced apple.

When I came downstairs a while later Little Miss told me all about the potato chips she ate for snack.  At 9:30 in the morning.  So, basically she would never eat fruit again.  (She has.  But it took work to undo that one.)

And then there’s bedtime.  That thing where I try to impose some measure of routine and discipline and he stays however long she wants and often passes out on the floor next to her bed holding her hand.  What an asshole!

He’s too lax.  He’s too easy for her to manipulate.  He would give our children bowls of refined sugar topped with hot fudge and a side of cookies for breakfast if they asked for that shit.

But.  He hardly ever yells at them.  He finds other ways to cope with the infuriating crap they pull.  (Some of them healthy.  Some of them not.)  But he doesn’t aim at them.  And he’s got that one on me.

I am a yeller at home.

I go back and forth with Little Miss Thing on whatever the argument is about and after three or four calm but intensifying volleys, I eventually burst.

It’s not effective.  Yelling escalates things when I’m trying to do the opposite.  And then I berate myself for making things worse.

Of course, I’m not yelling because I enjoy being a mean mom or scaring my kids.  I yell because I am ALWAYS trying to do the right thing by them — like making sure they don’t go to school without fucking pants on — and toddlers are irrational little shits sometimes.  And hell hath no fury like a type A mama with something in her way.

But the fury doesn’t help.  Instead, it earns you a hug from your four year old during a calm moment with this casual observation: “you’re not so yelly today.”

That was three weeks ago.  She meant it as a compliment but it was crushing.

Her experience of me as her mother is a measure of whether I am more or less “yelly” at any given time.  Maybe not always.  But clearly sometimes.  And that’s too much.

To be fair, my experience of her is often a measure of whether she is more or less of a psychotic dragon at any given time.  But she’s four and I’m not.

When I think about who I am as a mother (it’s rare — usually I’m just trying to keep them alive) I think of all the cooking I do late at night and early before work.  And arranging their foods into new and unusual faces on their plates to get them to eat.  (Last week I used spaghetti for a beard— rather than hair.  Sometimes my creative genius can be overwhelming.)

The painstaking negotiations about whether her outfits are fancy enough.

The pep talks about a new class or camp experience.  The silly songs I make up to get them through eye drops or yucky medicine.

A billion coloring sessions and teaching moments and wiping tears and vomit.  The sleepless nights and the showers I skipped or ran out of, naked and dripping (and still not clean, somehow), because someone was crying.

For god’s sake, I practically pre-chew their food like a fucking ostrich.  Being a mother consumes every fiber of my being nearly every moment of every day – no matter where I am or what I’m doing.  So to be boiled down in my daughter’s mind to a measure on the scale of how “yelly” I was that day was excruciating.

Now, there is a time and place for yelling.  When my two-year old is standing on the sofa aiming head-first for the glass coffee table (I wish I were making this up), that’s the time to yell.  To prevent injury and deter further masochism.

But as a general matter, I don’t want to be a yeller.  So I’ve decided to do things differently.  I’m taking a page out of irresponsible, subversive, good-cop Daddy’s book.

I will *not* sleep on her floor but I have been yelling less.  One thing I tried the other night was simply to ignore the trigger.  It’s not always possible but that time, luckily, it was.

It was bedtime and she was screaming “I need a band-aid — but it can’t be a Dora one — but oh my god it hurts so much, get me a different band-aid!” at the top of her lungs.  About a scab from a cut she had gotten a week earlier. (God only knows where she learned to be so dramatic.  Presumably her father.)

I challenged myself to just sit there and ignore the tantrum.

And when she shouted “Mama! Why aren’t you answering me,” I told her — in a low, calm voice — that she had torn up and thrown away the Dora band-aid so she must not really need one.  And that if she wouldn’t accept the Dora ones we had in her room, I wasn’t going to look for others because it was bedtime.  I also mused aloud, without really thinking, that I was trying really hard not to yell back at her.  And that it was tough.

She let out a slow, deep sigh and said “I know.”

“I’ll take the Dora band-aid.”