Yelling- Gabrielle

Dude, have you heard of yelling? It's this new thing that's all the rage in our house, and I'm telling you, it's AWESOME!

Just to give you some history, you should know that I've always tried to kinda go the "sweet" route. I realized very early that people ooh, ahh, and give you things when they think you are sweet. If you are quiet and innocent-seeming, they also ignore you. This has allowed me to get away with a lot of stuff in my life. So, for the most part, up until now, this whole sweet thing has worked for me.

Unfortunately, the Evil Warden that insists I call her Mom has recently gotten some brains. (She's not shown much up until now, so I'm thinking it's just as likely someone has ratted me out, but that's a topic for another blog...) Mom has started paying more attention to what I'm doing, being a bit more worried about "where I am and what I'm getting up to." She actually said to me the other day, "You know, that sweet act won't work on me, young lady!" so I started to think that perhaps I needed a new gig.

It didn't take long to realize that my brother Josiah has a pretty good schtick going with this thing called Yelling. Man, that drives Mom nuts! She's always saying things about "inside voices," "kind tones of voice," "headaches" and "isn't your father home yet?" I HAD to get in on this! So I talked with Josiah about this a little, and we came up with a game plan. We did have to be a little creative, though. See, Josiah knows more words than I do. And he does this thing with saying lots of words all at once that makes Mom say, "Josiah, that was a nice sentence, thanks for using such nice words!" Yeah, I'm not really all that interested in the sentence thing. So I explained to Josiah that, if we're going to work together, he really has to go back to the single word and short phrase thing. Ever since we got that worked out, it's been wonderful. Man, you should hear us both start up with "Potty! Potty! Potty! Potty!" It's, frankly, beautiful beyond belief.

There are two key components to a very effective Single-Word Yelling technique: volume and repetitiveness. There is a delicate balance between how quickly you repeat a word, though, so be careful. If you go too fast, Mom will say something like, "I'm not listening unless you use real words" and "If you cannot speak appropriately to me, you can go spend some time alone in your room." Once Mom gets to those sentences, the fun usually stops because she really will ignore me and make me spend time alone in my room. So you have to disguise this Yelling thing as if it's a sincere and true attempt to communicate. Mom should feel some stress that she's unable to meet your "needs" and she'll start saying things like, "Gabby, I'm trying, I'm really doing my best, please don't yell at me!" and "I'm really really sorry that we're out of yogurt, is there ANYTHING else you could possibly shove into your mouth to make that awful noise stop?!?" See, you have to make her think that YOU are the victim and hope she never realizes what a complete patsy you are making of her.

This has been a fun two weeks implementing our plan! I feel bad for Josiah, though, because Mom's getting kinda hard on him. She keeps sending him to his room, saying, "You cannot stand there and yell one word at me over and over and over again. You know how to speak properly, come down when you're ready." But, you know what? It's his own fault for ever speaking in sentences in the first place. I mean, really, you have this great Single-Word Yelling thing going, why would you jeopardize that just to get a little praise from this crazy woman? I tell you what- I'm NEVER going to ask for something politely in sentence form. Sure, I know all my letters, can spell my name and write a couple of letters. But I'm playing dumb with that. That and potty training, and I can pretty much guarantee I'll have Mom on edge all summer long...