Well, you wouldn't have to be. Where's it written that screaming and yelling are your only options? Or that just because that's what everyone else does, that you have to too? Or even if it was written, it actually is in a few places, that you have to do what is "tried and true" if it doesn't sit right with you?

So you make a plan, a parenting plan and you commit yourself to sticking to it. You also realize that this plan is going to have to be adaptable because kids change a lot, and it turns out they're people. Little tiny people, but people who are individual from you. They are not property, toys, or trophies of your success in life as a man. You also commit yourself to doing what needs doing to set your partner parent up to be the best parent they can be, particularly if that parent is the primary caregiver. You both reevaluate the plan on a needs be basis.

Your primary goal is one of survival. Your secondary goal is protection of sanity. Obviously, stability has a lot to do with ensuring #1 and #2 with positive outcomes, still, your third goal is broader stability regarding everything else.

I'll tell you something else. People talk about the parent/child relationship like it's the ultimate love and all that. You know what I'm talking about? People say a lot of really stupid things.

Good parent/child relationships are just like all relationships. They're built on a foundation of shared history and trust. So if you want a good one where you're not screaming in the grocery store, you need to be building space for a pleasant shared history and being trustworthy in all manner with that little kid because they don't know that yet. You have to hold that knowledge for them long enough and consistently enough for them to learn it.

And that's all it is. It's no big thing. Simple as simple can be. And it's everything.

Urchling for yelled at a handful of times, less than 5 and those were imminent danger scenarios.