You have got to be ^$#!(#&@$ kidding me!

What the hell have we allowed to happen?

For some parents, shouting is the new spanking

Jackie Klein is a devoted mother of two little boys in the suburbs of Portland, Ore. She spends hours ferrying them to soccer and Cub Scouts. She reads child-development books. She can emulate one of those pitch-perfect calm maternal tones to warn, “You’re making bad choices” when, say, someone doesn’t want to brush his teeth.

That is 90 percent of the time. Then there is the other 10 percent, when, she admits, “I have become totally frustrated and lost control of myself.”

It can happen during weeks and weeks and weeks of no camp in the summer, or at the end of a long day at home — just as adult peace is within her grasp — when the 7- or 9-year-old won’t go to sleep.

And then she yells.

“This is ridiculous! I’ve been doing things all day for you!”

“It’s not kind,” said Ms. Klein in Oregon. “When I’m done I feel awful.”

….

“My name is Francesca Castagnoli and I am a screamer,” began a post on Motherblogger.net earlier this year. “Admitting I’m a mom that screams, shouts and loses it in front her kids feels like I’m revealing a dark family secret.”

No, no, no. Oh hell no.

You have this undeveloped organism that has such a short attention span that you have to remind it to shut a goddamn door it just walked through and has spent its entire existence learning how to most effectively ignore your voice whenever it wants.

And now raising your volume level, the only tool that breaks their ability to ignore, is considered the equivalent of corporal punishment?

I guess I’m going to have to get my list of reasons as to why I’m not having children out and put this one on it.

I’ll also probably need The Wife to rein me in a little tighter in public, so that I won’t yell at little Billy the next time I see him stuffing candy bars into his pants at the grocery store. Because then I’ll have to get into a yelling match with little Billy’s dad because I yelled at his thief-spawn.

Of course, maybe having his dad wake up on the floor in a pool of his own blood and saliva will stop little Billy from stealing in the future?

Hmmph. Probably not.