It's normal to feel frustrated and overwhelmed as a mother sometimes. But if you find yourself snapping at your children more than you feel comfortable with, get five bobbins and try this.
Viral for all the right reasons, a hair tie hack has been doing the rounds across social media in a bid to promote positive parenting behaviours and people cannot get enough of it, nor can we.
The hack first appeared on the blog The Reformed Idealist Mom, after blogger turned author Kelly Holmes found herself becoming short-tempered with one of her three daughters.
"My personal goal is to talk to my kids with the same level of respect and kindness that I use to talk to my husband. The good news is that for the most part, I do talk to my oldest and my youngest that way."
"But my poor middle child. Something about the preschooler-ness of my preschooler was turning me into an angry mother every time I opened my mouth to talk to her. I needed help," she wrote.
The idea is, each day when you wake up you place five hair bobbins on one of your wrists. Then at any point throughout the day when you yell or be unkind in any way you remove one of the bobbins from your wrist and place it on the other hand.
The ultimate goal is to not move any of the hand ties to the other wrist but if you happen to slip up, you must do five kind and loving things with your child to make up for your irrational behaviour.
"If you catch yourself snapping at your kiddo, move one hair tie to the other wrist. But your goal is actually to make it to the end of the day with all 5 hair ties on the original wrist," she writes.
"You can “earn back” one hair tie by doing five simple things to reconnect with your kid. Research shows that to have a healthy relationship, for every one negative interaction you need 5 positive interactions to balance that out."
But does it really work?
According to Holmes, she needed to try something different and believed a few elasticated bobbins on my wrist certainly wasn’t going to hurt anyone.
As it turned out the visual cue of the hair ties with the gentle pressure on her wrist was a magical combination.
"The first morning I wore them at home with my preschooler and toddler, I didn’t snap once. All I needed was a little nudge to jolt myself out of that angry mother habit."
"Later I did snap, but I was highly motivated to move that hair tie back to the other wrist, so we repaired the damage quickly," she continued.
Like with everything awesome in life, Holmes thought it was all a fluke that it would "wear off over time," and she would revert to being an angry mother with her middle child.
Much to her surprise, months later the hair tie hack is still working wonders. Proving the hack does help you become a better parent.
"I talk to my preschooler with love and kindness in my voice instead of annoyance and frustration."
