To Yell or Not to Yell?

To say that I'm loud is an understatement. I can remember being very young and constantly having people tell me to lower my voice. That's really annoying, by the way. Anyway. Lately though I've noticed that not only am I yelling more but the boys are yelling more. They yell at each other, they yell at their dad and sometimes they even yell at me. I'm tired of all the yelling. So, I sat the boys down and we all agreed that we would work on yelling less. We would use kinder words to each other and really try hard not to yell. I wasn't sure how well this was going to work, as I yell the most and the loudest. Each day, I remind the boys how many days it has been since we started not yelling and I also remind them to talk with their indoor voices. We are on day 9 and it's going surprisingly well! The first time that I yelled was just two days ago. I caught myself and lowered my voice. It's amazing how now that there is so much less yelling, the boys are struggling more but I expected that, how nicely everyone is getting along. They are playing better, talking nicer to each other. Saying 'please' and 'thank you' more and even being calmer. I had my doubts about this actually working but I'm very proud of all 5 of us! Hopefully we can keep it up!