To think loud, silly behaviour in children is impossible to deal with?

[lecce]

Dh is away at il's this weekend and I have struggled so much with our two boys - I feel utterly defeated.

What I just can't deal with is the shouting and shrieking they do. It just triggers something in me so that I lose it too and we are all shouting. . Ds1 has always been a whiner about doing stuff he doesn't like, but that seems to have morphed into shouting now, and speaking to me so rudely. He is 7, yet seems to think he can speak to me like I'm nothing - and at top volume.

Ds2's specialism is high-pitched shrieking, singing Frozen ridiculously loudly, repeating what is said to him, running around - it's just silly, typical 5 year old stuff. Why can't I deal with it?

I see threads on here with people saying they wouldn't accept such and such from a child, but what do you do when they just don't care what you say? I read one thread where a woman said she had sent her dd to her room for the whole day for something, serving her basic meals up there. I told ds to go to his room today to give us both time to calm down, and he wouldn't stay there for 2 minutes. I feel such a failure and feel they are going to have awful memories of childhood.

They have had a fairly tough time lately in that dh has returned to work after being a sahp, so they have had to adapt to CM etc, but, tbh, they have always been a bit like this. I teach in a fairly tough secondary school with no real difficulties, yet I am defeated by my own under-10s. Btw, their behaviour is perfect at school.

How do people deal with this? It just seems impossible to me.

It is great that they are beginning to learn to negotiate and find solutions.
They are very young - too young to leave for very long.
My boys are 2 years apart and they were about 10 and 8 before they could really co-operate for long without fighting and falling out.

Sometimes the garden isn't the right place.
Neutral territory is always better.
It is exhausting, but you just have to lower your expectations - both of their ability to play quietly and your expectation of getting anything done.

I was on my own a lot with my 2 as DH worked away most of the time.
Every weekend we would be up early and out.
However, we did no organised activities at weekends because it was too stressful. We only did after school things like swimming and cubs.

The best thing that happened to me was finding a friend with boys of similar age and swapping them round or joining forces so that they paired off with the one of the same age.

I have no real advice, except to say that one day it will get better. My two are now 12 and 10 and the shrieking and silliness is much more infrequent.

I wanted to pick up, though, on your question of why you can't deal with it. I don't think many can, so don't be hard on yourself, but I notice that you teach in a secondary school. Same here, though mine isn't exactly tough. I worked full-time when my boys were a similar age and found it so stressful and draining of my patience that I found I was a different person at home - shouty and slightly anxious. I couldn't bear the noise, the arguments and the sheer volume. I'm now part-time and find I'm much more chilled and decisive at home and have a much better handle on behaviour. It's not possible for everyone to go part-time, obviously, but full-time teaching might be a reason why you feel you can't cope?

Sorry for the rambling post.