Parenting Advice: Are You Stuck in a Shouting Match with Your Child?
If screaming worked, being a parent would come easy, right? We would just yell, “Just do it!” and our kids would follow. child behavior problems would be a rare occurrence. Parenting advice to would come easy – just blow your top. But here’s the reality: it just does not work. I’ve told parents, “Look, if yelling at kids produced results, I’d be out of an income. You’d just be able to roar at your kid and he’d change. Or you would bring your son to my office, I’d scream at him and call him insults for 45 minutes, and then your child would go home and be sweet for a week. Once any adult had kids, parenting advice would be easy to dole out.
When a mother or father tells me they yell at the kids, I can empathize. I’m also a father and I’ve worked with adults and kids all my life. Let’s face it, it can be difficult being a mother, and it can be difficult being a child. I believe mothers and fathers end up yelling at their kids because they’ve simply come to the end of other ways to solve the problem. Instead, they rely on control to get things accomplished. And it works, so long as the other person is willing to accept this from you. But realize that once your child learns to yell back, your shouting will have no effect. And make no mistake, yelling skills are harder for kids to get rid of than they are to learn.
In my experience, no parent should get into a screaming match with their child; it gives kids too much power. It also does not help you with the problem at hand, whether it’s getting your child to take out the trash, stop playing video games, or to come home on time. The other danger is that yelling turns you into your child’s emotional equal. When you’re out of control, they know it and for the time you’re in that fight with them, your power is diminished.
The 3 Things Your Child Gains from Screaming:
- Your child learns that power is how things get done. More precisely, he learns that overpowering others is the effective to get things done.
- Your kids learn how to bring you down to their level. Mentally and emotionally, he quickly learns how to stop listening when the yelling starts.
- Your child learns that his parents can lose control, and that by saying the right words, they can get you to lose control. You can count on it, once you’ve started using yelling as a behavioral management tool, you’ve handed over everything he needs to know about pushing your buttons.
These are the reasons why the old school parenting advice of just yelling doesn’t work. Teaching your kids the opposite of what you want them to do is not the answer. Reducing your power down to a child’s level doesn’t work either. Screaming orders in order to get things done is not how to get your children to listen and follow.
