There is immense pressure on parents today to be perfect. When you were a kid, if you didn’t mind what your parents asked you to do or when they asked you to do it, chances are you either got yelled at in a voice that clearly warned you mom and dad had reached their breaking point, received a spanking, got grounded, or all three. In other words, there were consequences, and you learned from a young age when you had crossed the line drawn in the sand by your parents—your authority figures.
Today, parenting is all about NOT damaging the fragile psyches of our children. It’s about learning from the mistakes our parents made, practicing positive discipline, and finding the most non-violent, non-hostile ways to deal with our out-of-control children. Spanking is out, and yelling—otherwise known as “raising your voice”—is also considered negative by many parenting experts.
The thing is, these experts aren’t raising YOUR children. The experts that condemn you for raising your voice haven’t spent the past 7 hours trying to get YOUR child to do his or her homework. And “feel-good” parenting, filled with nothing but joyous praise and positive reinforcement, is raising a generation of children who feel they deserve a trophy just for participating in life. As these kids become adults, how will they ever deal with a critical boss, handle failure, or realize that the rest of the world isn’t going to treat them with kid gloves?
Parenting Challenges and the Reality of Yelling
Even so, parents around the world experience frustrating encounters with their children, blow their tops, and then wallow in guilt for hours or days. They wonder: “Do I yell at my children too much?” “Am I a bad parent for losing my temper and raising my voice?” “Am I damaging my children’s self-esteem by yelling?”
The first thing you need to do is take inventory. Realize that at some point, every parent’s cortisol levels will rise to the point where you’re going to lose your temper and yell at your child. In a survey for The Washington Post, 98% of parents polled admitted they yelled at their child from time to time. Of that 98%, 74% felt guilty about it.
One parenting expert explains yelling at children like this: You should strive to be a level-headed, self-controlled parent 80% of the time. But during the 20% of the time when you are either so fatigued or frustrated with your children that you behave in a way you had hoped you’d never visit, you should learn to let it go.
On the other hand, if you cannot speak to your children without yelling and are constantly nagging and hollering at them, you may have some anger issues to address. What many parents find when raising children is that their day-to-day behaviors become so upsetting and aggravating that they stay mad from one day to the next. After a week, months, or even years, what they are really “yelling” about is not the ink stain on the freshly painted hallway door, but the accumulation of frustrating moments over the long haul.
If you yell a lot, or always, you need to learn to reset from one day to the next. Staying angry and remaining in a state of angst and frustration with your kids will not allow you to be the loving parent you desire to be. It will also cause you to yell more than necessary, which can be extremely negative for your children’s sense of security.
You also need to realize that you aren’t doing a very good job of teaching your children how to communicate effectively if everything that comes from your mouth is spewed with excessive volume. Essentially, you will raise children who become adults that yell. Not good. On the other hand, if you raise your voice or yell occasionally—normally when the children have pushed you too far—then you aren’t doing any emotional damage. In fact, some experts even say that yelling, when done without name-calling or demoralization, is like a clap of oral thunder that gets your children’s attention and is much healthier than physical violence.
Parents also need to realize that when they do yell at their child, they shouldn’t wallow in guilt afterward. Instead, once the kids have conformed and the shock of seeing mom or dad so upset has worn off, sit down and talk with them reasonably about what happened. Explain to them that you shouldn’t have had to ask them 41 times to clean up their plates or told them 12 times to brush their teeth. Kids need limits. And parents need limits.
Apologize for losing your temper, which will help them see that sometimes it’s okay to feel anger. Sure, in a perfect world with unicorns and rainbows over every rooftop, yelling wouldn’t need to exist because kids would always be obedient and ever willing to accept the boundaries handed down by mom and dad. But we all know this world doesn’t exist. So, move on!
Yelling can, of course, be a problem. As parents, it’s important to set good examples of behavior and try to remain in control when dealing with children. If you have difficulty with this, your best option is to seek help to find other ways to deal with your kids that are more positive. However, nearly all parents, at one point or another, yell at their kids. It’s a dirty fact of parenting—one that today’s experts would like to shun from the reality of raising kids. Yet, it’s a reality indeed.
