Why you shouldn’t yell at kids
While many of us aren’t exactly happy to admit it, chances are good that we yell at the children in our lives from time to time. The “yelling gene” may be triggered when you become a parent for the first time but it certainly doesn’t dissipate with time. As a grandparent, you may have learnt (or taught yourself) to yell less but still catch yourself doing it reasonably regularly. This is because yelling often becomes our default way of communicating with our kids. It appears to get results so we keep doing it, despite the research telling us that we don’t like doing it.
The question of why we yell while at home, even when we find it an unpleasant mode of behaviour and communication, is complex. Often parents or grandparents will feel that it’s the only way to actually get children to listen. After numerous polite requests are ignored, yelling appears to be the only option. Research has found that the reason children often do not respond to our more pleasant requests is that we’ve trained them in a way to wait until we yell before they actually need to act. We make requests of them in a nice way and when they don’t comply, nothing untoward happens. We may try again and again and still, no result and no consequence. So we yell. Our yelling is also linked directly to the timing of the requests we make of our children. We will often ask them to do something without considering what they currently have going on. If heavily engaged in an enjoyable activity, stopping it isn’t going to seem like something a child will want to do. We know as adults, that being disrupted abruptly while happily engaged isn’t pleasant and can be very annoying. Pile a terse request or demand on top of that and it becomes easy to see why our kids may choose not to respond at first.
Tackling our yelling is an important part of raising happy, healthy children. Kids who are yelled at regularly, especially in a severe way, experience a profoundly negative impact on their wellbeing. There is of course a big difference between shouting and aggressively screaming at a child but the impact any kind of yelling has is food for thought.
The best anti-yelling strategies are those that are practical and respectful. Here are 4 to try next time you’re temped to blow up:
- Go to your children – Kids not responding to your words? Go to them. If you need their attention, walk to them and address them directly. You’d do it to a peer or partner so why not your children?
- Consider timing – before making a request, consider what your child is doing. If possible, give a ‘5 minute call’ and let them know that in 5 minutes you’ll need them to stop what they are doing and do XYZ. This lays out your expectations and always for their own input.
- Take a soft approach – If you’ve tried and failed to get the attention of your kids, try speaking softly. Kneel down on their level, take their hand, look into their eyes and ask if they’ve heard what you’ve been saying. If they haven’t, you can repeat the request and if they have, you can work together to help accomplish the request.
- Use their names as a positive – We often address children by their names when they are ignoring us or doing something we deem to be inappropriate. Kids become so used to their names being used as a disciplinary measure that they’ll often tune out when they hear them. Try using their names in a positive sense and even trying some ‘yelling for good’ i.e. yelling out their name followed by an ‘I love you!’ or ‘great job.’
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