Ogbugoh Terundu Joy Esq.

Yelling at your child when he or she goes wrong might be instinctive even for a parent not given to spanikng their child. Frustrated by the demands of parenting, it becomes almost impossible not to yell at your kids. 

Some parents can take it to the extreme by cursing at their kids and labelling them stupid, idiots, etc. The question is how effective is yelling? Does it yield the desired results? The answer is No.

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Below are the five reasons why yelling at your child is a lose-lose situation. 

• Half of the time that you are yelling, they are not listening. Instead, they are standing there afraid and feeling ashamed of their misconduct. They are anticipating what your next move would be, and because they barely listened to anything you said, they are likely to repeat the same behavior.
• It damages their self esteem. Every child looks up to their parent, they see their parent as a god and so believe everything that the mother or father says. When you call your child a “fool” an “idiot” “empty head” that child is going to grow up believing that he is all of those things.  So instead of correcting him which was your purpose of yelling, you bruised his self esteem instead.
• Yelling makes children rebellious. They have listened to you yell so much that it has become noise to their ears. They do not attach meaning to that tone of voice anymore and so go on to keep doing witht the act that made you yell at them in the first place, not minding that you would yell at them again.
• Every child that is yelled upon would obey but this obedience is not long lasting, it lasts only for a while after which they  become rebellious and full of resentment towards you.
• It makes your child retreat, he does not feel comfortable around you anymore, he is too careful of everything just to avoid being yelled at. It shames them, making them believe that there is no room for mistakes to be made in your presence and in life generally, and these are not feelings you want to instill in your child.

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The solution? Don’t yell.  When you feel yourself about to lash out, take a step back for a minute, breath in long and hard, release then return and calmly but sternly speak your point across to your child in a way that it would make some sense.

Children listen better when you speak to them in a calm and dignified way.