Screaming is the New Spanking

What your article leaves out is the frequency of these yelling and/or screaming sessions as a baseline for what you are discussing . Coming from an emotionally and verbally abusive home where the mother’s screaming sessions were often (every other day at minimum), and lasted between two and four hours each time, I can tell you with factual certainty that a parent’s yelling and screaming has a lifelong negative impact affecting the child’s self-esteem, sense of well being, how they treat others, patience for others and many other basic attributes of the child and interactions s/he has in life. This is not an article subject to be taken lightly and with so little information provided to its readers to reference how to control the yelling and screaming impulse. Adults who frequently yell and scream are, in essence, displaying childlike behavior that they know will not be “checked” by another person because they are, in fact, considered an adult by their physical age and, therefore, cannot be made to physically stop doing so by another person. As it is not okay for a child, boss, co-worker, vendor, etc. to yell and scream at another person in each of those managed circumstances (as the example titles in this sentence suggest) it is also not okay for an adult to then decide that since their home life is not kept in check by the social norms and mores as public and work spaces that they are free to yell or scream at others. The one place that humans retreat to at the end of the day is to be a place of rest and rejuvenation; a safe place in which to survey the day they have had, learn from it and then rest for the next day to come. If a child cannot count on that space to be a safe haven where one’s emotional being is just as important as their physical well being then the safe haven of “home” will become a jail cell or torture chamber. I want to comment specifically on certain sentences you wrote in your article. My comment s are below each quoted item:
“You can blame yelling on all sorts of factors today like multitasking, lack of time, squeezing in quality time, well, a whole host of things that are daily occurrances for most families.”
- The blame of yelling and screaming goes to the one whom yells or screams. I can no more physically make your vocal chords scream than the next person. Neither can the child, spouse, etc, etc, etc….blame for this always falls on the person who is actually doing the yelling and screaming.
“One way to look at it is like this – if you got yelled at at work, it would be very disturbing. So why is it okay to yell at our kids? I don’t know. I just know it happens.”
- Why is it okay, you ask in this article?….it is not okay. It never will be no matter what article suggests that it is or what folks on the street say. It never will be okay.
“As a child of a yeller (who isn’t, right?) it can be scary to be yelled at but I’ll tell you, it’s REALLY effective, though I’ve read that mental health professionals say that’s it is ineffective. It’s not – if it didn’t work, why would so many parents continue to do it?”
- Here you do not define what “REALLY effective” means…..if you define it as mentally scarring a child into being scared of the parent then, yes, it is “REALLY effective”…..Constant yelling and screaming from my parent just made me realize over and over again that they had no sense of self-control, very little (if any) respect for others, no respect for themselves, showed me they were willing to act like a five year old that didn’t get their candy for the day, etc, etc. Their yelling and screaming meant that I learned not to do those things. I’m just as stubborn as the next person with my own issues that I have spent my entire life working on and screaming is no longer one of them. One can learn not to yell and scream. I have done it and it is because I learned that once I began to yell and scream that everyone stopped paying attention and immediately reasoned that I was just a village idiot that could not be trusted. I don’t think losing respect and being disrespected by a child is what a parent is going for when yelling and screaming, but it will be what happens….for life, if the parent keeps up the abusive behavior.
- By the way, who are you to say that the troves of mental health professionals whom have collectively spent years studying this subject are wrong? Your comment just completely baffles me. Your opinion that they are wrong is written like fact. You are the one that is wrong. You need to check yourself on writing this type of opinion article.
“My advice – start saving for their therapy fund now.”
- I think this is a careless comment to make on such a serious topic. Families can save the lifelong emotional toll (and cost, human and monetary-wise) now by controlling their behavior. It makes much more sense to start now than to ignore the issue. This comment is a “giving up” kind of comment…..and folks that are in their right mind have control over themselves. Start now because later you may lose your children altogether, as they will not want to put up with an abusive parent.

Screaming does not invite listening.

“…I’ve read that mental health professionals say that’s it is ineffective. It’s not – if it didn’t work, why would so many parents continue to do it?”
This statement is total fluff. Is this not the exact same argument that people made for spanking??? I agree with Cate that this article lacks clear research and is poorly written. All it does is bring up an issue and then says it’s too hard to control, so why bother trying to deal with it. Is this really the approach you take to dealing with your anger around your kids?

I made the mistake of yelling with my first daughter and all it has resulted in is teaching her to yell too. It got to the point that we sounded more like sisters yelling at each other than a parent-child relationship! It was a tough lesson to learn, partly because I had to stop and realize just how much I was yelling. Now that I have worked on changing that behavior, I also realize how hard it is to teach my daughter to change the behavior she learned from me. Now that I have two daughters, I try to avoid making the same mistake.

I was yelled at and spanked when I did something wrong, and I’m glad for it… otherwise I would have just done whatever I wanted and would have thought there was no major consequese… Then as I got older I would have kept thinking that and ended up in jail…

It appears that the majority of the people who never
raised a child state that they are against spanking and they would never spank
their child; but are judgmental toward parents who do spank. When they have a
child, they will change their tune. The fact is that each child is different. Each
family raised their children differently. You can’t follow Dr Spock’s book on raising
your kids because the book concentrates on one type of child. There are no
books to raise your unique child. Who wants a perfect child?  I wouldn’t! 
Like would be so boring!  Some
children need a spanking; some need you to raise your voice (no constant
yelling); punishment; and some need just the parent to talk to them. I believe
all children are good; but sometimes make bad decisions. They should not be
ridiculed for making mistakes either. We should want them to bounce back and
learn from their mistakes. They are precious and deserve for us to teach them
right from wrong. I raised three children and we always had opened
communications. As a parent, I knew that there would be times when they would
choose the wrong paths. Children are not perfect and we as parents are not
perfect either. Since everything was depending on their age and
scenario-driven, I believed in sitting down with my kids and explaining the
pros and cons of the situation. Always, I asked why and what they could do to
improve themselves. If they decided to repeat the offense, we would communicate
and then they would be punished for a couple of days. Sometimes, I would allow
them to have input in choosing their punishment. If the first punishment wasn’t
enough, then the 2nd punishment was longer, usually 1 week. A spanking would be
attached if the situation would be detrimental to them or someone’s health and
safety. Regardless, we would talk about why they should be punished and why
they should be spanked. Out of my three children, I had one child who, at
times, understood situations only when he did receive the spanking.
Nevertheless, spanking and raising my voice was the last resort.

I would say shouting can do as much harm as spanking, ignoring or spoiling a child, and it greatly depends on how the child processes the attitude of his/her parents. I got physically and verbally abused by my mother, when she wasn’t ignoring my existence: the pshysical part and the cold shoulder, I could handle perfectly well, it bothered me none and just got through with it…

But when she shouted or yelled at me about how poorly I did at school (that is, when I scored A- or less), or how fat I looked, or how hideous my face was, or how lousy my artistic skills where… I have been undergoing therapy for over five years and it still gets to me like a bullet…

Each one of us handles things in a different way, and yet that is no excuse for saying that one kind of abuse is “less harmful” than another.  Personally, I find this article outrageous; are you trying to imply that yelling at kids is more “acceptable” than spanking? No way, Miss!

I have 3 kids and #4 on the way, and I can tell you that screaming doesn’t work one bit.  The kids just think you hate them (and they hate you) and don’t even hear the words you are screaming.  BUT, punishment DOES work.  Taking away a privilege - and what one kid considers a privilege is different from another – is VERY effective.  Even a 3-yr-old putting his nose in the corner is sad that they are missing out on whatever else is going on; that was their privilege.   Screaming evokes too many feelings of hate, worthlessness, etc, for the “point” you are trying to make to get across.  Most kids who are screamed at just want to know afterward if you still love them, and they’re not at all thinking about what they did wrong or what you said to them.

So when you mess up at work or have road rage or do something else that is “bad”, you should be spanked! Until I live to see that happen in the US, your child’s body is not to be used as a punching bag. You are nothing but a big bully…grow up, please and learn to parent effectively.

Right on Sistah! I agree 100%. Punishment in the form of consequences is the most loving way to discipline. And with that, you don’t have to reassure your children that you (of course!) still love them. Thanks for replying!

i got screamed at nearly every day of my younger years, also getting smacked was another, they say violence breeds violence, i disagree, as i dont hit my kids although there have been times ive had to restrain myself and resort to shouting.

I hear you. When I’ve lost my temper – and as much as I’d like to say I don’t do that, I do sometimes – I always apologize to my children. I think parents don’t have to be perfect, they just have to be honest and themselves.

We have 5, expecting #6 any day and I completely agree. Taking things away works much better, that and time-outs or ‘breather time’ for the older kids. Also, pushups for cuss words, and writing sentences when making fun of others.

Wow…appareantly you can’t control your anger if you think a quick “pop” on a hinny is the same as hitting a punching bag… So possibly in your case you shouldt use spanking.

This is silly…. Should we gently encourage our children to be ill mannered & disrespectful just bc society deems “raising my voice or spanking” as unacceptable. Go ahead, your kids can be monsters but my children are very well behaved & we can take them anywhere w/o tantrums. And my youngest is only 23 months. How many of you have 4 kids & have the privilege of having quality time together w/o a fight? Train them young & spanking becomes unnecessary. All I have to do is raise my eyebrows.

I guess… but didn’t it make your life so much more miserable?

No matter what we do we are going to screw our kids up……at least according to every other parent. I do what the situation calls for, children are sponges though and we do have to be careful about how we raise them

my son has apergers as well. you might be a little judgmental. you don’t know what happens in her home

“One way to look at it is like this – if you got yelled at at work, it would be very disturbing.” Not everyone works at a job where yelling doesn’t take place! Maybe an office job no one yells.. Besides that, if you didn’t yell sometimes, it wouldn’t be normal. People yell for all kinds of reasons..and not all of them are bad.