Psychologists Have a Good Reason Why Parents Should Never Yell at Their Children

Being a parent is not easy. We’ve all been there. Sometimes, you just must scald your kid when they don’t hear what you’re saying and do stupid things. New parents imagine smile and giggles and its mostly like that when they’re still babies. However, rarely anyone thinks of the difficulties and challenges coming their way.

Raising children is difficult and a very emotionally and physically draining experience. It requires a lot of sacrifice and will seriously impact your financial situation. Kids are quite demanding and needy from the moment they see the light of day.

Of course, it’s not all hardships. Having a child is an amazing experience that will help you grow as a person. Being a parent is fantastic and we’d never trade it for anything else. It’s the most rewarding and life-changing experience in the life of a person.

There’s no such thing as a perfect parent. No matter how hard you try, you’re bound to make mistakes. Just like with everything else in life, you will make mistakes in parenthood too. With that being said, one of the most common mistakes parents do is losing their temper. While letting that rage out feels satisfying for you, it actually does a lot of damage to your children.

According to psychologists, yelling is one of the most harmful things a child will ever experience.

What’s the Damage?

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While physical punishment is one of the things that can scar a child for life, yelling is actually much more harmful. According to studies, yelling at your kids constantly can make them lose self-esteem and has been associated with higher depression rates.

Just think about it and it will make sense. Parents yell at their children so they stop doing something or they’re testing their limits. They hope that the yelling and shouting will make the kids feel bad. However, it’s a very unproductive discipline technique. Many parents believe it’s an assertive discipline technique that helps them establish domination. However, it never leads to positive progress. As a matter of fact, it’s very negative.

Yelling doesn’t establish dominance – it makes you weak. It’s the response of someone that doesn’t know how to handle a situation. Yelling is actually worse than physical punishment. It has been associated with high degrees of anxiety and depression, so you don’t want to do that to your kids.

To make things even worse, you’re exposing them to behavior they might accept as normal. It might teach your children that everyone will yell at them for any mistake when they get older. This will make them even more depressed, so you may want to rethink your discipline strategies.

Yelling Doesn’t Help

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Dr. Alan Kazdin from the University of Yale is an esteemed child psychologist who says that yelling is the worst form of discipline. Shouting isn’t the way – there are other much better strategies to prevent your child doing something it shouldn’t.

For example, positive and negative reinforcement is one. When your kid does something wrong, don’t yell. Instead, have a calm conversation to them about what they did wrong. Encourage their good behavior and discourage bad behavior. It’s the only way to let your children know what’s good and what’s bad.

Discipline techniques need to be effective. Yelling will never help, no matter if you think otherwise. Reward your child’s good behavior and have a talk with them anytime they do something wrong. You’ll see that it’s a much more effective way to raise your kids.