When a couple welcomes their first baby, life is magical. New parents are sucked in that newborn haze of happiness and exhaustion. A mix we all know too well. Baby hasn’t slept in hours, yet you wouldn’t have it any other way. The soft skin, the tiny feet, the toothless smiles, and all those cute noises babies make in their sleep… all this is priceless! Every mum, even though she might be exhausted, is without a doubt in a state of bliss!
Fast forward to the two years mark and things start to get ugly! Toddlers know how to push boundaries. They know how to challenge you and make your little demons come out. They know what they want, and it is usually the opposite of what you would like. They enter this new phase of burgeoning desire for independence, with abundant outbursts of “no”, tantrums, and vicious fights in supermarket aisles, over matters that you had never EVER even considered before… in your life! And with this, every mum’s angel-like attitude turns into an exercise of one’s vocal cords. You start with the singsong voice, with phrases that end with “sweetie” and “honey”, then you move to the perfectly arched eyebrow, and finally the clenched teeth, and the pursed lips, with “I SAID STOP”. Yes, sure they meltdown, you might have to leave your loaded cart, and just run for your life, you might be escorted to the exit by security, and you might lose your mind, and YELL!
Yelling is something every parent must go through, at least once in their lifetime. Yelling comes with the job! At some point in the day, after hearing “mom” for the 97362837th time, and after saying no to throwing toothpastes, hairbrushes and spoons in the toilet, and after cutting the third sandwich into perfectly square shapes, just to be haunted by the 97362838th “mum”, surprised by a toy that has been thrown into that same toilet, oh and a “Mum.. I said rectangles not squares”… well, what do you do? You yell! You can’t help it, it just happens! Parents yell because they’re getting pulled in a million different directions and something happens that makes them frustrated. They see their kids fighting, or the child is doing something they don’t approve of, and so they just kind of let loose. It’s some kind of automatic response. The anger just sort of parachutes in, it sneaks up from behind, and we know we have been triggered. Our hearts are pounding and our jaws are clenched — it’s clear something has hijacked us.
Whether parents yell because they believe in old-school discipline or just lose their cool sometimes, yelling has become the new spanking. Despite it being a frowned upon method, it’s a more socially acceptable way to deliver a reprimand and get kids’ attention. Many in our generation grew up being yelled at and even spanked, so it’s what we know. But then the final truth about yelling reveals itself: we don’t feel very good about ourselves when we launch into a tirade on our progeny. And it often frightens them (like it frightened us as kids) to be on the receiving end of angry words, making them anxious and, logically, more prone to yelling themselves.
Yelling is something we can do to relay urgency to a kid, what’s harmful about it, though, is that kids have sensitive nervous systems, and yelling is scary for them. It’s aggressive and intimidating. The facial expressions that accompany yelling are really angry and scary. So when we get the results we want from yelling, it’s because they’re scared and they just want us to stop yelling. Yelling can seem to work in the short term, but, over time, kids will either shut down or learn to tune it out.
Yelling mostly indicates that our cup is empty and that we need to do some very much needed self-care. Whether it is a cup of coffee with a friend, a trip to the spa or just a good book and some silence. Unless we refill our tank, we will never be the parents we strive to be for our children.
Chanelmama
