Parents who shout at their children or call them “stupid” are leaving their offspring at greater risk of self-harm, drug use and ending up in jail, new research claims.
Talking harshly to children should be recognised as a form of abuse because of the huge damage it does, experts say.
The authors of a new study into such behaviour say “adult-to-child perpetration of verbal abuse … is characterised by shouting, yelling, denigrating the child, and verbal threats”.
“These types of adult actions can be as damaging to a child’s development as other currently recognised and forensically established subtypes of mistreatment such as childhood physical and sexual abuse,” the academics say in their paper in the journal Child Abuse & Neglect.
Like I’ve definitely raised my voice with my kids but couldn’t imagine a world where I ever would call them stupid. That is just trash parenting and amazing that anyone would do that to their offspring.
Ya, I think the study is mostly aimed at the negativity and denigration of the child. While I almost never raise my voice and would absolutely never call my children “stupid”, there are times where a raised voice helps break though to the child. It’s also good when you leave such a raised voice for imminent situations. For example, kid starts reaching for something dangerous, a shout will stop them cold, especially when they aren’t used to dad shouting.
Oooh yeah. My parents gently raised me and a shout from one of them was immediately understood not as them being angry but them being scared. By contrast we had some friends who were just incessantly yelled at in anger all the time. The difference was stark in how willing to accept advice, correction and trust in the experience of adults was. When you are essentially just told to obey and then yelled at you don’t really grasp the underlying principles that advantage you later because at any point that anger could just be you hitting a parent’s pet peeve. It’s also really hard to respect someone who doesn’t respect you back.
We grew up pretty damn straightlaced. By contrast our yelled at peers ended up by and large going completely off the rails once nobody was in a position to force them to obey and about half of them went really far astray.
I think it’s more yelling as habitual, not yelling when it’s sometimes necessary. No one is saying not to yell at your child to stop them from putting their hand on a stove. It’s yelling at them when they leave their legos out that is the problem.
I think it also depends highly on the circumstances, if your child did something very very bad (hit bother with a hammer say) then youd actually be derelict in your duties as a parent not to yell at them (and ground them, etc) in that situation. Going too soft on them when they really go off the rails can be just as bad or worse than being too hard on them.
Yep. If you are calm and reasonable most of the time, then yelling actually remains an effective tool rather than desensitizing the child to it and/or causing them the damage this post is about.
In my house, I’m pretty chill but we have no problem being loud when playing or joking. We have a bunch of pets too, so it can be chaotic. But when my serious big voice comes out, everything freezes and gets figured out pretty quickly. Usually. Lol.