by Linda James

Created on: July 13, 2008

As I thought about this question, I thought about everytime I was yelled at or I did the yelling, what happened. I have a 21 year old son and I looked back over his early years and I realized that our relationship changed when I stopped yelling. I realized that discipline got easier when I spoke softly and stuck to my guns. These are the things that I learned about yelling.

1. You can't hear what is being said. When you are yelling your levels are so elevated that you can't hear if someone is talking to you. So even if the child is admitting his or her behavior, you are in such a zone that you will probably miss it.

2. People tend to tune you out. You child learns your behavior and finds the space inside of him or her where you can't penetrate and retreats there and no longer hears what you are saying when you are yelling. So they are no longer listening to you.

3. It belittles the other person. You yelling makes the other person feel small and lowers their self-esteem. When we yell we tend to say things that we don't mean and can potentially hurt our children. No matter what other people might believe sometime verbal abuse is as bad as physical abuse. Words have power and they stay with you. You may say you are sorry but that will not always erase the feelings that we planted there with our words.

4. Feelings are important. Think back to when you were young and your parents yelled at you. How did it make you feel. How angry were you with them. Did you automatically forgive them? Our children have feelings too and we need to consider them before we act.

5. Respect is earned not automatic. We want our kids to respect us, but we don't necessarily feel we need to respect them. How do they learn to respect others if they are never shown respect. Self-esteem and good manners are taught at home.

6. Learned behaviors. We look at our children and wonder why when dealing with their siblings they are always yelling. Well where do you think they got it from? They are only doing what they are taught to do by us. We yell at them so in return they yell at others.

I am not saying that you should never yell. That would be crazy to believe that is even possible. What I am saying is that we need to consider why we are yelling. Are we doing it to have them fear us or was it that we can't control our temper? I would rather have my child respect me than fear me.

I have learned to set rules for my son and give guidelines. Set a concrete punishment for the rules and if he breaks the rule, stick to my punishment. After a while I didn't have to yell, he knew where the line was drawn and what would happen if he crossed it.

Now don't get me wrong my son is not perfect by any means. But we have a great relationship, built on respect, honesty and trust. To this day he still tries really hard not to cross those lines, even though it doesn't always work.

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