by Janette Waldron

Created on: November 10, 2010   Last Updated: November 15, 2010

When your child lashes out at you it can be heartbreaking and depressing. If you’re trapped in a screaming match with your child, what message do you think this is conveying? Well it certainly shows that you are both out of control and that screaming simply doesn’t work. If yelling at your child when they lash out at you, worked, a plethora of child psychologists would be out of a job. Of course it would be wonderful if when we shouted “STOP!” our kids complied. But life doesn’t work that way. Having worked with a host of children over many years, the author has told parents time and time again, “If screaming at your kids was effective you’d just have to yell your head off and they’d change”.

Parents would bring their child into the consultation room, be told to yell, pay the fee and walk out of the room with a changeling. The kids would be nice for a while and when they lashed out again, the parents would simply have to yell and life would be a bed of roses once more. Unfortunately, reality shows that yelling simply turns your child into your equal. Therefore you are bringing yourself down to their level. When you yell in response to a child who lashes out at you, you are fighting nastiness with nastiness. Of course the author fully comprehends and understands how the parents feel, she is a mother of four and has faced this dilemma herself.

Raising children can be wonderful but it can be highly frustrating as well. But life can be highly frustrating for children too. Most parents yell when their children lash out as them as a last resort, they’ve often run out of ways to resolve the problem. Consequently, they then depend on power and all hell breaks loose as two people are now engaged in a vocal power battle. Often times it works because most children are the weakest in comparison to adults. But when the child learns to yell back right in their parent’s face, the jaw will drop. Parents will then realize that yelling finally has no effect at all.

A myriad of parents forget that habits are so hard to break. Once you start shouting and your child becomes accustomed to shouting back, it will be a hard habit to break down the track. Besides, it’s emotionally exhausting for both adults and children. No parent should ever allow themselves to get roped into a screaming match with their child. This places power right where the child wants it, you are playing right into their hands. It changes

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