Why Are We Yelling At Children?

2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43

Mom in the stairwell yells at her three children: “You can't enter the elevator without me !! This is dangerous! You can get stuck alone in an elevator! And this is not the worst thing! The worst thing is that you can fall through this gap between the elevator and the floor and break your head and die !! Everyone should stand and do not enter the elevator without me until I find the keys !! ". A sad picture … It was heard behind the closed door of my apartment, how my mother, angry that she could not find the keys, yells at the children, threatens them, shows an example of her not very best behavior. But, to be honest, I do not know a single parent who, honestly, would honestly say: "I have never yelled at my children." This does not happen. Even with the most loving, responsible, caring parents. So what makes parents, despite remorse and guilt, fall into this state of madness again and again when they no longer control themselves? Do some parents, following the example of their families, consider this behavior towards children normal?

Reason 1: We are afraid for our children. Fear is always more difficult to show, it weakens us, we seem weak and defenseless to ourselves. We are scared from the first day that something will happen to our children, something will happen, and therefore we strive to warn them against all kinds of dangers (do not touch the dog - it will bite, do not come close to the road - the car will hit, do not go into the same elevator …). Dangers are everywhere, and the most common response to danger is yelling. As a way to deal with your anxiety about your child. From all these "crying precautions" the child realizes that the world is dangerous, and begins to grow anxious and tense.

Reason 2: the child is weaker than us. And this is a reason to pour out on him, small and defenseless, all the hardships of our adult life. Have a fight with a friend? Unhappy with your husband? Does your boss demand the impossible? Failed to reach your goal? Didn't have enough money for something? Your emotions from all these situations do not go anywhere, but pour out on the most precious thing you have. And we take it out on our children. In this case, the child becomes a lightning rod for our emotions, our unfinished situations. And all because it is weaker. He will remain silent, will not respond in kind, will accept it … and harbor a grudge against his parents for injustice, misunderstanding. Parents in this situation provide an excellent example for the manifestation of selfishness, since in this situation they think only of themselves (“it became easier for me”). The same example about the staircase and the missing keys to the apartment: mom spends her time on it, pours out her own discontent and annoyance at not being able to find these keys, pouring out an emotional stream on her children, although they are not to blame for anything.

Reason 3: It's faster and easier to get things done. I think every parent noticed that you can get your way by screaming. Sometimes it's easier not to beg 5 times and persuade 6, but to bark once so that the child understands, obeys, and does something faster. But the quality of the relationship only suffers from this, parental authority falls, trust collapses, the child stops believing you. And there are no levers to influence it in the future.

Reason 4: Our image of the ideal child is at odds with the real one, and we get angry about it. We strive to drive the child into the image that we have created in our minds. Our requirements do not coincide with what our child can do, what he really wants, what his desires are. We put pressure on it in order to make it convenient for us, to satisfy our needs, so that it is exactly what we would need. And when he does not meet these requirements, we turn to a cry - from our powerlessness, from our disappointment that the child once again did not live up to our hopes.

Reason 5: because we want to be good (no matter how paradoxical it may sound). Many parents yell at their children in playgrounds, shops and other crowded places. Why? They are driven by shame: that the child is not like that, they begin to compare him with other children (“Look at this girl in a dress, she, unlike you, does not climb into the mud!”). And they shout, shout, trying to instill in the child the right behavior, the right manners. We show in public that we are parents, that we know how to educate. We equate rigor with goodness and we believe it is right.

6 reason: we do not find the right words and explanations. What seems obvious to us, understandable from the height of our growth, experience and age, can be overwhelming for children. We get tired of explaining again an example in mathematics, and we are sincerely annoyed and surprised why he does not want to understand ??? Why doesn't he want to remember seemingly simple and obvious things? Making mistakes all the time? How many times comes across the same rake? We do not have enough strength, patience to explain these easy things to him. We get annoyed, angry … and screaming.

7 reason: we do not think about the future of children. This is about all of the above reasons. And about our fears, which do not allow the child to develop, and about our expectations, which do not allow the child to be himself and build his life according to his own rules. This is about our anger, which does not allow us to see another person nearby, different from us, and about our powerlessness, when after work we do not have enough strength and patience to convey the same thoughts not by shouting, but by understanding words. And about our love, which we do not always understand how to show in relation to a child. We do not think about the consequences, about what will happen in 5, 10, 15 years. With what eyes our child will look at us, and with what words, and most importantly - with what intonation in his voice he will speak to us.