An anger management specialist has revealed the one sign that a child gets shouted at too much, and it may surprise you.
Many parents will understand what a tricky subject discipline can be. Most of us grew up with parents who thought that shouting at their kids was the best way to get them to behave or do things, and it’s a hard behaviour to unlearn, many of us are finding.
Know better, do better, they say, and now the research points out that shouting at your children isn’t actually the way to get them to change their behaviour or to get them to do what we want. Plus, it can actually be damaging and traumatising, so many Millennial parents are taking a different approach.
Occasionally even the gentlest parent will slip up, shout or yell, though, and then feel guilty about it. So we try to make it up to them, and it is believed that the way you react after shouting or saying something negative, such as apologising and having a conversation about it, can mitigate the effects of the initial comment. This is known as rupture and repair, and it’s a valuable theory for parents to read up on.
However, if parents are using shouting as a way to discipline their children, then Andrea Maher, a mum and certified anger management specialist, says there is a sign that points this out.
Sign a child is shouted at too much
Taking to Instagram, the mum-of-three told her 542K Instagram followers that there is a sure-fire way to tell if a child is shouted or yelled at too much, and it’s probably not what you think.
‘The one habit that quietly reveals a child gets yelled at too much. It isn’t the child having meltdowns. It isn’t the child screaming. It isn’t even the child everyone notices,’ Andrea said.
Andrea, who specialises in helping parents be calm and parent without shouting, said that the child who gets shouted at a lot is often the child ‘who apologises before they’ve done anything wrong’.
‘The child who asks,“Are you mad at me?” The child who panics over tiny mistakes. The child who watches everyone’s mood before they speak,’ she says.
She added that if this sounds familiar, then you may be a parent who flies off the handle a little too easily and it’s probably something you feel guilty about. ‘Life gets loud. Stress builds. The same reaction slips out. And the cycle starts again.’
Guilt can’t stop you from shouting at your children, Andrea says. Parents need a ‘different plan’ – one mum says this viral trick helped her stop shouting at her kids for good.
