Over the years, a substantial amount of research has begun to document the damage that constantly yelling at a child can cause. For most parents in the busy and stress-filled world we live in, it can feel awfully hard to curb. We hope the work we do at Think:Kids offers parents a way to avoid raising your voice with your child, and instead to solve problems in a proactive and durable way and foster calm and connection. After all, just reading an article telling you how damaging yelling can be, without giving you a better way forward, is only likely to leave you feeling like a bad parent, and that doesn’t tend to help.
Now not to turn around and make you feel bad, but we did come across a song by the children’s musician Alistair Moock that may at least inspire you to avoid this kind of behavior with your child. It’s a song called “Three Like Me.” Take a listen. We think it captures very poignantly the confusing experience it can be for a child to be yelled at. Maybe it’ll inspire you to try something new—Plan B—and set a different course for you and your child.
Of course, more poignant yet is the fact that, for the kids we work with, they’re often not only well beyond age 3, but the experience of having elicited parental disapproval is a much more common one!
