Text 4 all over bar the shouting

We should never yell at our children, says a new study. Rebecca Abrams is not convinced. Most parents feel bad enough about yelling at their children without being made to feel that they are causing them life-long damage.

Let’s start with a confession – I’ll say it very quietly so as not to shock you. I shout at my children. I don’t mean occasionally, or even regularly, I mean more like (a deep breath) daily.

Today, for example, I shouted at my seven-year-old when she still hadn’t put on her shoes after I’d asked her at least ten times. Yesterday, I got cross because I caught her flitting through the house wearing a new top of mine that I hadn’t yet worn myself. The day before, I had lost it at tea-time when my five-year-old started spitting peas at his sister (a new trick he’s picked up at school). The day before that, I … uh, well, I can’t actually remember that far back, but I’m sure there was a really good reason.

According to a new research from Denmark, however, there’s never a good reason for shouting at our kids. An eight-year study of nursery children found that raised voices can cause as much anxiety and distress as actually hitting them. It appears that children are often far more sensitive to angry voices than parents or teachers realize. According to Erik Sigsgaard, of the Danish Centre for Research in Institutions, children make little distinction between physical and verbal violence. One boy, interviewed for the research, said being shouted at was “like somebody beating you with their voice.”

“When you punish children you give them the feeling that they aren’t worth anything,” says Sigsgaard. “You can’t say that it’s better to scold your children than to beat them.”

His advice to parents who want to keep up a close relationship with their children is not to shout at them, but to state their opinions in a normal voice. Apart from wondering how much time Sigsgaard has actually spent in the company of small children (or even big ones), I can’t help marveling at the wholly unrealistic nature of his recommendations. Who are these saintly creatures who never raise their voices, however tired, stressed or sorely provoked? Most of the parents I know not only admit to yelling at their kids, but defend their right to do so.

“It’s good for them to know you have your limits,” says Catherine Rogers, a mother of three daughters aged from five to eleven. “They need to realize you are human. It’s too easy to say that shouting is bad, but I know plenty of families that go in for tight-lipped silences and sulking instead. From the child’s point of view, that’s even worse.”

Helen Crowther, a nurse and mother of two, agrees. “When I was growing up, my mother never shouted. She was always very calm and rational. I was more hot-tempered and so I was always the one losing control and shouting. It made it impossible to communicate with her. I felt I was always in the wrong, always the one who had to apologize.” So with her own children, Thomas, six, and Harriet, nine, Helen has taken the opposite approach. “I actively make room for them to be angry. I don’t want them to feel guilty about it. If Harriet shouts at me, I shout back. We’re quite confrontational with each other, but we deal with things there and then. I also don’t have a problem with apologizing afterwards if necessary. I want them to know that I don’t always get it right.”

Danish legislation requires parents to protect their children from “psychological violence,” and smacking is outlawed. In view of Sigsgaard’s research, we shouldn’t be surprised if shouting is next to go.

Although the Scottish Parliament has made smacking illegal, England is still resisting pressure from more than 300 organizations to follow suit. However, the issue is hotly debated following harsh criticism of England from the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child. Should shouting now be put on the agenda too? The child-rearing expert Penelope Leach thinks not. “There is a big difference between physical and verbal violence. Every week a child is killed in the parental home. That’s not from being shouted at. You can’t legislate that all should be nice to their children. What you can do is educate in that direction.”

The National Family and Parenting Institute has published a booklet and video From Breakfast to Bedtime for parents of toddlers to try to do exactly that. According to Sophie Linington, head of the Parent Support Project at the NFPI and author of the booklet, it’s not realistic to tell parents not to shout at their kids, but, she says, “there are often better, more positive ways of dealing with tense situations, and parents may just need a bit of help working out what those alternatives might be.”

Bedtimes, meal times, trips to the supermarket and getting out of the house in the morning are all common trouble-spots. “Taking your time to stop and think about what happens in these stressful moments, about what you say to your children and how you say it, can make a huge difference,” says Linington.

Often the trick is helping parents to channel their own stress and frustration instead of directing it at their children. Vis-a-vis my dawdling daughter, Linington suggests that I get her up an hour earlier and, when the shoe moment approaches, rather than the usual deranged shriek of “I don’t believe it. You STILL haven’t got them on! You’re making us all late! Hurry UUUUPPP!” try something gentler, more encouraging, such as, “I see you’re nearly ready. You’re doing really well today. As soon as you have got your shoes on, we can set off.”

This is excellent advice, and definitely worth a go. But what worries me about this parenting style that we’re all meant to aspire to, is how anodyne it is. Calm, calm, calm. Not a flicker of emotion anywhere in sight. The high-octane, argumentative style of one household may make another household blanch, but that doesn’t make it dangerous. Is this world of Stepford Mums and Dads really the way forward?

In the film My Big Fat Greek Wedding, everyone shouts at everyone, but then that’s OK because they’re all crazy Greeks anyway. For Greeks read also Italians, Jews, Arabs, in fact almost any non-Anglo-Saxon, non-Protestant culture you care to think of. Surely there is room for a bit of diversity in family life?

Clearly, when shouting is the predominant or even the sole form of communication between adults and children, it has the potential to be harmful. But in many cases, shouting is just one of many emotions. Where it is set in a wider context of a warm and loving family in which there is plenty of listening, humour and affection, it is hardly the same as “psychological violence.” In any case, most parents feel bad enough about shouting at their children without being made to feel they are causing them life-long damage in the process.

Linington wholeheartedly agrees and concedes that anger per se is not the problem. “The last thing we want is a generation of children bottling up their feelings. It’s not feeling angry, but what you do with it that counts.”

My children don’t seem to have much trouble distinguishing between unreasonable anger (which is frightening and distressing, and for which they usually get an apology and explanation) and reasonable annoyance (“Well, you had asked me ten times and we were late for school.”) They don’t like seeing other children being shouted at by their parents, especially in the street or supermarket, or by teachers. But what they absolutely can’t abide is any kind of “lively discussion” between their own parents.

Sigsgaard’s research suggests that children’s reactions to shouting do need to be taken more seriously – parents and teachers need to be aware of the impact of raised voices on children’s confidence and self-esteem. When it is constant, verbal abuse is almost certainly akin to physical abuse. But whatever the Government decides to do about smacking, following the UN’s criticisms, I can’t help hoping that shouting remains off the agenda.

(compiled from www.timesonline.co.uk)