myanak2ku

Can Yelling at Your Kids Be Good?

Anger and Stress
(Illustration by Barry Falls)

I never lose my temper. I am Zen in the wake of any storm. Sometimes I speak a bit more, um, loudly, than other times, but that’s only because there is background noise and I want to make sure my boys hear my rational and calm explanation that begins with an even-keeled “how many times do I have to tell you…”

If you ever meet them and they start to spin tales about how, once or twice (or whatever) I actually lost my voice from shrieking about the dang clothes left all over the darn floor, well, boys do have active imaginations, now don’t they? And the one about the time Mom threw a full glass of water (the contents, not the actual glass) at one of their heads (she missed, they will tell you) — you don’t have to believe them. (I would never miss.)

We rarely talk about the anger of being a parent. We know the lurking danger — of anger turning physical, or crossing a line. That means we also don’t talk about the fact that we all lose it. Or the corollary fact that sometimes anger works.

When all else fails, a few claps of oral thunder certainly show that Mom or Dad has had it, that humans can be pushed just so far, and this is what it looks like when you’ve pushed them too much.

I have friends whose parents really never yelled. Those same friends were terrified at their first fight with their own spouse, or their first anger at their own children; they were certain the marriage was over and the kids would be taken away. There is a lesson learned by some yelling (not abusing or berating, or belittling, but emoting; not constantly, but sometimes): we get mad, we make up, we still love each other.

My guest blogger, Susie Orman Schnall, knows this, well. She and her husband are raising three young boys in the suburbs of New York. Most days go well. Here’s the story of one day last fall that didn’t. For some of you what she describes will sound like a minor skirmish, others will find it outrageous. For her it was frightening, and memorable — and it seems like it all turned out okay.