A Better Goal Than “Not Yelling” At Your Kids

I’m really not a fan of parenting advice that claims it will help you stop yelling at your kids.

I get why it attracts people. And I’m not going to claim that yelling is beneficial for kids. But not only did this kind of advice not help me, it made me feel bad about myself and my parenting. And it was only by shifting my focus away from “not yelling” that I was able to (mostly) stop.

The Science Behind Why Parents Shouldn’t Yell At Their Kids

Lest any confused readers think that I don’t understand the harm that can be caused by yelling at our kids, let’s take a moment for a brief overview.

Yelling at our children ignites a similar physiological response as physical violence such as spanking. If a child is in ventral, they’ll shift down into sympathetic. And in certain situations, they might move all the way through sympathetic, settling in dorsal. In both cases, their stress level has been raised and while the parent *might* complete the stress cycle by yelling, the child probably won’t.almost never does.

And so they stay in a heightened state, contributing to greater resistance and subsequent meltdowns. Or they push their hurt feelings down into their “emotional backpack” where they explode later in a tantrum or aggression.

Another “medium-term” effect, which all parents who have tried to stop yelling have probably seen, is that their child’s neuroception and prediction-making brain has made them very sensitive to (often invisible) cues that their parent is about to lose it and yell. In my house, this appeared in the form of my son and I disagreeing about whether what I am doing is yelling or just speaking in a normal voice while annoyed.

Finally, there are additional medium to long-term effects that are well-documented in the research. Children who are yelled at tend to be more aggressive and experience increased levels of anxiety and depression compared to their peers. And that heightened fear of other people getting angry with them I mentioned in the last paragraph? That’s not just limited to their parents. It applies in other significant relationships later in life, too.

Why Parents Who Know The Science Yell Anyway

“Great,” you might be thinking. “I already knew that I shouldn’t yell at my kids. But I just can’t help myself. Why is that?”

Glad you asked! The reason lies in your brain, your autonomic nervous system, and the stress response.

Deep in the center of your brain is a little structure known as the amygdala. You can think of this as your “threat detector.” And when it detects a threat (like children squabbling—go figure) it actually separates from your prefrontal cortex—the part of your brain that controls executive functions such as self-control to stop yourself from yelling—at the same time it tells your body to shift into the protective sympathetic nervous system, home of our “flight or flight” response (aka our yelling).

The most important thing to understand about this process—and why parents who know the science yell anyway—is that the process is automatic. There are practices that we can do to make ourselves less reactive, but it can still happen despite your efforts. (Which is the main reason why I don’t think “not yelling” is a useful goal.)

A Sidebar on Shame

As I hope the above makes clear, yelling is an automatic response that is not entirely within our control. Sure, we can try to reduce our stress. But it is unreasonable to think that we’ll be able to eliminate it entirely. Just as the source of our stress today is more likely to be our cell phone alerts than a saber tooth tiger, those alerts will one day be replaced with another stressor that we can’t yet predict.

Because yelling is outside of our control, it is particularly important that we not feel shame when we’ve yelled. What’s shame you ask? Shame is the feeling that “I am bad.” This is in contrast to the feeling of guilt, which is “I did something bad.” Guilt is constructive. It signals that you have not acted in congruence with your values, so that you can make a change. Shame, in contrast, is destructive. It sucks us into lamenting that we aren’t different and diverts our energy away from taking constructive action that honors who we are while supporting us so we can act more like the person we’d like to be.

So what should you do if you start feeling shame because you yelled at your child? Now is a great time to offer yourself self-compassion—perhaps offering yourself soothing touch or taking a self-compassion break—and remind yourself that you aren’t a bad person, you yelled involuntarily when your autonomic nervous system took control.

How To Yell Less

So what is a parent to do? Shift the goal posts away from not yelling, and towards yelling less. Not only is this more realistic, it makes it easier for you to practice self-compassion when you mess up and yell anyway, even though it’s not an emergency.

And once you’ve done that, you can take the practical step of practicing mindfulness meditation.

Now, before you get all riled up thinking that that is impossible with your busy schedule, I want you to know that meditating just five minutes a day most days of the week is all you need to start yelling less.

There are two main reasons why meditation is so incredibly helpful in getting parents to yell less. The first is that meditation changes the structure of the brain in key ways. Studies show that when we meditate regularly, the amygdala—that alarm center in the brain that we talked about earlier—actually shrinks in size. And at the same time, the neocortex that surrounds the amygdala and the rest of the limbic system grows. As a result, the amygdala’s alarm becomes a lot less powerful and the connection between the two parts of the brain is more likely to remain, even when something stressful occurs.

The second is that meditation gives you an opportunity to practice your “pause button” over and over again, thus deepening the neural pathways in the brain that make it a little easier to pause before you yell at your kids. You are working the muscle of self-restraint, making it a little easier to use when it is called for off the mat.

You see, the practice of meditation isn’t about clearing your mind. It is about bringing yourself back to your anchor over and over and over again. Just as you return yourself to a place of kindness, compassion, and love every time your child pulls you away from it.

Are you a yeller? What do you think of the goal to “yell less”?