Rare is the parent who has never just lost it and yelled at their kid. Also rare: a parent who hasn’t felt bad about yelling at their kid after doing so.
“All parents know that yelling is not the best way to do things,” Laura Markham, a clinical psychologist, parenting coach, and mother of two, tells Fortune. “Parents are usually remorseful after they yell.”
That’s natural, she says—but not worth harping on, as it won’t help the situation to beat yourself up about it.
“It only works to have compassion for yourself, because when you beat yourself up, you can’t actually do better. It just makes you feel worse about yourself and more likely to yell,” she says. “Every parent will at some point lose it and yell at their kids. That’s not the end of the world. That just goes with the territory of being human.”
It’s only when you continue to use shouting, despite it being ineffective and potentially harmful, that problems can set it, she says.
Here, experts sound off on the three pillars of parenting without raising your voice.
“There is some research that the effects of yelling can be worse than hitting kids,” says adolescent psychologist Barbara Greenberg, referring to one study of middle school kids out of the University of Pittsburgh which also found that maternal verbal aggression was associated with social problems and a negative self-perception. “It really is experienced as emotional abuse.”
Another study found that, for adolescents who experienced harsh verbal discipline from a parent—including yelling, shouting, and verbal humiliation—it was linked to behavioral problems and depressive symptoms.
“Kids form internal scripts that go through their mind again and again all through their lives,” says Greenberg, stressing how negatively impactful it can be to get yelled at. “I don’t think parents always realize the importance of their words.”
Further, says Markham, author of Peaceful Parent, Happy Kids, yelling isn’t effective parenting in the long-term. “We know that it’s absolutely effective to yell at kids in the moment, so yes, we’ll give parents that,” she says. “But it works through fear.” And while it might get kids out of the house on time, it doesn’t help them develop their prefrontal cortex—the part of the brain responsible for attention, inhibition, complex learning, and emotion—so they can learn to manage things for themselves.
“The minute we raise our voice and yell at our kids, sure, they may comply, but it has all these unwanted side effects,” she says. One is that it makes you, the parent, “not a safe person.” And your child, she says, “doesn’t forget that,” whether they want to come to you in the middle of the night after a bad dream or tell you about a bully at school.
Kids whose parents don’t yell do better in every way, according to the research—they feel closer to their parents, are more willing to open up to them, and behave better, Markham says. Meanwhile, she adds, “Kids whose parents yell are more likely to be anxious or depressed by the time they’re in their teen years,” she says. “So that’s just motivation to help parents who are struggling with this, because it’s a very hard thing to tackle.”
Says Greenberg, “It’s up to parents to take a pause and think about what’s going on, even if you have to leave the room to regroup.” Taking that break—think of it as a parental time-out—is beneficial for both you and your kid, she says, because “you are going to be less activated and less aroused,” while it gives your child a minute to calm down, too.
But what if you, like many parents Markham has worked with, don’t even notice that you’re yelling?
“You will, at some point, notice that you’re yelling,” she promises. “You’ll see your kids look at you with a stricken expression…and you’ll realize, ‘Oh, my God, I’m scaring them.’ Most parents will feel a sense of shame at that point. And then they’ll double down—’Well, they weren’t listening’—and then yell more.”
But instead, it’s important to stop right at that moment—even if you fear you’ll “lose face,” she says, explaining that in fact what you’ll be doing is “modeling self-regulation,” which is an excellent skill to pass on to your child.
“The minute you notice you’re yelling, you take a deep breath. You can’t apologize at that point…but you can shut your mouth and turn away. Take a breath. Shake out your hands, splash some water on your face,” she says, explaining that by changing your reaction in these ways, you’ll be giving your body a signal that it doesn’t need to stay in fight-or-flight mode.
“You breathe and you notice what you’re feeling. What you’re feeling is anger at that moment, but under anger is always the same threat,” of failing as a parent—whether it’s because you couldn’t get your kid out of the door on time or you let them stay online too long.
“And once you allow yourself to feel those feelings, you don’t need the anger as a defense against them,” she says, stressing that it’s all about choosing to make the shift in energy right in that moment. “Imagine the calmer, wiser parent inside of you. Some parents say, ‘I choose love instead of fear’ … or you could imagine there’s an angel on your shoulder who’s your wisest self, and they want what’s best for everyone in the situation. That parent reminds you that your kid is just being a kid. They’re not trying to make your life harder.”
After calming down your nervous system, says Markham, it’s time to connect with your child—by apologizing for raising your voice. “You just go in and you make the repair,” she says, while adding, calmly, “’but I am serious, we need to go now.’”
And in case this has you concerned your kid won’t learn a lesson, she says, “When your kids has an agitated nervous system, they don’t learn well…so you have to return to safety and connection before you can teach them anything.” Harvard University’s Center on the Developing Child, in fact, found that exposure to circumstances that provoke persistent fear and anxiety (like yelling, for example), can even interfere with how children learn and develop in the long-term.
So, once you’re calmer, maybe after the dentist appointment that you were afraid to miss, “You say, ‘Wow, that didn’t feel good to be 10 minutes late. They were pretty mad at us, because it messes up everything in the dentist office … I was embarrassed to be 10 minutes late. I wonder what we could do next time so that doesn’t happen?’” Markham suggests. “They will have ideas. And then you’re teaching, because you’re in a good place with them.”
