Six months and one day ago, as we rang in the New Year, my resolution was to refrain from raising my voice at my boys.
I gave it my best effort.
I had almost forgotten about it until two days ago when my oldest son asked me, “Dad, have you ever yelled at me?”
“Of course,” I said, trying remember the last time I actually had used volume to make a point, but I came up cold.
I really don’t remember the last time.
The resolution to speak softly has become a new habit and now, having broken the old habit of shouting, here’s what I’ve discovered.
Yelling discourages dialog. It says, “I’m louder. I’m superior. I win. The end.”
Not yelling encourages listening. Now when I speak in corrective terms, my kids listen carefully. If I tell them quietly but clearly, “if you don’t go up stairs right now and clean your room, I’m going to come up with a trash bag and clean it myself,” they know I mean it.
Yelling gives us a false assumption that we’ve actually punished. After spouting off an angry pitch at our kids, so often we take no further action toward correcting their behavior. When children are little, yelling is terrifying to them. It is enough to get them moving. But as they get older, they get desensitize to it. The problem is we keep doing it thinking it is still effective.
Yelling is knee jerk. It’s from the place of anger, the place of irrational reaction.
Not yelling is controlled. It’s from the place of caring, the place of rational response.
Personally, I feel a lot less stress when I don’t yell. When the boys do something that would otherwise make my blood boil, I find myself thinking calmly to myself, “what is the most effective way to deal with this,” and then I apply it.
If it doesn’t work, I try something else. But I don’t get irrational.
Yelling, I have discovered, is one of those psycho-somatic things … like smiling. If you do it, the corresponding emotion follows. So even if I wasn’t mad, all it took was brief shouting session to get me there.
I know many parents who are semi to staunchly authoritarian. Some might think that my newer softer tone makes me a push over. Some might even say it makes me a weak father figure.
But I would offer that any action born from anger is not controlled and that in fact, it takes a great deal of strength to restrain our actions – especially when we are angry.
Comparatively, acting on impulse seems weak.
I’m happy I broke the yelling habit. In doing so, I’m setting a better example for my boys.
Over time they too will understand that they don’t have to use a loud voice to make a strong point.
On Fatherhood 