# Scream at Your Own Risk (and Your Children's)



## Revelation_old

*Scream at Your Own Risk (and Your Children's)*
By BONNIE ROTHMAN MORRIS
Published: November 9, 2004

The thing about children is that sometimes they misbehave.

They disobey. They talk back. They ignore their chores and fight with their siblings.

Even the most patient parent can end up hollering. Indeed, yelling at children is so common in American households that most parents view it as an inevitable part of childrearing.

But in some cases, researchers say, yelling can become a form of emotional abuse. And children whose parents consistently raise their voices or combine yelling with insults, criticism, ridicule or humiliation may suffer from depression, dips in self-esteem or demonstrate more aggression themselves.

While physical abuse of children has been widely studied, child development specialists have in recent years begun to focus more attention on emotional abuse, which studies suggest can be equally harmful. In 2002, the American Academy of Pediatrics urged pediatricians to be aware of the risk factors of psychological maltreatment of children.

The academy's report, based on numerous studies, said that "a chronic pattern of psychological maltreatment destroys a child's sense of self and personal safety.''

Almost every parent yells at one time or another. A 2003 study by Dr. Murray A. Straus and Carolyn J. Field, published in The Journal of Marriage and Family, found that 88 percent of the 991 families interviewed reported shouting, yelling or screaming at their children in the previous year. Of the families with 7-year-old children, 98 percent reported having yelled.

In another study, not yet published, Dr. George Holden at the University of Texas and his colleagues followed 132 parents and their newborn infants over four years. Thirty-five percent of the parents reported yelling at their children before they were 1. By the time the children were 4, 93 percent said they had.

Not all children suffer as a result. Researchers say that content and context matter. The tone, what is said and the frequency can mitigate or exacerbate its effects.

"The difference comes in how the yelling is used," said Bonnie Harris, a parent educator in Peterborough, N.H., and author of "When Your Kids Push Your Buttons: And What You Can Do About It." "Is it blaming and shaming?" she asked. "If the child is being held responsible for the parent's feelings and behavior, then the yelling can have a deleterious effect.

"But not if the parent is just venting without blame, saying, 'I am really angry, I can't stand this anymore,' " Mrs. Harris said. "You have just as much right to your emotions as your children do."

Researchers are trying to codify the definition of emotional abuse while, at the same time, understanding more about its effects. A study in the July 2001 issue of The American Journal of Psychiatry that compared 49 subjects with depersonalization disorder with 26 emotionally healthy subjects, found that emotional abuse was the most significant predictor of mental illness, more so than sexual and physical abuse.

Dr. Straus, director of the Family Research Laboratory at the University of New Hampshire, said yelling could set a bad example for children that affects the way they handle social interactions later on.

"Yelling sets the tone for family relationships that carry over for dating relationships where you get a lot of psychological aggression," Dr. Straus said.

Still, in the context of a supportive family environment, raised voices do not necessarily signal trouble, a study published last summer in The Journal of Emotional Abuse says.

"Other familial factors (particularly, having an emotionally warm and close relationship with at least one parent) appear to ameliorate the potential negative effects and also, to play a greater role in long-term psychological outcomes than yelling or other forms of aggressive acts," Dr. Anupama Sharma, assistant professor of psychology at Eastern Illinois University and a co-author of the study, said in an e-mail message.

Some experts even say that yelling can be useful, teaching children about failures in a safe environment.

"Children have to understand that we as parents are not perfect and every once in a while we lose it," said Dr. Bennett Leventhal, director of child and adolescent psychiatry at the University of Chicago. "It's far better to understand at home that sometimes people get beyond their limit."

But as most parents can testify, screaming at children is often not effective.

"Yelling overpowers children, it makes them feel frustrated and angry, and what can happen is that after a while kids become immune to being yelled at. They tune it out," said Dr. Myrna B. Shure, a professor of psychology at Drexel University, who conducted a five-year study, financed by the National Institute of Mental Health, of children from kindergarten to fourth grade.

The yelling can also make parents feel worse.

Jen Sayre, a mother of three from Rockingham County, N.H., said she hated yelling at her children.

"I feel so sad and out of control when I'm yelling and I'm mad at myself," she said.

Mrs. Sayre does not yell often, she said, because she and her husband took workshops with Mrs. Harris to help them be more effective parents.

That was four years ago. Today, on the rare occasion that Mrs. Harris raises her voice, a child pipes up and puts her in her place.

"My kids will look at me now and say, 'Mommy, this is your issue, you need to work on that," Mrs. Sayre said. "I try everything I can do not to yell, but when I do yell, I apologize."

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News Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/09/health/09yell.html

This page exists for archive purposes only. DPSelfhelp.com does not claim copyright to Articles in "Depersonalization in the News" unless stated otherwise.


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## Johnny Dep

My parents were yellers. Once my mom pulled the car over to the side of the highway to yell at us and hit us and a state trooper saw it and pulled over and lectured her. You just feel so trapped, especially when your parents were good at acting normal when other people were around.


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## Eric

i got yelled at...a lot
and it wasnt just yelling
it was screaming
sometimes you could here it standing outside of my house


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## Rein

My mother always yelled to, for very unreasonable things.


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## Borisus

I got yelled at, hit, beaten(there's a difference when there's no reason for the hitting, then I call it beating, lol), guilt trips.. hell I remember this one time I wanted to visit my dad at work and my mom didn't want to take me, so I left on my own.. I was walking down and she came by with her bike and said "I'm looking for my son, not sure where he is" traumatized the shit out of me. I still hate her for that, hahaha. We're fine now, but damn that was really hard for me as a kid.


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## dreamsofsomeday

I got yelled at tons. And put down. And told that I was going to be disowned many times. My mom has always been one to flip out. I remember even when I was little she used to try to make me feel horrible by saying how bad I have hurt her and by throwing things. I've also witnessed countless verbal and sometimes even physical fights involving adults in my family, even before I started kindergarten. It scared the crap out of me. My "aunt" would go crazy, so my mom, brother, and I would lock ourselves in my room, even barricade it, if we couldn't get out of the house.


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## Danny Depersonalized

My stepmother used to get drunk and yell at me and call me useless, as well as stupid. Andddd she would hit me. Good stuff.


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## jessetc

Yelling is completely counter productive. Even when the child does get the message, the child gets a completely different message than the one you were trying to send

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## brianjones

I got yelled at.

Beaten up.

Kicked out of home.

And yet I was never that unreasonable. I was actually a really sensitive boy.

I remember my father beating the hell out of me when I was really young, because I cleaned the garage one day (it took me the whole day, and I did it to be nice to my parents) and I used the vacuum cleaner. I plugged out the freezer so I could use the vacuum, and forgot to plug the freezer back in. My fathers meat went off, and he beat me. And I was trying to do something nice. I still remember him saying that "at least 30 dollars worth of meat had to be thrown out" and me thinking wow, I'm sorry I had the best intentions in mind. I ended up with bruisers all over my ass and the fear of god in my heart.

My mother yelled at me, tried to stop me from going out with friends. Or because I was playing guitar (she would spit on me some nights to stop me) Would never give me money to do anything. She made me feel guilty cause I played tennis and fractured my wrist. She refused to take me to hospital saying that it was my fault--and, quote and unquote, 'i shouldn't of been playing tennis'.

When I was in year 7, I really wanted to play for a soccer team. Joined for one season, and my mum was too lazy to pick me up from training, so my coach called the police to take me home(he had to apparently, cause of public liability laws and what not). Once he told me the police were coming, I ran, as I would of been too embarrassed and walked home in the rain for 3 hours with studded boots on. But I got kicked out of the team because of it (soccer was truly my passion).

Now that Im 23, I want to go to my mums house and punch her in the face. The fucking bitch. How could she. Man you know, I got given a cat from a family friend when I was in year 7 too. The cat poo'd in the house, and my mum got so upset that she put the kitten in a plastic bag to suffocate and die slowly. I was so fucking traumatised, i loved this fucking thing. And I went around the entire house, crying non stop to save this poor thing. And after hours my brother finally found it, in a box in the garage, tied up in a plastic bag. And I'm wondering why it feels like I don't have a fucking soul. Its because she fucking maimed it--and since I left home I've been trying to salvage what remains of it. Buts nothing remains.

I was an extremely sensitive kid--this shit fucked me up--and still does.


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## noname

My dad was an hypoyeller, that mean he cant explicitely yell because he wasnt have the balls probably, so he was destructing us with endless hypocritical remark. I discover this malfunctionnality when friend or other guy from another family had make me notice it. Its really hard to have the proper angle to see how dysfunctionnal your family are, but when you begin to see, you notice how much anger and cowardice run in the family.
My mum was an inconsistent yeller, meaning she yell (on the contrary to my father, this dont have decreased with age) randomly for unrelated reason, and the yelling power was tottaly disconnected from the actual importance of things at hand.


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## kate_edwin

Unless they're yelling because the child needs to hear it clearly and quickly (like if a car is about to hit them) , or they're too lazy to come downstairs to talk to them, it's emotional abuse


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## MatrixGravity

My Mom raised me from an early age, and I endured years worth of physical and emotional abuse. I used to cry virtually every day. I was always getting hit by her, and verbally abused and it was just absurd..


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## Tyley

Hmmm... Maybe all this has something to do with our DP. We all seem to have a bad childhood in common, or at least most of us.


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