Parents who shout at their children or call them “stupid” are leaving their offspring at greater risk of self-harm, drug use and ending up in jail, new research claims.
Talking harshly to children should be recognised as a form of abuse because of the huge damage it does, experts say.
The authors of a new study into such behaviour say “adult-to-child perpetration of verbal abuse … is characterised by shouting, yelling, denigrating the child, and verbal threats”.
“These types of adult actions can be as damaging to a child’s development as other currently recognised and forensically established subtypes of mistreatment such as childhood physical and sexual abuse,” the academics say in their paper in the journal Child Abuse & Neglect.
My first girlfriend in highschool had severe anxiety and was so incredibly quiet and shy. It was so tough cuz she was a genuinely sweet and caring person once she opened up to you. I was extremely surprised to learn her family was nothing like that when I met them. Until I met her dad, and he kept calling her an idiot, and stupid, and useless. Then I understood why she never wanted to say anything. Every time she opened her mouth she was criticized by her dad. This attitude towards your own kids is insanely damaging.
It’s very difficult to notice that it’s happening to you sometimes.
It wasn’t until my mid twenties that I noticed every single thing I say my mother seems to instantly try to take the opposite side and tell me I’m wrong, purely because it’s in her nature.
That level of negativity combined with a hair trigger for screaming, and she wonders why I don’t talk to her about absolutely anything 🤷♂️
frog in a boiling pot.
Honestly, I think that type of abuse is the worst because it cuts way deeper and leaves a permanent mark. I was yelled at (a lot), physically abused, and sexually abused, but I was always encouraged and supported. (Weird, I know. No, I'm not getting into it.). Because of the verbal support I received from my mother I was confident enough to stand up to my sexual and physical abusers even though she had not been able to as a child. I was also strong enough to break away from them and take on life solo after completely cutting them all off from my life (my mother had already passed away).
If you believe in yourself, you can fight. If you don't, you might just sit there and take it. Psychological abuse is the cruelest and most damaging.
My anxiety also came from living with an abusive father. It sucks always second guessing yourself and never feeling safe and secure because your baseline is abuse.
EMDR helped me. I hope your ex found or finds some healing.
Yeah, I think an important thing parents need to do (apart from tearing down their kids for no reason) is differentiate DOING something dumb versus BEING dumb.
A comment my dad made long ago when I was young kinda stuck with me “For a kid who’s really smart you sure do some really dumb shit sometimes”
I’ve tried to phrase things like that to my kids, not “you dumbass why did you do that?” but more along “you’re smart enough to know you shouldn’t do that, so why did you?”
Or you could use positive reinforcement instead of belittling your kids. You can explain, why stuff they did was wrong without calling them dumb. They are kids after all, they don’t know stuff, have a lot to learn and it is hard for them to completely grasp the consequences of their actions.
I don’t have a better solution, but “you’re smart enough to know you shouldn’t do that, so why did you?” feels a lot like the “you’re smart but you don’t apply yourself” I got a lot as a kid that always made me feel inadequate.
I fucked up sometimes, I didn’t do it on purpose and asking me why I did it as if I consciously made a decision to be wrong on purpose and wanting an explanation is basically asking me to either lie or say “i don’t know” which was never the “right answer.”
More about analysing the thinking that led to the situation. In most cases it’s things that they know or were told not to do but guy caught up in the moment
Like I've definitely raised my voice with my kids but couldn't imagine a world where I ever would call them stupid. That is just trash parenting and amazing that anyone would do that to their offspring.
Ya, I think the study is mostly aimed at the negativity and denigration of the child. While I almost never raise my voice and would absolutely never call my children "stupid", there are times where a raised voice helps break though to the child. It's also good when you leave such a raised voice for imminent situations. For example, kid starts reaching for something dangerous, a shout will stop them cold, especially when they aren't used to dad shouting.
Oooh yeah. My parents gently raised me and a shout from one of them was immediately understood not as them being angry but them being scared. By contrast we had some friends who were just incessantly yelled at in anger all the time. The difference was stark in how willing to accept advice, correction and trust in the experience of adults was. When you are essentially just told to obey and then yelled at you don't really grasp the underlying principles that advantage you later because at any point that anger could just be you hitting a parent's pet peeve. It's also really hard to respect someone who doesn't respect you back.
We grew up pretty damn straightlaced. By contrast our yelled at peers ended up by and large going completely off the rails once nobody was in a position to force them to obey and about half of them went really far astray.
I think it's more yelling as habitual, not yelling when it's sometimes necessary. No one is saying not to yell at your child to stop them from putting their hand on a stove. It's yelling at them when they leave their legos out that is the problem.
I think it also depends highly on the circumstances, if your child did something very very bad (hit bother with a hammer say) then youd actually be derelict in your duties as a parent not to yell at them (and ground them, etc) in that situation. Going too soft on them when they really go off the rails can be just as bad or worse than being too hard on them.
Yep. If you are calm and reasonable most of the time, then yelling actually remains an effective tool rather than desensitizing the child to it and/or causing them the damage this post is about.
In my house, I’m pretty chill but we have no problem being loud when playing or joking. We have a bunch of pets too, so it can be chaotic. But when my serious big voice comes out, everything freezes and gets figured out pretty quickly. Usually. Lol.
One benefit of shouting at your kids and generally dismissing their emotions is that you can enjoy your retirement without them anywhere near you and die alone.
Hi mom!
Well that's one way to get them to move out on their own I guess
Not just yelling at kids, just being in a house where people are verbally abusive can fuck a person up, if my parents were not yelling at each other they were yelling at one of us kids. to the day 30 some odd years later just being around someone who is pissed off triggers my anxiety.
i really feel that about being around someone who is pissed off. i also get little adrenaline rushes whenever anyone shuts a door forcefully
I also get adrenaline rushes and instinctively angry when loud noises that can be avoided, happen.
I have also developed (without going for it) some very good stealth skills and I am not an especially tiny person.
I also grew up with a fairly short temper, though I wonder if it's genetics or the upbringing. Learned over time I can control it, but the berserker rage is still there.
Any yelling beyond "don't do that thing that is imminently dangerous" can often just be parents taking out their stress on their kid. That's kind of how it felt whenever my dad yelled at me. It was never something that seemed sensible to yell about.
Just last night i went out to help my dad change a flat and it brought up so much shit from him yelling at me over everything when I was a kid. That was 30 years ago and he wasn't even yelling at me this time just pissed off at the situation.
This crap definitely sticks with you.
I am 70 the words uttered by my father when I was 5 still ring in my ears. He said "I wish you had never been born".
I am 32. I love my dad, he did his best. He was a good dad.
But I will probably never be able to forgive him for the times he shouted and yelled at me when I wasn't a good kid. He went into fits of rage over mundane things like homework and failing school. I remember everything he said in those fits of rage. Every instance of it. And I definitely remember feeling terrified.
And will remember it until the day I die.
Even at 70 years old.
This makes me sad tbh. I'm 21, and get flashbacks of my dad yelling at me, especially when someone yells at me irl. I was scared that I'd spend my life trying to get rid of them… now I wonder if that's even possible
You might be able to do it if you'll get closure by talking to your dad about it.
My dad is the type that is never wrong, never does anything bad, and therefore never apologizes. I brought this up a few times and he always say I exagerrate or those instances never happened. He will never own up to it.
Unfortunately, both my parents are like that too. I went no contact for that reason, actually.
It is possible to get closure anyway, eg. by not doing the same mistake yourself or by surrouding yourself with healthy relationships and realizing your parent is just a human being full of faults and you're your own person. I have examples around me of people who were able to get over it finally and also of people who carried it with them their whole life (and I don't blame them). The sad thing is how many people have such burden in the first place.
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Maybe shouting at children all the time until they leave home is about the same as them getting sexually abused once.
But they aren't equivalent in the slightest when compared in the same quantities.
yea if my dad only yelled and never hit me
well i wouldnt like hitting people idk
but seriously Any communication is better than cell phone babies
i wish dad yelled insults at me
he never calls now, i should call him
be a better man
sorry tired
Although I don't think verbal abuse is acceptable, I think that equivalency is a bit much
You miss-read (or didn't read) the article if that's your take-away. It's saying the long-term effects can be roughly the same. It's not equivocating the actions themselves.
They're not equivocating the malice of verbal abuse vs. sexual abuse. They are equivocating the damage this kind of abuse can do to children, which their research supports. There's no reason to take offense as if they were taking a stand on the non-severity child sexual abuse, which they are not.
I guess I'm surprised sexual abuse doesn't do more damage
Verbal abuse when I was growing up was backed up with the threat of physical abuse. And having been bit and hit by my dad, and seeing my mom and older brother hit by my dad, those verbal threats carried a lot of weight.
I've walked on eggshells around my dad and every man that reminded me of him my whole life. It's affected my relationships and made it impossible to hold down a job as most bosses have the same authoritarian streak my dad did.
So yeah, verbal abuse is damaging. Rather it's equivalent to other forms of abuse I can't say. But it took me 44 years and a skilled emdr therapist to finally heal enough that I don't feel overwhelmed whenever I get emotional.
And for much of the last fifteen years I've been trying to find a therapist that took my trauma seriously and knew how to help me with it. So many misdiagnosis (anxiety, substance use, and depression were symptoms, but not the diagnosis that helped). Many suicide attempts. Many psych meds that didn't help. Many many years feeling unheard by the medical establishment.
So yeah, it's damaging.
Why?
I will say, verbal abuse is harder to pinpoint.
In some ways, it's easier to have a source of trauma to point to and say "that's the cause," so you can address and treat it.
I was verbally abused. My inner dialogue was one of critisism, guilt and shame, that I didn't realize until well into adulthood. I thought that was how everyone talked to themselves.
If I had been physically abused, I would have known about it. Much less insidious to the mind.
E: Was also just thinking about triggers. If you were a victim of physical trauma, your triggers might be very obvious. With verbal trauma, for me anyway, they were much less obvious. To think back, I went years and years having fight or flight reactions for no obvious reason, often manifested as anxiety or poor impulse control, wasted so many days just feeling anxious instead of working on myself. One trigger for me is loud voices. Had no idea until well into adulthood things started making sense. Damn near had a panic attack one day when a chef started yelling at the line cooks while I was waiting for my order.
While what you and I feel doesn't matter much, we truly need a scientific study of this. Oh, wait! That's what this was. Please defer to objective consensus…
Lol. Fuck off. Objective consensus? Are you part of team "trust the science" thinking every fucking study is well done or non biased?
How about you take the study at hand and point out, where it is not well done?
this. things like this are starting to annoy me. lets me clear. sexual abuse is worse than physical abuse which is worse than verbal abuse. The first should never happen in the least. Grabbing your childs arm roughly and yelling at them when about to touch something hot is fine and expected. Yelling at them and telling them to behave when they hit their sibling is fine.
"things like this" being… Scientific studies?
using equivalency phrases on things that are very much not equivalent. Also scientific studies are great in the hard sciences but in the social sciences become very iffy. Doing some correlation on questionaires is not equivalent to measuring small changes in a large structure to measure gravitational effects.
Doing some correlation on questionaires is not equivalent to measuring small changes in a large structure to measure gravitational effects.
Where did anyone say this? You're trying to sound knowledgeable about science, but all you're doing is making up strawmen to argue against over and over
its a reply to iamthetots comment about scientific studies. one thing that is frustrating with federation is sometimes folks don't see all the people or parts of a convo
I read that comment, that doesn't change the fact that you're creating strawman arguments
explain strawman argument and how my conversation fits into it because I do not believe my conversation has been one. Or not if you don't really believe its a strawman argument. Make some other comment if thats the case.
I think there's a missed distinction here.
"Yelling" at your child to get them to stop something, or not step into traffic, or not eat pills is one thing. That's certainly not verbal abuse.
Shaming and berating your child for getting a C, telling them they are worthless, they are the reason Dad left, they are ugly is very different. This is clearly verbal abuse.
It's conceivable that the sustained verbal abuse as I defined it could absolutely harm a child in a long term way, and cumulatively have an impact similar to physical abuse.
You're completely misunderstanding everything written here. You created arguments that don't exist in this article, and do not understand the definition of verbal or physical abuse, because the examples you give are not that
except that there is no hard line of where something moves into abuse. In the end my comment was that yes these are not equivalent. There is no level of sexual contact that is ok but there is a level of physicality and yelling that is ok as long as it is not type of constant thing. and physicality is way less ok than yelling and only should be used in rare, usually dangerous situations.
Ok, but again, you're arguing against a strawman. Nothing you're saying here is relevant to what I said about you misunderstanding the definitions of physical and verbal/emotional abuse as evidenced by you standing up and knocking down examples that are clearly not abuse
yeah but you are taking a whole conversation and not looking at my initial comment. you just don't get the jist of the whole and where it goes. you concentrate on the last thing said and take no context at all.
This is your initial comment and is explicitly what I'm talking about
So where is the effin straw man in that. The news item that references the study equates sexual, physical, and verbal abuse as equivalent and my comment is woa. They are so not!!!
Grabbing your childs arm roughly and yelling at them when about to touch something hot is fine and expected.
Is it really? Honestly I'd rather a child touch something hot and learn the lesson that it is unsafe than potentially learn the lesson the people charged with taking care of them are unsafe. I mean, I remember burning a finger on the stove when I was little. It sucked but I was and am fine. I was lightly verbally abused by my Dad exactly once (he apologized after), and it was much, much worse. I was verbally abused by teachers and peers, and it was much, much worse.
[edit: I retract the sentence "Honestly I'd rather a child touch something hot and learn the lesson that it is unsafe than potentially learn the lesson the people charged with taking care of them are unsafe." It was poorly thought through and poorly worded. To be clear, I do not condone intentionally allowing a child to touch a stove to teach them it is dangerous. I also do not think that the threat of a child touching a stove justifies physically and verbally abusing a child, as OP said.]
Letting your child touch something hot (like a stove) to teach them a lesson is in itself physical abuse…
This is a generation of soft pussies. Triggered little bitches who can't live in the real world.
Lol. Calm down snowflake. No reason to get offended. You have some big feelings about this but you don't have to be a wuss about it. You can sack up and face them.
How much you wanna bet their parents say the same type of “this generation” things to them?
Or that they get called a pussy by their dad?
Triggered little bitches who can’t live in the real world.
Says the guy crying about a scientific study online.
Whose triggered here? It seems like you're the one getting emotional.
If you went through the same type of shit as me growing up, get help. It's much better not feeling angry 24/7.
Found the absolute loser. Guaranteed to be a present or future old single white guy bitching about how the divorce court judge screwed him.
Sounds like you need a hug
why does the real world have to be hard? because you say so and refuse to adapt to gentler standards??
If you're not able to control your emotions well enough to be kind you're the soft one.
This is a generation of soft pussies. Triggered little bitches who can’t live in the real worl
So… like trump supporters who cant handle the fact they lost an election you mean?
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Did the existence of soft pussies … trigger you?
This is correlation study, and we all know what that means, right?
This is psychology/sociology, not MINT. If you start to question whether childhood experience is a valid causal vector to influence adult behaviour you should become a philosopher while the rest of the world happily assumes causation.
Also if you had actually glanced at the study you'd have seen that it's a systematic review. Skimming over it what it's saying is "there's a ton of unorganised data out there that nonetheless shows a clear and distinct pattern we should study the topic for its own sake".
I loved my dad, but he would yell really angrily when he got mad at me and it would terrify me to the point where I would beg him not to hit me (he never hit me). I turned out mostly okay, but I can see how that could really screw someone up.
Same, but I actually got hit sometimes.
I feel you man. I am in the same boat as you.
I really hate the idea of parents. Like two people raise you and are responsible for you? Reading Brave New World as a kid, it took me until the very end to understand it as dystopian. I thought the idea of your parents being barely a part of the equation, just absent minded and high all the time? Great. Trusting school to raise you entirely using weird subliminal studying methods was actually an improvement. It is dystopian, but yeah I basically think this idea of an atomic family unit to be the most bizarre and selfish, anti-social bullshit. My parents didn't let me know my relatives, were able to choose who I was friends with, where I was able to go. And all the while I'm reliant on them to not be kidnapped or hate crimed and to support my goals rather than force me to sit at home. The abuse just continues on and on. I will never be okay, I can only hope to make some cool art before I die. But that start of life decides for you whether you will be important or not.
Childhood is basically an Achilles heel for every single libertarian concept, and one which authoritarians exploit every single time. Until every single human is born with complete knowledge and faculty, this weakness will always prevent full individualistic freedom.
I can only hope to make some cool art before I die
That, friend, is more than most people could hope to dream of. And I don't mean that in the "poor kid in Rwanda" way. Let the wound do the talking there's medicine there, not just for you.
hugs
It’s terribly lonely, isn’t it? And so hard to explain to other people.
I remember when I was allowed to go to school (kindergarten). I was so excited to finally have friends and thought everyone was automatically my friend. That’s how it worked on TV, all the kids were friends with each other on the tv shows. Turns out that’s not how it works, and everyone had friends already from preschool. I was a permanent outsider from that point on, bullied. Struggled to make friends. When I finally did, we moved.
Nobody cared if I was lonely, only if my grades were good (and they were perfect), and the floors were mopped and the knickknacks were dusted weekly. Anything less was an hour long screaming session.
Nobody understands why I don’t want children. How do you raise children without a family?
My dad loves to yell. Not at me, anymore, but he got it from his mother - they used to work out their problems in the form of screaming matches. I remember early in my teenage years he would bring up, almost out of nowhere sometimes, that he never hit us. He was proud of that. But man oh man, he sure loved to yell at us.
I only remember my grandfather yelling at me, once. It's not even fair to say "yelling AT me", because he was yelling FOR me - I was a dumb kid and I'd left the front door open to go outside and play. Once I got in front of him, he explained to me - calmly, quietly, but firmly - why I couldn't do that. I never did it again. I don't remember him yelling before or since that moment.
I miss my grandfather - he's the source of some of my fondest childhood memories and I can only hope I do him proud. Meanwhile, when my dad dies, I'll be glad to be rid of him. So, you do the math.
I miss my grandfather - he’s the source of some of my fondest childhood memories and I can only hope I do him proud. Meanwhile, when my dad dies, I’ll be glad to be rid of him. So, you do the math.
The math might be either that your grandfather was simply a better person, or that he had less stress at the time when he was bringing you up. He's after all the one who brought up your father.
Yeah… being a parent and still just being a human makes you consider the circumstances.
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No wonder I'm so fucked up.
I want a big colorful name! How you do dat!?!
Unicode and emojis in the "display name" field.
Nothing personal against you, it's certainly my failing, but when I see a username like yours, my mind just goes "stuff" and thinks of you that way.
This is horrible to do, but I feel like this really downplays physical/sexual abuse.
How so? If the result is similar they are just different roots to the same outcome.
The main difference is that the resilience, or the ability of a child to cope with the abuse, may vary greatly between physical abuse, sexual abuse and psychological abuse (like what the article is talking about). So a single sexual abuse is much more likley to cause Trauma, then beeing yelled at once. But beeing yelled at for years? Beeing told that you are wortheles repeatedly? That is likley to cause a lot of harm, especially because it plants a sense of "not beeing good enoth" in you that can take a lot of work to overcome once grown up.
There is no need to rank diffent kinds of abuse against each other. We need to see them as equaly harmful for children and not trivialice them.
frankly if my dad was in my life the whole time growing up saying those horrible things
i wouldnt of thought i was capable of being a rocket engineer and fuck myself
It doesn’t, really. I experienced psychological and sexual abuse as a child (but not physical). Both were equally bad. I had a good friend who got physical and emotional abuse, but not sexual. She said she preferred being hit by her father over the psychological shit she got from her mother, because it didn’t last as long or hurt as much.
All three are equally bad in the long term.
