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How To Never Yell Again By Sarah Chana Radcliffe

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Chapter One

The fact that you want to stop yelling makes you an excellent parent in my eyes! None of us is perfect. Those of us who have been brave enough to embark on the parenting journey know that it can be a rough ride. Our nerves get frazzled frequently. We often feel overwhelmed, exhausted and pushed to our limits. Of course we want to yell! We sometimes want to scream from the rooftops! And yet, we know intuitively that allowing our emotions free range can provide us with temporary relief while simultaneously scarring our kids for life. We dont want to do it. Despite our best intentions, however, we find ourselves displaying anger again and again and again, day after day, week after week, year after year. Our kids are suffering from it. We know it. But we seem to be powerless to just stop it once and for all. This little booklet will help you overpower your own anger. It is not a complete parenting manual covering every aspect of the parenting journey (if you want one, read my book Raise Your Kids without Raising Your Voice); rather, it is a very specific treatise on parental anger. In these few short pages, Ill help you to stop yelling. Lets begin.

Why You Should Never Yell Again Even if you know all the reasons why you shouldnt yell at your kids, it is worth reviewing them sporadically. Keeping in mind all the harmful effects of yelling can be a powerful source of motivation. Its so easy to forget it all in the moment of parenting passion, so easy to just lose it. Read this list once a day or once a week or once a month. If you EVER raise your voice at any member of your family and that includes your parenting partner and anyone else who lives in your house then read this list regularly until you have licked the yelling habit completely. Heres the facts: The more you yell at a child, the more short-term negative consequences there will be. Specifically, the more you yell (or show anger in any style whatsoever), the more:

Nervous habits your child will display health issues your child will suffer behavioral problems you will have to deal with academic issues the child will experience social and peer-related problems the child will have authority issues the child will display with authority figures

The more you yell at a child during the course of two decades of parenting that is, if you continue to yell (or otherwise display anger) all the way through the teen years as well, the more long-term consequences there will be for the child. Specifically, the more you use anger as a parenting tool and the longer you use anger as a parenting tool, the

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more likely it is for your child to experience some or all of the following symptoms in adulthood:

more disorders of depression more disorders of anxiety more personality disorders more relationship difficulties less chance of having a good relationship with YOU in adulthood more parenting difficulties raising their own kids more work-related difficulties more difficulties with authority figures more health issues more marriage difficulties sometimes more issues with the law

Keep in mind that the more you use anger while raising your child, the more chance you have that your child will distance him or herself from you as soon as possible. Keep in mind, too, that when you yell at your child, you yell down to your grandchildren and great-grandchildren as well because you are programming your childrens brains to yell under stress and they will most likely program their childrens brains the same way. If you want your child to grow up into a mentally and physically healthy adult, you need to conduct yourself in ways that are conducive to that outcome. Although it is true that children can have all sorts of mental and physical health issues despite absolutely wonderful parenting and that you as a parent do not have total control over the final outcome of your childs personality, still YOU dont want to be a cause of the childs lifelong difficulties. If youve done your best and your child still has difficulties, you know that factors outside of your control have contributed to the childs suffering. The childs genes, personal experiences, relationships with others besides yourself and so on all contribute to his or her adult outcome. Although you may well feel sad for whatever pain your child is experiencing in life, at least you will not be blaming YOURSELF for it! Imagine, on the other hand, that you see your adult child struggle and you know that a lot of the pain is the result of your own inability to control your anger during the parenting years. Imagine the remorse and guilt that you would have to endure. Fortunately, you can avoid this unpleasant scenario by reading this booklet and following the easy antidotes to anger that youll find on every page!

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CHAPTER TWO

The Beginning of Anger

In order to turn anger off, lets look at what turns anger on. That way, we can learn to control the dials ourselves. Here are some of the many things that make parents feel upset:

a kid who doesnt listen one who talks back any form of disrespect or rudeness a child who does something really dangerous a child who gets into some avoidable trouble a child who wont cooperate a child who isnt trying a child who breaks the rules a child who can perform but isnt a child who sides with the other parent a child who hurts a sibling a child who causes embarrassment or shame a child who shows no appreciation a child who doesnt help out a child who isnt responsible a child who leaves a mess a child who wont eat a child who wont go to sleep a child who wont stop bothering you a child who argues

Kids do all of these aggravating things and more. Therefore, we parents get aggravated! Moreover, some of us are prone parental anger than others. Here are some things that can make you more vulnerable to anger:

being born with a short fuse (i.e. your genes!) having had parents who used anger as a parenting tool experiencing an overload of adult stress (marriage, health, financial problems,

etc.) trying to raise a difficult child (i.e. one who is inflexible, uncooperative,

hyperactive, demanding, argumentative and so on, one who has a difficult inborn nature)

lacking support (household help, emotional support, parenting relief, etc.) being sleep-deprived (having a newborn, working shifts, suffering from insomnia) being ill suffering from an untreated disorder of depression or anxiety or other mental

health diagnosis

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Life being what it is, most of us are prone to getting angry and upset fairly often. Whether we suffer from one of the vulnerabilities listed above or another one or whether were just human, we find that we get irritated, annoyed, upset and even enraged on different occasions. Feelings themselves can hurt no one except ourselves. The chemistry of anger can cause a person harm internally and emotionally. The internal harm can lead to heart disease and heart attack as well as disorders of immunity that can lead to disease. Emotional harm comes from the constant stress and misery that chronic anger generates. Since our anger tends to harm US, we may want to seek professional help or access self-help strategies in order to help ourselves feel anger much less often. Obviously, if we dont feel anger, we certainly wont act in anger and therefore, we wont hurt anyone with our anger. Therefore its really win-win when we treat the underlying causes of our anger: we feel better physically and emotionally and we parent better as well. We will be looking at some strategies for treating underlying causes of irritation. For now, however, lets look at how we can help ourselves avoid the onset of an anger attack. Notice from the first list above (the one describing the things that make parents feel angry) that there are a lot of daily provocations in childrearing. Notice from the second list (the pressures on the parent) that there are a lot of internal and external stresses that make us jumpy to begin with. Now think about the interaction of these two factors! We parents are walking time bombs! If were going to raise children, we have to expect their behavior to challenge us frequently. There is no way around that one. We can reduce the amount of time they are provocative by using specific parenting strategies (see my book Raise Your Kids without Raising Your Voice for a full, detailed set of parenting strategies that help kids be less provocative and more cooperative). But since they are children, they will inevitably do things that frighten, unnerve, madden and otherwise upset us. We will have to be prepared to handle such situations without anger. Since were human, we will also have to expect that we are driven by a complex of chemicals, hormones, genes and all sorts of physical factors that govern our mood and emotions. Well also have to expect that life will be stressful: marriage is hard, work is hard, finances are challenging, health is unstable, extended family exerts pressure, there are social pressures and religious pressures and community pressures and so on and so forth. We will have to expect to feel stressed. When we notice that we are feeling edgy we need to take steps to help ourselves. I repeat: When we notice that we are feeling edgy we need to take steps to help ourselves.

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Do not wait until you have exploded and harmed the ones you love the most. Keep in mind that if you explode at ANYONE it will harm your kids as long as your kids witness your explosion. That is, if you explode at them, it harms them. If they see or hear you explode at their other parent, it harms them. If they see or hear you explode at a sales clerk, it harms them. They are always harmed by your anger. Therefore, learn to recognize the signs of a coming storm. Do your shoulders get tight when youre under pressure? Is it your jaw perhaps? Maybe your mood drops. Maybe you start getting racey. Learn to identify your personal signals of stress and tension. Then, when you notice you are BEGINNING to feel stressed, do something to help yourself. Here are some things you can do to help you quickly reduce your stress level:

take 4 drops of Rescue Remedy (harmless Bach Flower Remedy sold at every healthfood store and on-line) in a small amount of liquid. Rescue Remedy turns off the stress response and quickly restores you to your normal state.

Take a short break from what youre doing. Do 5 minutes of stretching (there are books and videos galore to teach you how

to safely do a few quick stretches). Make yourself a nice cuppa something. Wash your face. Walk around the block once. Sit down and close your eyes for 3-5 minutes. Sit down, close your eyes and remember one of the highlights of your life. Do the one-minute breath: breathe in normally, think happy or one on the

out breath. Repeat for 60 seconds. Even if you have already expressed some anger, you can interrupt your tirade to take a breather. For more serious and enduring stress relief, try any or all of the following:

do 30 minutes or more of daily meditation seek personal counseling have a physical check-up and address any health issues see a naturopath and begin a health regime see a Bach Flower Practitioner to attend to your emotional health (see section on

Bach Flowers below) join a gym or hire a personal fitness trainer or otherwise start exercising a

minimum of 3 times a week. Increase the amount of fun that is in your weekly schedule Nurture your adult relationships

Bach Flower Remedies for Stress and Anger If you know that you are in a chronically grumpy mood, always close to the edge, you may like to help yourself with Bach Flower Remedies. These little vials of water that has

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been heated with the head of a flower, magically work to reduce personal stress and irritated or fearful mood. Dr. Bach was a medical practitioner in England who died in 1936. He developed the Bach remedies with the intention of keeping people healthy and happy. Theyve been used in the same way for more than ninety years now, primarily in England and Europe. However, they are easy to find in local health food stores and on-line. You can call a practitioner to create a mixture uniquely designed for your personal stress issues or you can look up the appropriate remedies in any book on Bach Flower Therapy. Buy one remedy and at two drops of it to a bit of hot or cold liquid and drink. Do this 4 times a day until you feel the way you want to feel. Stop using it and start again if you notice that your mood is dropping, your stress is rising or your anger is erupting! If more than one remedy is appropriate for you, buy an empty Bach Mixing Bottle (a one oz glass bottle with a glass dropper). Fill the bottle with water and add 2 drops of each remedy to your bottle. Add 1 teaspoon of brandy to preserve your mixture. From the mixing bottle, put 4 drops in some liquid and drink. Have 4 such drinks a day until you feel the way you want to feel. Here are a few ideas to get you started:

Mustard: for depressed mood Vine: for getting upset when kids dont follow your instructions or when others

dont do what you want them to do Willow: for festering resentment Holly: for anger that erupts when someone insults you or hurts your feelings Impatiens: for quick flare-ups and intense irritability Beech: for feeling critical and displeased Gentian: for being negative, expecting the worst, giving up quickly

There are many other Bach Remedies to choose from. Some address anxious feelings, others address insecurities, some address grief and loss check them out to see which ones match your personal stress. The remedies have no side effects, are safe to take during pregnancy and nursing and safe enough to give to a newborn baby! The mixture called Rescue Remedy is not taken to reduce chronic stress. It is best used to reduce a single episode of anger or intense stress. See instructions in the next chapter. When you work consciously to keep your mood calm, you will fall into parenting anger less often. The less angry you are, the less angry communications youll send.

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Chapter 3

Prevent Anger

Its far easier to prevent anger than to deal with it once its happened or to recover from it once its over. Therefore, try this technique: Think about the most provocative things your kids do on a regular basis. There are some recurring problems that parents get trapped in daily! Every day, a teen sleeps through his alarm. Every day, a youngster teases his siblings. Every day a child talks back. Day in and day out one leaves her clothes on the floor instead of placing them in the laundry basket. And so on. Find those issues that routinely cause you to lose your cool. Now picture one of those clearly in your mind, like youre watching a movie of it. As youre watching the movie, see your role too. What do you normally say and do in this situation? Now, CHANGE what you are saying and doing to be exactly what you would LIKE to say and do from now on. Watch the new movie over and over again, a few times a day. When the situation inevitably happens, youll be pleasantly surprised to find yourself calm and in control. Repeat the movie exercise for every regularly occurring provocation you can think of. Another technique for preventing anger: When your child is provoking you, meditate on this thought: this particular situation is insignificant in the scheme of things, but MY reaction will be stored permanently in this childs brain, affecting him for the rest of his life. For instance:

Whether or not he finishes his pudding is not of enduring consequence Whether or not he makes his bed today is not of enduring consequence Whether he gets an A, B or F on this test is not of enduring consequence. Whether he brushes his teeth right now is not of enduring consequence. Whether he gets into bed this minute is not of enduring consequence.

And so on and so forth. In fact, given the fact that you have TWENTY years to raise your child, there is no EMERGENCY to have something happen the way you want it to happen, right this very moment. Over the long course of development, things will happen. Moreover, they will continue to evolve throughout the childs lifelong development. There is no emergency so you can calm down.

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Chapter 4

When You Find Yourself Shouting or Pouting

Lets say that your teen forgot to call home. Or that your 10 year old is absolutely refusing to do his homework. Or that your 5 year old wont eat her peas. Whatever it is, something has just thrown you over the edge. Your first task is to NOTICE that youve become upset. When you notice that your muscles are tight or that your heart is beating or that your voice is getting weird or loud or that you are saying not-so-nice things, or that youve stomped off IMMEDIATELY TAKE ACTION! You need to turn off the flight-or-fight response in your body. When adrenalin starts to run the chemical that causes the fight-or-flight response our physical body and emergency centers take over. Our cortex (the seat of our logical thinking processes) goes off-line. Therefore we arent able to ask ourselves important questions like, what would be the best parenting intervention to use right now? Instead, our mouth just opens, seemingly on automatic pilot, and starts spouting whatever panic-driven message it wants to spout. This message may be an automatic replay from our parents of long ago. Or it may be some other sort of gibberish. Whatever it is, it is much more likely to be harmful than helpful. Our job is to end that behavior as quickly as we can. Here are some ways that you can immediately turn off the adrenaline response and restore your brains capacity to think and solve your parenting problem:

Sit down. Sitting turns off adrenalin because the brain think that if you can afford to sit down, whatever emergency you are facing must have ended.

Lower your voice, even though youre still talking. Lowering your voice tells your brain that the situation has improved because youre no longer screaming and therefore your brain stops sending extra adrenalin.

Take a tall glass of water (no, not beer) and drink it slowly. The result is the same: no one drinks slowly while in the midst of a raging fire and therefore your brain will stop sending you emergency chemistry.

Add 4 drops of Rescue Remedy (Bach Flowers) to your water and then drink it, taking sips every few minutes as needed. Rescue Remedy is specifically created to stop the adrenalin. (It can be purchased in health food stores or on-line).

Concentrate on this thought: I have twenty years to raise this child and even after that, the child will continue to grow and develop. I DO NOT HAVE TO SOLVE THIS PROBLEM THIS SECOND. I can afford to slow down and think about the best solution and apply it tomorrow or even next week if I want to. The only true parenting emergency is one in which the child is standing in the middle of the road and that isnt happening right now.

Leave the room, sit down, breathe as follows: breathe in normally. Breathe out while thinking the phrase the calmer I am, the better it will be (or, if youre really riled up, God please help me!). The main trick here is to think a word or

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phrase on the OUT breath only. Breathe this way for one or more minutes until the adrenalin is turned off.

After you have returned to a calm state, think about the problem you are having with this child. Come up with a parenting plan to deal with it (virtually any scenario is covered in Raise Your Kids without Raising Your Voice) or consult with your spouse, a friend, a religious advisor or a counselor as necessary.

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Chapter 5

When You Had a Tantrum

Lets say that its been a hard week so you didnt manage your stress well, you didnt do preventative work on your anger and you didnt manage to turn off your adrenalin once you noticed it was going. You had a fit. Your child is in his room sobbing (or cursing you out). You failed in your goal of avoiding destructive anger. No problem. Youre still in the game. What you must do now, is break your anger pathway, the neural pathway in your brain that fires when your child provokes you. You can do this by giving yourself a significant negative consequence. The brain responds to negative consequences by collapsing the pathways that lead to them. Therefore your brain will soon cut off your anger response for you. A significant negative consequence must be something that causes you pain. Sorry, but thats the only way it can work. And the pain must be significant, or you will be causing yourself pain for nothing. Here are some examples of pain-inducing consequences to consider. Other parents have successfully use them to break their yelling circuits:

A significant monetary fine to charity. After every single time you yell, someone somewhere in the world will benefit from your extremely generous donation. The more generous it is, the sooner they will no longer benefit.

A significant amount of hard physical exercise. After every single time you yell, you do a designated amount of push-ups or other taxing, grueling, painful exercise, the likes of which will leave you thinking very seriously before ever raising your voice again.

A significant writing assignment. After every single time you yell, you write out lines or copy pages from a book. Your assignment should begin with writing something on 5-10 sheets of lined paper (the kind students use for note taking). If you fail to improve after 3 such assignments, then increase the writing by 3 - 5 pages for each yelling episode. You should be cured within a very short time. (You can try starting with 5 pages but this may not be significant enough for your personal brain. Use your judgment.)

Your own creative, really bad consequence.

What to Do Instead of Yelling

In order to succeed at not yelling for two decades of parenting, you will need other parenting techniques to empower you. You cant stand helplessly by while a child writes on the wall, squeezes the babys neck or steals your cash. You cant just ignore it when your youngster wont get off the computer despite the fact that you asked him to do so three times already. You must have effective techniques that you can utilize instead of anger. You can find such techniques in many different parenting books, podcasts and

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courses. In my book, Raise Your Kids without Raising Your Voice, you will find potent anger-busters including:

The 80-20 Rule: a strategy designed to reduce provocation and gain cooperation Emotional Coaching: a strategy designed to create the kind of parent-child bond

that makes a child want to listen The CLeaR Method: a purely good feeling form of guidance that gets your child

to do what you want in a way that is pleasant for both you and the child. The Anti-Arguing Rule: a strategy that reduces conflict between you and your

youngster The 2X-Rule: a form of discipline that is powerful and effective and that keeps

YOU calm throughout. The Relationship Rule: a technique that teaches your child how to handle his

own frustration without resorting to drama, tantrums and the like. In order to stay far away from yelling, keep reading, learning and growing. You will see the rewards of your efforts in the beautiful relationship you build with your child.