By: Erica Delgado, BCBA, LBA

Yelling. Raising your voice. Being stern. Call it what you may, but we’ve all done it at some point throughout the parenting journey. We yell at our children when we are frustrated, or when they do something shocking or unsafe. When we yell at our children as a form of discipline, we often overlook the consequences. Is this form of discipline effective? Does my child learn from my yelling? 

During child development, parents are the main role models and socializing figures during in-home learning experiences. Children learn by observing others around them and in turn engage in those behaviors, which is known as modeling. Children are more often to engage in behaviors that often result in a positive outcome. For example, gaining access to a favorite movie or escaping cleaning their room. 

When parents engage in verbal discipline, like yelling, it is difficult for a parent to identify if the child learned from this type of parenting style. Most children learn from the consequences of a behavior. Many times, a parent will yell at a child after a situation has occurred. For instance, “Why did you spill bubbles on the floor? I told you this is for outside only!! You never listen!” Although the child already engaged with the bubbles, resulting in a mess, the outcome was parent attention in the form of yelling. Raising your voice may not be the most pleasant form of attention but is still considered attention. When yelling is accompanied by gestures and facial expressions, the child may find this amusing or somewhat comical. They may enjoy the faces a parent makes while yelling at them. As a result, rather than discouraging a behavior as intended, yelling can serve to reinforce that challenging behavior.

Reinforcement is a basic principle of behavior describing a response-consequence relation.  When a type of behavior is followed by reinforcement, there will be an increased future frequency of that type of behavior (Michael, 2004, p. 30). This is known as positive reinforcement.  Now, let’s say the child continues to make messes in the future to gain attention in the form of yelling from a parent, we can describe this as positive reinforcement.

Parental discipline provides key socializing moments for children's learning of moral reasoning and disengagement (Campaert et al., 2018). One negative outcome from verbal discipline is bullying. For example, children who receive harsh discipline after misbehaving may learn that aggression is an acceptable way to achieve a certain outcome, i.e., getting your way, (de Vries et al., 2018).

To decrease the likelihood of this negative outcome, parent education and consultation is key.  The next time you’re presented with challenging behaviors and find yourself inclined to yell, here are some strategies to keep in mind: 

1. Identify the consequences of a child’s behavior

   -What is my reaction to this behavior? What does my child gain or escape?

2. Model appropriate behaviors

   -Use functional communication to model how to ask for an item, or remain calm when an item is not available or engage with something different.

3. Reinforce appropriate behaviors 

   -Offer social praise and descriptive language for catching your child in the moment. For example, “Amazing job helping with the dishes. You did a great job drying the cups!”  

4. Ignore inappropriate behaviors

   - Do not provide additional attention like eye contact, body language, or other goodies to redirect. Wait until your child is calm/appropriate to engage.

5. During inappropriate/challenging behaviors, redirect to a teaching moment

   -Assist with clean up and reinforce for every step completed.

Parenting styles and beliefs are widely different, but one common factor amongst parents is the need for our children to be happy, healthy and successful. We provide our children’s first glimpse into the world. Research has indicated the importance of parenting behavior and the direct influence on child development. Parents who are more confident about caregiving or strongly believe that their own behavior is exemplary for their children, are more motivated to engage in cognitive activities and to show positive and effective caregiving behavior (Sigel & Mc Gillicuddy-De Lisi, 2002).   

Sources 

Campaert, K., Nocentini, A., & Menesini, E. (2018). The role of poor parenting and parental approval for children's moral disengagement. Journal of Child and Family Studies, 27(8), 2656– 2667. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10826-018-1097-1

Cooper, J. O., Heron, T. E., & Heward, W. L. (2020). Applied Behavior Analysis (3rd ed.)., Pearson Education Limited. 

de Vries, E. E., Verlinden, M., Rijlaarsdam, J., Jaddoe, V. W. V., Verhulst, F. C., Arseneault, L., & Tiemeier, H. (2018). Like father, like child: Early life family adversity and children's bullying behaviors in elementary school. Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology, 46(7), 1481– 1496. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10802-017-0380-8

Hogye, S. I., Jansen, P. W., Lucassen, N., & Keizer, R. (2022). The relation between harsh parenting and bullying involvement and the moderating role of child inhibitory control: A population-based study.  Aggressive Behavior, 48, 141– 151. https://doi.org/10.1002/ab.22014

Michael, J. (2004). Concepts and principles of behavior analysis (rev. ed.).  Kalamazoo, MI: Society for the Advancement of Behavior Analysis.  

Sigel, I. E., & Mc Gillicuddy-De Lisi, A. V. (2002). Parent beliefs are cognitions: The dynamic belief systems model. In M. H. Bornstein (Ed.), Handbook of parenting: Being and becoming a parent (pp. 485– 508). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates Publishers.

van Adrichem, DS, Huijbregts, SCJ, van der Heijden, KB, van Goozen, SHM, Swaab, H. Aggression in toddlerhood: The roles of parental beliefs, parenting behavior and precursors of theory of mind. Social Development. 2020; 29: 427– 442. https://doi.org/10.1111/sode.12422

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