It can be hard to keep your cool as a parent – but just how much damage can shouting at your child do?

On this week’s ‘Parenting’ segment, one person asked for alternatives to disciplining their four-year-old.

“I have a four-year-old who seems to have a special ability for pushing my buttons,” they told Moncrieff.

“Every now and again, my husband and I have resorted to shouting at her to get her to stop acting the maggot.

“She purposefully slows down when we’re in a rush, she won’t let us speak to each other without shouting at us to interrupt, etcetera.

“It sounds small, but it’s really triggering.

“My question is, aside from all the good parenting stuff like paying her more attention and all that, how damaging is it to let the red mist take over every now and again?

“I find it’s a really big ask to keep cool constantly. I don’t know what the best thing to do is.”

Father Shouting At Young Daughter. Image: MBI / Alamy. 30 September 2013

Family psychotherapist Joanna Fortune said that while we all slip up sometimes, letting the ‘red mist’ descend is “not great”.

“I mean, we’re all human is the honest answer,” she said.

“What I’m going to call ‘book parenting’ or ‘prescribed parenting’, that’s not authentic, it’s not sustainable, your real self will pop out your mouth in those times of activation.

“But when I read something like, ‘A four-year-old has a special ability for pushing my buttons’, I do need to catch that and say, your four-year-old didn’t install those buttons.”

Joanna recommended this parent question why they find these behaviours so triggering.

Reframe the issue

She said that the child’s behaviour was developmentally normal and recommended the parent adopt different strategies to manage it.

“A four-year-old ‘acting the maggot’ - that is your literal job and right as a four-year-old to act the maggot,” Joanna said.

“There’s hardly any phase of your life you get to act the maggot with free abandon – but you can at four, that’s really what you’re supposed to be doing.

“So, you know, ‘she purposely slows down when we’re in a rush’, I’m going to reframe that and say would it be a case that your frenetic pace might stress her out?

“And she sees that you’re stressed out in that frenetic pacing and it’s causing her to slow down in a bid to slow you down and calm you down.”

Tired parents, frustrated and active child being naughty and playful. Image: Yuri Arcurs / Alamy. 3 February 2022

According to Joanna, shouting at a child can lead to long-term damage.

“It damages mental health and well-being, it can cause self-esteem issues, it can cause anxiety, reactionary issues – anger can beget anger,” she said.

“You can create anger that is expressed outward or inward; but including all of that, it’s damaging to the connection between parents and children.

“I really think the best thing here is not to look at this four-year-old, but to look for yourselves and to really look for parenting support, and I would do it as a priority as soon as possible.

“You’ve got a really small child here, so this is about nipping it in the bud, learning new ways of responding and engaging and you turn this around.”

Joanna recommended the Circles of Security therapeutic parenting programme for support.

Listen back here:

Main image: Unsmiling girl and her parents shouting at her. Image: Dmytro Zinkevych / Alamy. 19 December 2017