Hello and welcome back to the Simplicity Diaries with me, Kim-John Payne. This week I've been thinking about shouting at kids. I was at a workshop where this question came up from a bunch of parents, actually, about shouting, you know, and why do we shout and what happens when we shout.
And it used to be that, you know, for maybe our parents' age or maybe even some of us, that, you know, parents used to hit kids. It was just very physical, very swift when you stepped out of line. And we realized that wasn't okay.
Of course, rightly so. So then shouting became the new hitting. And we've kind of moved on somewhat into now explaining becoming the new shouting.
And so we just explain kids into submission by over-talking. But what happens and what I've seen happen a lot, and these parents were speaking about it, is we explain and we explain and we explain and we explain, and things still don't change, and then we step back into shouting. Hopefully very few of us step back into hitting, but that can happen.
So none of that is okay. Neither hitting nor shouting nor over-explaining. It all leads to shame.
It leads to guilt. It leads to frustration. And we were talking about this whole aspect of how, yeah, like I said, ashamed we can feel when we shouted at kids.
But I introduced something into the circle that I've felt for quite a while, really, is that when we shouted our kids, it shows that we're still in there pitching, so to speak. It shows we are not giving up. And I know that might sound counterintuitive to say, but our frustration, our shout, our steely voice, just she would have had it, that kind of thing.
It still means that we're in there. We haven't given up. Walking away and giving up is far more terrifying for a child than being shouted at.
So taking shouting as a beginning point, then how do we get beyond that? What is it that happens when we shout? And the first thing is to understand what anger and shouting is about. And I think of it this way, that anger is simply an attempt to re-address an emotional imbalance. In other words, if we shout at a child, it's because we don't feel heard.
Indeed, if they shout at us, they don't feel we're hearing them. If we feel small, we will sometimes try and make ourselves big. We'll puff ourselves up and we might exaggerate.
We might even lie. Lying is, for me, passive anger in the sense that we're making ourselves bigger or we're protecting ourselves. It could be showing off.
If someone's making us feel very small, then we will exaggerate and maybe tell situations that are larger than life about ourselves. So given that anger is an emotional attempt to address an emotional imbalance, with that understanding, we can ask ourselves, what's out of whack? Why am I shouting? What am I trying to re-address? That's the first key question. If we can sit with that for a while and really seriously sit with it, saying like, where am I, for example, another example is feeling invisible.
I'm being taken for granted. If I'm being taken for granted, I'm going to shout to make myself seen. I'm going to get in my kids' faces because they are taking me for granted and making me feel invisible.
There's another example of why anger and why shouting. I think to pause and understand that is really crucial. Because penetrating something with understanding is the precursor to change.
You've got to understand what's going on before we have even a hope of being able to step towards change. The other piece about shouting is what happens to our kids. Because when we shout, obviously we see our kids withdraw from us.
They start to step back or they will move back behind their barriers and shout right back at us. We've created a gulf. I think to understand that, I know that's obvious and it's a horrible feeling, isn't it? But again, that understanding is, I find, extremely important.
And then to also understand that shouting, when we shout at kids, the more intensely we shout, the more depleted we feel afterwards. I don't know if you've experienced that, but you shout like this in any situation in life. It's like you're taking a year's worth of wood that you're putting on the stove to keep you warm, like cordwood.
And there's a big pile, to use this metaphor, of cordwood. And you throw it all on the fire of anger and say, There, I'm making myself huge, I'm making myself bright, I'm making myself fiery. And then when the anger is over, one shivers in the cold of shame.
Because you've depleted, and not only do you feel depleted, you've used, energetically, far more energy than was probably really needed for the situation. It's often said that shouting at someone is like drinking poison and expecting them to die. But the image that I often have is that when we shout, we are burning up too much of our, how would you describe it, chi, or etheric, or vital forces, or however one describes it, but we're burning up too much.
These understandings, I find, are crucial in being able to deal with shouting at the core. And finally, to understand shouting at children, or shouting in general, is to also understand that your body will give you the cue that you're about to shout long ahead of the shout actually escaping you. Long, I mean, three to five seconds.
I think of that as long. In that, some people will say, Yep, when I come to think of it, I tense in the shoulders, and then I count to three and out comes the shout. I lock my knees, I harden my chest, I dip my head.
These are all different things that I've heard over the years. And I'd invite you to sit quietly and really consider what your body cue is when you're about to shout. And when that body cue comes, tune into it, notice it, pay really special attention to it.
Go inside, notice the lock, notice the tension. And if you go inside and notice the tension, then the shout is far more unlikely to escape you and become that regrettable moment. You know there's a saying, count to ten? Actually, the neurologists tell us it's not ten, it's three.
So my suggestion is simply this. When you can understand the origins of your shouting, and that's the first thing, to think about it, and to really penetrate some of these things that I've just mentioned, if these strike a chord for you. And then go to your body, go to the physical tensions that you experience before a shout, and then notice the tension and then focus on it.
Really focus on the tension. In other words, give attention to the tension. And do that for three to five seconds.
Then literally the hormonal cocktail that was surging through your body will have already begun to subside. And what might come out of you is frustration. What might come out of you is sadness.
But it's unlikely, very unlikely, to come out of you as a shout. I sure hope that's helpful. Countless numbers of parents have given me the kind reflection that it is extremely helpful.
And so, you know, I thought I'd pass that on to you today. Okay, bye bye for now.
