Have you ever watched parents struggle with headstrong toddlers? It can be a sobering experience. As an innocent bystander, you can’t help but feel awful for the child while also wondering,
‘God, do I behave like that when I’m angry with my children?’
One time, before Covid, we sat at the back of a plane. We silently watched as a row erupted a few seats ahead. A small child loudly refused to eat his lunch, angering his dad from what we could gather. Cursed with a short fuse, the father yelled before storming off to the lavatory, leaving his partner to cope with a small hiccuping bundle of sadness.
Why do parents yell?
Most parents can identify with his exasperation; however, not every caregiver might react the same.
When children enter the phase we in the west call the ‘terrible twos,’ our patience gets tested as toddlers undergo powerful motor, intellectual, social, and emotional changes resulting in challenging behavior. But many parents don’t possess an endless well of patience, and feelings of frustration quickly boil over into a power struggle.
How does angry parenting affect children?
With research suggesting parents regularly shouting at kids* can impact a child’s brain development, parents must learn strategies to control their anger.
Researcher Sabrina Suffren of the University of Montreal says:
The implications go beyond changes in the brain. I think what’s important for parents and society to understand that the frequent use of harsh parenting practices can harm a child’s development. We’re talking about social and emotional development, as well as brain development.
Where do we go wrong in the west?
A Journal of Marriage and Family study revealed almost 90 percent of the nearly 1,000 American parents surveyed said they’d yelled, shouted, or hollered at their kids in the previous year.
This statistic is not surprising when anger is part of our society’s fabric, spewing through Twitter spats, heated political debates, and a growing mental health crisis.
The director of Social and Cultural Psychology at the University of Leuven, Prof Batja Gomes De Mesquita, tells the Guardian:
The western belief is that we have these authentic emotions that should have room to be expressed and that beyond the odd situation, you shouldn’t have to suppress it. But this idea of an internal emotion that should be free to come out in any circumstance is not shared as much elsewhere.
NPR reporter Dr. Michaeleen Doucleff asked if Americans can learn lessons from other cultures to raise children conflict-free. Born into a shouty family and tired of power struggles with her three-year-old daughter Rosy, Doucleff investigated how the Inuits deal with parental frustrations.
In her book, ‘Hunt, Gather, Parent,’ she explains how western culture focuses mainly on one aspect of raising children: the power distribution between caregivers and kids. However, hunter-gatherer cultures, such as the Inuits, view the child-parent dynamic differently.
The Inuits’ parenting method: no spanking, yelling, or time-outs
While researching her book, Doucleff and her three-year-old spend time with families in three highly respected cultures: the Mayans in Mexico, the Inuit above the Arctic Circle, and Hadzabe families in Tanzania.
Struggling to control her own and Rosy’s temper, she observes a distinct lack of tension in the harmonious relationships between children and caregivers. Other than many western parents, they build relationships based on trust instead of fear, cooperation instead of control, and personalized needs rather than standardized development milestones.
For instance, Inuit parents have a powerful approach for teaching children emotional intelligence. When kids are upset, angry, or act out, they respond calmly and teach children how to settle and think before acting.
How Inuit deal with temper tantrums
Doucleff tells the Atlantic how Inuit parents tame temper tantrums:
‘If the child’s energy goes high — if they get very upset — the parent’s energy goes so low.’
And when she explained to local families how Western parents feel children are testing boundaries and manipulating them when they act out by screaming, biting, or hitting, their reaction was unexpected.
One woman said something like, “She’s a kid — she doesn’t know how to manipulate like that.”
Instead, Inuit parents view young children as illogical, irrational beings who haven’t matured enough to acquire understanding or reason. So it’s pointless for parents to get upset or argue back- they’d only act like children themselves.
For parents: 4 simple Inuit techniques to tackle tantrums
The main thing to remember is that getting angry with your small child is not productive. Rather, it builds tension, blocks effective communication, and usually ends in arguments.
But when you consider children mirror your emotions, it’s easier to keep cool in the face of a storm. And chances are your toddler will calm down too.
So when you find yourself in a sticky situation, try these techniques:
- Visit a quiet place in your mind when a tantrum comes on: remain calm, even if your child bites you, and show support by staying close. Eventually, she will settle.
- Use the power of touch to calm your child. Take the sting out of a tantrum by tickling her or even touching her shoulder tenderly.
- Help your child develop a sense of wonder to replace her anger by pointing out, say, a flower when she’s angry. When a child learns to replace a negative emotion like anger with a positive one like a sense of awe, you will teach her a lifelong skill to settle herself.
- Take your child outside. Fresh air will diffuse an angry toddler.
Doucleff used all four on her daughter and reduced her daily tantrums to once or twice a month.
Final Thoughts
Growing up in a society that accommodates daily rage can feed into how we parent children. Power struggles between parents and kids are the norm, with nearly 90 percent of almost 1,000 American parents surveyed said they’d shouted at their kids.
However, many cultures don’t operate this way. Following the example of the Inuits, NPR reporter Dr. Michaeleen Doucleff discovered peaceful parenting.
Because of how Inuit parents view their children, they don’t rise to their anger. Instead, they stay calm when the child is cross or in distress. And by using their simple techniques, see above, you too can tame temper tantrums, as Doucleff did with Rosy.
So the next time your child is about to throw a wobbler, don’t get into a flap-like the angry dad on our plane, but stay calm and guide your child through her distress.
Let’s make our society more harmonious together.
*This research looked at shouting and getting angry as part of harsh parenting, including hitting or shaking.
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Previously published on Medium
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