How To Never Yell Again

By Sarah Chana Radcliffe

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

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!

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

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.

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

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 online. 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.

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
Whether
Whether
Whether
Whether

or not he finishes his pudding is not of enduring consequence

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

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

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.

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