PARENTING – Does your child REALLY deserve that scolding she/he got?

It’s 7.00 in the evening, it’s raining cats and dogs outside, your colleagues are leaving the office one by one to hit for home or anywhere else better than work and you are stuck juggling reports which dateline is next week but all of a sudden, your boss decides he wants it tomorrow early in the morning and you have a family waiting at home. Your patience level is thinning, you feel like there’s a volcano that will erupt from within you. “Mommy”, you start hearing your children’s little voices. Fast forward the whole scene, you arrive home at 9.30, greeted by your lovely angles. As soon as you reach the door they jump on you and pull you down together with your reports, everything is scattered. You get so mad that you yell at them saying they’re just making your life miserable. Sounds familiar?

In today’s challenging world, many parents have unintentionally use harsh languages or gestures with their little ones as a result of life’s stress. When we yell, shout, scream or reprimand our children, they immediately cease whatever they’re doing that would have caused their parents to be angry but in cases such as depicted above, how will a child understand the wrong of getting exciting at seeing their mommy coming back home? This is a classic situation of parents’ projecting their anger towards their child when actually they are angry with someone else or something else. In the case above, the mother yelled at the children with hurtful words out of her anger towards her employer, unfortunately she could not say it out directly to her employer, thus it’s bottled up causing her emotions to be extremely fragile. The first powerless person who happens to touch that fragility will experience its effects, thus the children getting yelled at.

In all the situations where we have been angry and act harshly towards our children, have those acts been valid? Did our children do something wrong or bad to deserve being reprimanded? It is so much easier getting angry at children because they are not equal to adults in terms of power. They are not our match; hence we use that and make them scape goats. Things can get out of hands sometimes when parents don’t stop at what happened that instant but instead continues to nag about past events and hurting a child’s personality, saying things like “you are useless”, “always giving me problems”, “making my life difficult”. These statements can live scar on child’s emotions and they drag it with them like a baggage with a broken wheel. Just imagine what does a bag with a broken wheel can do your floorings? Taking this analogy into child’s life, think what that broken wheel will do to him/her? It will scratch and leave scars on their self esteem and confidence, and this in turn will results in a hose on other emotional related problems later on. Is this what we want for our children? The next time you feel a volcano erupting within you, take a walk or even better, shower! and analyze what is the actual cause of the anger. This can help you avoid hurting your little angels.