Strict parenting habit can be as damaging to kids as sexual abuse, experts warn
The results of new research is likely to horrify parents. That's because a study has found that parents who regularly shout at their children could actually be damaging the development of their little ones and causing problems for them down the road.
The study, which was published in Volume 144 of the journal Child Abuse & Neglect, revolves around childhood verbal abuse (CVA) as a form of child maltreatment. CVA includes shouting, yelling, threatening, and criticising a child unfairly and all of this, experts say, can have a long-lasting impact on a child, potentially even being as harmful for them as other forms of maltreatment such as childhood physical and sexual abuse.
Around 40 percent of children are affected by verbal abuse, according to the research, if not more, and worryingly, those who do experience it could be at a greater risk of self-harm, drug use, and potentially even jail time, in later life.
The experts explained: "Child maltreatment is defined as an adult or other caregiver engaging in acts that harm or omit needed care to a child. There are currently four subtypes that comprise child maltreatment: physical abuse, sexual abuse, emotional abuse, and neglect. Of the four, childhood emotional abuse has increased in prevalence (Swedo et al., 2023). A key attribute of childhood emotional abuse is the underlying adult-to-child perpetration of verbal abuse, which is characterized by shouting, yelling, denigrating the child, and verbal threats.
"These types of adult actions can be as damaging to a child's development as other currently recognised and forensically established subtypes of maltreatment such as childhood physical and sexual abuse. Yet there is less attention to childhood verbal abuse (CVA) perpetrated by adults as either a form of childhood emotional abuse or its own category of maltreatment."
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They continued to say how children require better communication from their caregivers, writing: "Just as children require nurturing, safe, and supportive physical environments from adult caregivers, they also require communication from adults that does not denigrate but promotes healthy self-concept and development."
Prof Shanta R Dube, who co-authored the study, echoed this message, warning parents of how their words carry such weight with their children. She said: "Often adults are unaware of how their shouting tone and criticising words, such as 'stupid' and 'lazy', can negatively impact children, particularly if that is how they experienced being parented."
This comes after a child psychologist shared some of the 'best' things parents can say to their children when they are upset. Professor Sam Wass, who specialises in stress, told the Mirror that the most important thing is to label emotions with your child. The expert has previously shared how young children don't respond to logic as their brains aren't developed enough.
So when you can see that a child is feeling a certain way, perhaps they are jealous of another child's's toy, or they are sad they can't go to the park, then don't tell them not to feel that, says Prof Wass, help them put a label on it and become more self-aware.
"An effective thing to do is to comment on what they are saying, echo it back to them, and try to use their language," he said. "Something about being self-aware of what we're feeling helps us to manage emotions and helps that emotion to reduce. Emotions tend to happen quite low down in the brain, just on top of the spinal cord. This process of describing emotions and gaining self-awareness [helps] the emotion spread out into the language and analysis centres of the brain.
That process of spreading the emotion out in the brain helps us to manage it better. So what I would do as a parent is to help them understand what they're feeling, using non-judgemental phrases, saying 'it seems to me that you're feeling like this' and put a verbal label on what you think they are feeling."
He added that it's also important to try and put yourself into your child's shoes and to consider what it's really like to be them before you speak.
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