Parents who shout at their children or call them “stupid” are leaving their offspring at greater risk of self-harm, drug use and ending up in jail, new research claims.

Talking harshly to children should be recognised as a form of abuse because of the huge damage it does, experts say.

The authors of a new study into such behaviour say “adult-to-child perpetration of verbal abuse … is characterised 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 mistreatment such as childhood physical and sexual abuse,” the academics say in their paper in the journal Child Abuse & Neglect.

  • Zink@programming.dev
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    1 year ago

    Yep. If you are calm and reasonable most of the time, then yelling actually remains an effective tool rather than desensitizing the child to it and/or causing them the damage this post is about.

    In my house, I’m pretty chill but we have no problem being loud when playing or joking. We have a bunch of pets too, so it can be chaotic. But when my serious big voice comes out, everything freezes and gets figured out pretty quickly. Usually. Lol.