Kids are noisy. I feel a little badly for my neighbors right now because my kid is only 3 months old and she’s already, on an average day, louder than me. Because of their noisiness, it can be easy to feel the need to compete with them on a loudness scale.

 

But just ask any parent who finds themselves yelling more than they’d like and they’ll tell you that it isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.

Drawbacks of yelling:

#1 You have to get louder and louder to get your kids’ attention. If telling turns into yelling, it becomes background noise for kids.

#2 It gives you a headache.

#3 It makes you feel badly about how you’re communicating with your kids.

#4 It’s not that effective. They don’t even seem to listen to yelling all the time, so how do you amp it up after that?

#5 Your kids learn to yell back.

#6 THEY DON’T KNOW WHEN YOUR YELLING MEANS THAT THERE’S AN EMERGENCY!

This last one is the most important to me because I want my yell to MEAN SOMETHING! If I do it all the time, it’ll just be any other yell when it comes to a more serious situation. But I want to be clear that when I see my kid chasing their ball toward the street and I YELL, “STOP!!!”, she’ll stop. I don’t ever want to run the risk of her tuning me out when it’s uber important that she hear me simply because she’s heard me yell one too many times. I’ll be the mom who yelled wolf…and everything else I ever wanted to say. She will never believe me when the wolf actually comes around. Gobble gobble.

While all of the reasons to keep your voice down (including the shushing of the librarian) are completely valid as well, I want to be safe rather than sorry and save my raised voice for a time when it REALLY IS NEEDED!