Feeling guilty for losing your temper? You’re not alone — many parents struggle with reactive parenting. A parent will often raise their voice with the intent of controlling the situation. Only when a child’s face turns cold with fear do we realize yelling was a bit much. So why do we repeat the same action and hope for a different result?
Turning the volume down on your voice matters more than we often realize. Research from Stanford and Montreal University found that parents who often used aggressive discipline — including frequent yelling — tended to have children with smaller prefrontal cortex and amygdala volumes. Those regions help regulate emotion, and when they are underdeveloped, a child has a higher likelihood of anxiety and depression down the road.
The reframe
Changing a child’s behavior often starts with changing our own. When we regulate ourselves first — with a breath, a pause, a lowered voice — we give our kids the co-regulation their brains are actually built to learn from.
