How to Stop Yelling at Your Kids #001

Struggling with yelling at your kids? Discover effective strategies to break the cycle and foster better communication and connection.

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Episode Number: #1

Description: In the first episode of the Whole Parent Podcast, Jon tackles the challenging topic of yelling at kids. He shares practical advice on how to break the cycle of yelling and offers alternative methods for effective communication. Jon also answers questions from listeners about their struggles with yelling, providing insights and solutions to help parents create a calmer, more connected household.

Timestamps:

00:00 - Introduction And The Challenge Of Yelling
02:36 - Understanding Why We Yell
04:23 - Breaking The Cycle: Key Strategies
14:28 - Practical Steps For Stopping Yelling
16:40 - Addressing Yelling As An Instinctual Response
34:15 - Repairing The Connection After Yelling

Key Takeaways:

• Breaking the Yelling Cycle:
  • Stop the pattern of yelling to get your kids' attention and rely on alternative methods of communication.
  • Understand that yelling is often an instinctual reaction rooted in how we were raised.
  • Use empathy and validation when addressing your child's behavior to foster better communication.
• Effective Communication:
  • Speak calmly and engage your child's logical thinking to teach them appropriate behavior.
  • Recognize that yelling can cause fear and is only effective in immediate danger situations.
• Repairing After Yelling:
  • Apologize with honest vulnerability to repair the connection with your child.
  • Avoid adding a "but" to your apology to ensure it is sincere and effective.
  • Use the opportunity to teach your child about taking responsibility and making amends.

Links to Resources Mentioned:

• The Whole-Brain Child by Daniel J. Siegel and Tina Payne Bryson
• How to Stop Yelling - Live Training

What episode should you listen to next?

• My Partner and I Disagree on Parenting 

How to Connect:

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• Share: Share this episode with friends and family, especially those who struggle with yelling.

Episode Transcript: The full transcript of this episode is available here.

Connect with Whole Parent:

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Chapters

• 0:00 Episode Intro
• 4:14 Breaking the Cycle of Yelling
• 20:34 Growing up in a "Yelling" Home
• 36:19 Quick Call To Action
• 38:05 How do we repair AFTER we yell?
• 49:41 Write a Podcast Review!

Transcript

Jon Fogel @Wholeparent: 2:00

If you want to stop having yelling be the necessary tool that you use to get your kids attention, paradoxically, you have to begin by stopping yelling. That's how you break the cycle. You actually stop doing the thing that feels effective and you rely as much as it is painful to do for those first few weeks when it feels like I really can't get anywhere, on alternative methods of communication. It's a brand new day. Wake up every morning and say it's a brand new day. Take a good day. Make it great, okay, cause it is a little bit different, all right. So for the first ever episode of the Whole Parent podcast, I wanted to focus on a topic, and we have been sending out requests for you, the social media community that follows Whole Parent, those who are in the Whole Parent membership, those who are on the email list to submit questions, and so we've been compiling those questions and kind of categorizing them a little bit into different general topics and then trying to organize episodes, and so for this first episode, we're gonna have three questions that are all centered around the concept of yelling at kids, because this is a really difficult thing. Actually, I'm recording this only a couple of days after Thanksgiving and this was something that even came up at my Thanksgiving table with my own family. My nephew challenged me and he said like you don't think yelling at kids works? I think it does, and it's kind of funny cause he's obviously well, I guess I should say obviously he's not a parent, he's like a preteen, but it's a hot topic in the world of parenting. And so we got three. We got more than three, but we picked three really amazing questions, and the first one comes from Emily. And so Emily says hi, I'm Emily. I have a real problem on my hands. I've tried everything that I can get, that I can think of to get my kids to listen, but it seems like they only respond when I raise my voice. I hate yelling, but I met my wits end. How do I break this cycle and get them to cooperate without losing my cool? First and foremost, emily, an amazing, amazing question. I don't know how many kids you have. You didn't identify that. Well, this is before we were like asking for some of that information, but really, really amazing question whether you have one kid, two kids, five kids.

Jon Fogel @Wholeparent: 4:36

So many of us find ourselves in this position where we are doing something that we hate. We don't like the fact that we're yelling at our kids, but it just seems like it's the only thing that works, and so, as we dive into this, I first want to say it's lead with validation and empathy, right With kids, but also with adults. I get it. I was raised in a household where yelling was one of the tools of discipline, and we're going to talk about that later in the episode with the future question. But I just want to start by saying it is normal and natural when you come from a yelling environment to be inclined to yell at your kids. It doesn't make you a bad parent to have that be initially your reaction of how you feel. When you come upon your kid in some sort of problematic behavior, or maybe your kid is doing something that feels disrespectful to you, or whatever the situation might be, it's totally normal to feel like man. I just want to really scream at my kids right now and to even go down that path, and so so many of us are there. Emily, you're not a bad parent at all for yelling at your kids. That is just part of the journey for each and every one of us, and especially those of us who were raised in homes where yelling was modeled. Whatever is modeled will be mirrored right. That's one of our fundamental concepts and principles, and so if you came from a home where yelling was modeled, it's highly likely that you're going to mirror that Not only in yelling yourself in your life, but especially as it relates to now, your relationship with your kids.

Jon Fogel @Wholeparent: 6:23

So I think a lot of people think that the reason that they yell is just because they, or a lot of people who don't struggle with this might think like oh, the reason why you yell is because you like it or you think it's effective. In this case, emily, thank you for pointing out like you hate it, right, you don't like it, but you're at your wits end. How do you break the cycle and get them to cooperate? And the first thing to say, I usually give kind of three pieces of advice. When I do this on my group coaching, which is something that I do on a weekly basis inside my membership, where I answer questions like this live with a Zoom group of parents and it's really funny in there I always say I have like three things. So the first thing that I would say is, if you have to move beyond simply hating it to actually working to resolve it, and we'll talk about that not only in this question but throughout, emily, if you're listening.

Jon Fogel @Wholeparent: 7:19

But you have to move beyond simply hating it, and the reason why you have to move beyond that is because what that sets us up for, what that sets all of us up for when we are doing something that we are ashamed of or uncomfortable with the fact that we're doing it, what it sets us up for is shame spiral, which is you yell and then you feel shame about yelling, and that shame is uncomfortable because it should be. I mean, shame is awful and we'll have a whole another episode on that, I'm sure, in the future but that shame feels very disorienting. It is the opposite of what feels like to be warm and fuzzy and connected. Shame feels isolating. You feel kind of like an alien in your own world, and so, as a result of that shame, you want to avoid that shame in the future, and so you wind up going to yelling actually, which is the very thing that you're ashamed of, because you're more dysregulated. And so this is why shame is a terrible teacher is because shame usually sends us into a state of dysregulation emotional dysregulation and then we go to our most base instincts or our fight or flight response, which, in the case of a child raised in a home where yelling was modeled, is yelling. And so you're more ashamed of yourself because now you've yelled and sometimes you live in like.

Jon Fogel @Wholeparent: 8:38

I got to a point in my parenting journey where I was yelling at my kids about like why are you making me yell at you? Right, like I was so self. There was so much self loathing in the way that I yelled at my kids that I wound up actually doing that. So the first thing is to deconstruct the concept that, like, you're a bad parent for yelling. I know that you hate it. I know that it's ineffective. We could have a whole thing about how it's ineffective and we'll talk a little bit more about that as we continue to go on Bye.

Jon Fogel @Wholeparent: 9:07

You can't come at this from a place of self-deprecation, and this is a lot of the harm, I think, in the way in which we do these quick little social media. Hey, stop yelling at your kids in 59 seconds on Instagram and TikTok and Facebook on YouTube, because when we do it in these short little sound bites, it sounds like man. When I go and scroll my own feed, which is full of other parenting educators and creators giving parenting advice. When I scroll my old feed, I feel like a terrible parent and that doesn't help me to change. It just helps me to experience that shame and self-loathing and that ultimately leads me to parenting from a place of shame and usually parenting ineffectively, doing things like yelling rather than moving forward. So that's number one.

Jon Fogel @Wholeparent: 9:55

Number two the way that you have to stop, the way to stop yelling, or the way to get your kids to listen without having to yell right let's center the kids a little bit here too is that you have to stop yelling. That might sound really kind of silly a turn of phrase, the way they said that, but this is because our kids are conditioned to respond to the ways of communication that are most stimulating to them. This is an evolutionary response, and so if something feels threatening, we are conditioned as human beings to pay more attention to that thing than things that don't feel threatening. This is why, by the way, when you go and you watch the news whether that's on social media or you watch a traditional news station or you read the newspaper it is filled with stories of tragedy and heartbreak, stories that are designed to make you feel a little bit of fear or discomfort, and the reason is is because all of those organizations whether it's a social media feed or a newspaper or selling advertising or a news site selling advertising or channels selling advertising space between segments they want you as the watcher, listener, consumer of their news to stay attentively engaged. And the best way to do that is to make you afraid, because we pay attention evolutionarily to the things that make us afraid.

Jon Fogel @Wholeparent: 11:20

Well, when you yell at your kid, that is a disorienting and fear inducing response in kids, whether you feel like oh, my kids shouldn't be afraid of me, why would they be afraid of me? They are, it's evolutionary. So your kids look at you as their primary source of protection and belonging. And when you yell at them, they get afraid. Whether you're a guy like me, if you're a woman, doesn't matter, right, when you, the large adults in the room responsible for their safety, acts aggressively toward them, which necessarily yelling is aggressive, your kids will pay attention, and so this is why it seems like yelling works to many parents, especially parents who come from a more authoritarian or 90s traditional parenting mindset. They feel like yelling works because it gets your kids attention. That's true, it does get your kids attention. And so, unlike many other parenting creators modern, psychologically healthy parenting creators I do think there is a place for yelling and parenting.

Jon Fogel @Wholeparent: 12:21

The place when you yell is the place when you need immediate attention of a child who is doing something that will cause them imminent and severe harm. So I yell at my kids effectively I'm gonna use that term. I yell effectively when my kid is about to do something that is going to risk their life or long-term safety. So if I see my kid running towards a street with cars flying past, I will yell. If I see my kid reaching towards a hot stove something that I did two years old and have a scar for the rest of my life because I pull a pot of boiling water down on myself I will yell. Why? Because yelling freezes your kid in their tracks, and that's what it's good for.

Jon Fogel @Wholeparent: 13:04

What it's not good for is teaching long-term skill building, moral thinking or rationalization, in other words, teaching your kid how to behave in the future. That it is not good for, because the very part of your brain that responds with a fear, fight or flight response, generally speaking, does not learn complex social ideas like why you shouldn't color on the walls or why you shouldn't. I'm trying to think of other good examples here. Take out all of the flour, try and bake without your parents and cover the entire kitchen in flour and cocoa powder. Those things, those are social constructs of. The reason that those things are inconvenient is because it messes up a room or something. It's not imminently dangerous and so their brain is not going to learn as well, or maybe at all, when you're yelling at them about those things. Or hey, you hit your brother. Why would you dare do that? How could you be doing that? I can't believe that you would be so mean to. You're trying to teach social, relational thinking and moral I'll use that word moral thinking, ethical, problem solving to your kids.

Jon Fogel @Wholeparent: 16:08

Yelling at them actually make turns off the part of their brain that does that and it engages the part of their brain that is just there to survive for the next five to seven seconds. So if you need to make your kid survive for the next five to second seconds not touch the stove, not run in the street, yell great. But if you want them to not do those things in the future, you have to talk to them calmly and actually engage their logical thinking through the prefrontal cortex, their neocortex, which is the parts of their brains that are active when they're in a calm state, not in an escalated state. So what does this have to do with Emily's question about it being ineffective? Well, when we yell at kids for everything, or when we yell so much, what happens is because that is an extremely stimulating thing to be yelled at and it's an engaging thing. The result is our kids learn to filter out what we're saying when we're not yelling. So as we yell, we actually train our kids not in good behavior or ethical thinking or reasoning or logical rationality or the consequences of their actions. What we're teaching them is to not listen when we don't yell.

Jon Fogel @Wholeparent: 17:23

And so many parents, it takes a long time to break the cycle of yelling, because you actually have to retrain your kid's brain to not be ignoring you when you're not yelling, and so if you yell every day, multiple times a day, you can basically put it down in your journal. Your kids are not gonna listen to you when you're not yelling. The good news is that relationships and brains are both plastic. They are malleable, they can change over time and they should, and so if you want to stop, having yelling be the necessary tool that you use to get your kids attention. Paradoxically, you have to begin by stopping yelling. That's how you break the cycle.

Jon Fogel @Wholeparent: 18:12

You actually stop doing the thing that feels effective and you rely as much as it is painful to do for those first few weeks when it feels like I really can't get anywhere on alternative methods of communication and discipline. You might need to make things really over the top fun for those first couple of weeks when you're breaking your yelling habit. You might need to give a lot of warnings and be very clear about the plans, and this is what we're going to do in these ways. You might need to do whatever. You might need to use distraction more than you often would like to, but ultimately, the goal here is to break the pattern for them that all communication that is worth listening to from mom Emily is yelling, because that's what they will do. So we will talk a little bit as we continue on this journey with the next couple of questions about what are some tools that we can use to not yell when we feel like it in the moment. But if you're asking the question, how do we ultimately break the cycle when kids don't listen to us unless we're yell? It is to stop yelling, even though it feels like it's our only tool, to only use that tool when that tool is needed.

Jon Fogel @Wholeparent: 19:27

So again, yelling can be a tool that can be effective in the same way that a hammer is a tool that can be affected. A hammer is a tool that's effective when you're trying to drive nails. A hammer is a tool that's affected when you're trying to pull out nails. A hammer is not a tool that is effective when you're trying to cut wood. Same thing with yelling. Yelling is a tool that is effective when you're trying to stop a child from doing something dangerous in that exact moment. Yelling is not a tool that's effective when you're trying to teach long term social, relational or complex neurological processes like moral thinking and logic. That's the truth, great. So I hope that helps, emily. I know it's not an easy answer, but I hope that that begins. I hope that, as you hear me respond to Michael and then Sam, that you can see the ways in which because all of these things are linked together and anybody out there who struggles with yelling all of these things are linked together, all right, great.

Jon Fogel @Wholeparent: 20:25

So our second question is from a dad, michael, and he says hey, there. I'm a dad. I have been trying my best to be a good parent, but there's an issue that I cannot seem to shake. I was raised in a household where yelling was the go-to response when things got tough. Now it's become almost instinctual for me to yell at my kids when they push my buttons. I don't want to continue the cycle, but it feels like second nature. How do I break free from the way that I was raised and find better ways to communicate with my kids? So, michael, if I'm hearing you correctly in this question which I think I am, because this is so well written you were raised in a household like most of us who struggle with yelling. Again, yeller and Recovery. Right here, your host, the guy who talks about why yelling is ineffective, still yells at his kids when he gets triggered, sometimes when I'm not in my best place. But most of us who yell were raised in a household where yelling was the go-to response. Now it feels like not just your kids won't listen. In the case of Emily, when you don't yell, you are losing and lacking the skills and control to not yell.

Jon Fogel @Wholeparent: 21:42

First of all, michael, I just want to say thank you for the honesty to admit that you are out of control when it comes to yelling, especially working with dads. This is something that I struggle mightily to have to get men especially, but also women, to come to terms with the idea that they're not yelling because they're logically thinking through oh right, now yelling is the right response, that yelling is not a thought through decision, that yelling is an emotional reaction. Until we, as parents, realize where the problem comes from, we can't begin to solve the problem. That takes a level of vulnerability that Michael has just modeled for us that is so important. I was raised in a yelling household. It is instinctual for me. How can I break free from the way that I was raised and communicate better with my kids? Will you get to that vulnerable place about being able to be honest about that stuff? You're not going to make progress. Thank you for that.

Jon Fogel @Wholeparent: 23:04

If you're listening out there and you're going, oh man, I feel like I'm doing it intentionally. I would just ask you to really consider that really question that Do you have a therapist who you can talk to? Do you have a therapeutic relationship in your life, perhaps a partner or a trusted friend, where you can bring that and go? Hey, am I yelling because I actually want to? Am I hurt because I'm thinking that it's going to be effective or am I just yelling because I'm emotionally dysregulated? That's the first thing to just name and claim.

Jon Fogel @Wholeparent: 23:35

Step one you aced at, michael. We have to get back to the basics of understanding where this behavior comes from. By the way, we're talking about yelling today. We're not talking about our kids' behavior. We're talking about our behavior when we do talk about different kid-centric behaviors like hitting and biting and not sharing or whatever the kid problematic behaviors. I'm always going to begin that with number one making sure that we're not triggered when we're trying to engage those things. Timing is everything In parenting. You don't necessarily want to engage a child when they're already dysregulated. You want to wait and engage them when they're in a more logical state. That's all that prefrontal cortex versus sending them into fight or flight thing. That all applies here too. But step two is always to understand what underlying need is not being met, because I think this is really important to state and I'm glad that I can say it here on the first episode.

Jon Fogel @Wholeparent: 24:28

Kids are, generally speaking, trying to do the best that they can based on their developmental agent stage. Generally speaking, they are doing the best that they can. They're not intentionally manipulative. A lot of this stuff is for lack of a better term propaganda that we have been fed that kids are secretly trying to force their will upon us or manipulate us, especially when they're toddlers. They don't have the developmental or intellectual capacity to do that. They just don't Understanding that that is not what your kid is trying to do, they are just. There are unmet needs, unmet developmental capacities in most problematic behavior. Well, okay, now let's take that into adults. Michael Michael, there is an unmet developmental need.

Jon Fogel @Wholeparent: 25:11

We were not taught how to effectively communicate. So until we learn how to effectively communicate, we will always go back onto the thing that was modeled for us. Whatever is mirrored, whatever is modeled, will be mirrored, and so the first step, after acceptance that this is not a conscious choice, is to actually begin to do your work, and one of the ways that you can do this is what I call after the fact or reprocessing an event. So understand that the journey to not yelling at your kids is not a linear journey. It is not.

Jon Fogel @Wholeparent: 25:46

Like you know, I joke that I'm a yeller in recovery, because yelling actually does have a lot of addictive seeming properties, right when we learn about addiction. You know I can get into that, maybe at the end of the episode if we have time. But yelling has a very addictive nature to it where, like you, do it more and more and the more you yell, the more you have to yell to get your point across and and you know, it feels like it's out of your control. But for a lot, many people think they think it's in their control but secretly those of us on the outside looking in go, no, no, you're out of control, right. Similar to kind of how certain addictions function. But unlike many addictions I where, ideally it is sobriety. And you know, hey, once you make the decision, for example in AA as a program, which is an proven, highly effective program for trying to stop drinking, you your sobriety is contingent on not drinking at all from that moment forward.

Jon Fogel @Wholeparent: 26:42

That is not how you're going to stop yelling. You're not going to make a decision today and say I'm never gonna yell at my kids again and then you'll get your five-day chip and your 24-hour chip and your five-day chip and your week chip and your 36-year chip, right. That's not how yelling works, because it's not a conscious decision to go and reach for the drink. It is a triggered reaction in most of us, and so our goal needs to be, as we're talking about yelling, our goal needs to be not that we're going to never yell at our kids again, but that we are going to yell a lot less tomorrow than we did today. And so when we win, we have to be and this just comes again to what I said to Emily about you can't be self-hating yourself and self-loathing and beating yourself up about yelling and get better at it. At the same time, you have to come to terms and acceptance, where this is a problem that I struggle with and it's not going to go away overnight. I'm gonna have to. It's gonna be a long process to get to that point.

Jon Fogel @Wholeparent: 27:42

And so I look at this today and I go hey, I've yelled at my kids maybe two, three times in the last week. Guys, that used to be four, six times a day. I'm so much further along the journey. Is it total sobriety? No, of course it's not, because that's not the type of thing that it can't be that way. We're working with neurological processes and you know, yes, our brains are malleable and they change over time. But they change over time, they don't change overnight. You can't change yourself and rewire neural pathways forever in one day. Rome wasn't built in a day. Nobody stopped yelling in a day, right?

Jon Fogel @Wholeparent: 28:14

So one of the really key tactics is, now that you've decided that yelling is an emotional reaction. That you're doing is to retroactively or not retroactively to reprocess the things that make you feel like yelling. And so what I counsel parents to do every single day, that I counsel them, is okay. Next time that you yell at your kids, I want you to wait until after you calm down, and I want you to pull out a journal, or you can pull out your the notes app in your phone, or you again, you can bring this to a therapist If you have a trusted therapist or another therapeutic relationship, provided that's a healthy and stable person that you have a therapeutic relationship with. And I want you to process what in that action perhaps in your own childhood, perhaps what you felt was being communicated by your kids, actions whatever made you feel like yelling, and then write down or, you know, verbally process. Writing down actually really helped.

Jon Fogel @Wholeparent: 29:13

I'm a verbal processor, but writing down is really where I do most of my best therapeutic work, and not with other people, with myself. That's where me and my therapist make the most. Headway is in my writing things down and journaling. It's a practice that's been proven through evidence-based study to be effective at reprocessing difficult things and changing going forward. So if you want to change right, reprocess and go, okay.

Jon Fogel @Wholeparent: 29:39

Well, what was the thing that made me go to that place and then start to pull at those threads and pull that apart and start to understand what was really being communicated, so that next time that thing happens you can, the light bulb can come on and you can go? Oh, I see, I am triggered because it feels like they're being disrespectful. That's what's making me upset right now. Or I'm triggered because I was taught growing up that you were never allowed to say no to a direction of an adult. Now you may, in your own parent journey, have decided, as I have, that having a child who is totally and completely obedient to any direction given by an authority figure is a great way to set your child up for lifetime of abuse by toxic authority figures, and that you actually want to deconstruct that thing, but that when your child says no to you, you're not thinking passionately and logically about your long-term parenting goals.

Jon Fogel @Wholeparent: 30:42

You're thinking about how you felt or how you were treated when you said no to an authority figure who then shamed you for it, punished you for it, perhaps even hurt you for it, right? And so when you start to pull at those threads and process, well, what was the thing that made me yell today and what was the thing that made me yell last week? Then you actually wind up going into your past and seeing where all of this stuff is coming from. And then, in the moment, you're far more likely to be able to be a little bit more rational. Because here's the thing, right, all I need is a beat.

Jon Fogel @Wholeparent: 31:17

In the moment where I break myself out, where my prefrontal cortex, my OMPFC that's the real fancy term for it right, there's a little tiny part in the very front of your brain that that helps control and regulate your emotions, even when you're triggered. It's developed in adults and not developed in kids. That's why kids can't do this, but adults can. It gets developed in kids over time. Teenagers are better at it than toddlers, but not as nearly as good as you are as an adult, hopefully, as you are as an adult.

Jon Fogel @Wholeparent: 31:47

Like anything, it's a muscle that has to be exercised, but all I'm looking for in the Yeller, in Recovery, coming from a household where it was the go-to response and that's speaking about me, michael, not just you is that I want there to be a moment where I go should I be yelling right now? And if I can have that moment then I can institute or begin some of these contemplative activities that can help me get back into my nervous system, get real, stimulate my vagus nerve We'll talk about that here in a second and break free. And the same thing goes with what we said with Emily the more you practice to regulate down without yelling, the more your kids are going to listen to you without having to yell, but also the more adept you're going to be at not yelling. It is like anything, a muscle that has to be trained and learned Specifically. It's what's called a neural pathway. The idea is, in your brain there are the kind of conditioned responses. When this happens, then this happens, and the more time that neural pathway happens, the more time your kids trigger you and then you yell at them, the more ingrained that is. Well, the same thing is true the more times your kids trigger you and you choose to respond with empathy and compassion and understanding, you choose to step away from the situation before you get to yelling, the more entrenched that neural pathway is and eventually the goal is, the neural pathway to not yelling is stronger than the neural pathway to yelling. That's what you're going for as an adult. The longer you've been yelling at your kids, the harder it's going to be. The longer that your kids have been yelled at, the harder it's going to be for them to learn to listen to you when you don't yell as well. It's just a long process. Again, rome wasn't built in a day and neither were your neural pathways rewired. So that you know we can talk about a lot of those things.

Jon Fogel @Wholeparent: 33:42

I have a really great resource on my website. It's, you know, an email that I sent out with including a YouTube video where it's how to not lose it on your kids. A lot of the stuff that we've been talking about this episode is in there. So some really key grounding exercises. These are therapy tools that people have used that will that the therapists and psychologists have developed over time. They even monks and meditation experts yogis have developed that can help you to calm down before you get to that point.

Jon Fogel @Wholeparent: 34:15

But I'm just looking for that moment where my logical brain breaks through and goes hang on, john Michael, I don't want to go there Now. I need to step away, ground myself before I engage my kids. And there is, by the way, a fundamental myth here that needs to be deconstructed before we move on to Sam's question, which is that all good parenting has to be done at the moment of problematic behavior, that kids are like dogs and if you don't catch them in the act of destroying the CD cases or you know, not being, you know, house trained, that you can't, you know, process that with a dog later, because they don't have memory in that way, they can't communicate with you. Kids are not dogs. You can step away from a problematic situation, come back and revisit it in an hour 15 minutes, an hour doesn't matter and be an effective parent and disciplinary and aka teacher. You can do that, and most of us, when we accept and embody that reality that I don't have to parent, write this moment, write your kids coloring on the wall, you can take away the marker and you can walk out of the room before you, you know, do harm by yelling or before you kind of do, once you get to that point and realize that you don't have to yell in the moment, wow, how freeing it is. And for me it used to be that I had to step away for five or 10 minutes, and sometimes I still do. It's a long time, but these days I have to step away for only about 40 seconds and then I've regulated down because I have these tools that are again I've trained myself to do and now I can engage back in the situation and still, like I said, once a week at least, I still yell at my kids. I'm not gonna say that I'm happy about it, but I've moved past hating myself for it because I know that hating myself for it is not gonna make it better.

Jon Fogel @Wholeparent: 36:15

All right, before we go on to Sam's question, I wanted to just kind of make a really quick call to action here. You heard at the beginning. You know how important it is for us to get people to go and review not only this episode but the podcast as a whole, to rate this podcast on whatever podcast platform you're listening to and to share it with a fellow parent. We talked about that at the beginning. But if you're finding value in this specific discussion, I wanna make that plea to you again, so not just if you find genuine value in any of this podcast, any episode, but in this specific episode, to me, the highest compliment that I get is not when people say, john, I'm so happy with this thing that you've helped me with. It's when people share the content that I put out, whether that's on social media or whatever. And so in here in this podcast, that sharing on social media is great. When you share a podcast, the amount of impact that you can do is exponential, literally exponential. So we're trying, through this podcast, to enlighten and empower parents through evidence-based insights and real-world experience. But I can't do that unless you share it, unless you rate it. So please write a review, and write a review too. Like I love reading reviews, I read every single review that I get on this podcast. I don't read every DM that I get in Instagram. I don't read every comment on every video on TikTok, but I absolutely read every single review. And so if you wanna say thank you to me, the best way to say thank you is to jump over and review the podcast, because together we're gonna reach and help so many more parents. We're gonna transform the world through parenting, one family at a time.

Jon Fogel @Wholeparent: 38:00

All right, so back to our scheduled programming with Sam's question. We're gonna wrap up here. Sam says hi, I'm a mom of two wonderful kids. I always try and be patient, understanding, but sometimes the stress gets to me and I end up yelling at them. Me too, sam. I hate it when that happens, because I see the hurt in their eyes afterwards. How can I repair the connection between my kids after I've lost my cool and I've yelled at them? You know Sam asked this question, but this is actually a question that I got from numerous parents. How do we repair after we yell? And the short answer is honest vulnerability, honest vulnerability.

Jon Fogel @Wholeparent: 38:41

We have this idea in Western parenting that we need to always put on, you know, this face for our kids, in some way, that we need to be the superhero who never makes a mistake. I even have faced it in my own journey of processing with my own mom. Right, it's really hard for us as adults to say, hey, I was doing the best that I could and I still screwed up. But y'all, all I can say to you and specifically Sam. What I can say to you, sam, is that when you do that, it is one of the most impactful, if not the most impactful thing that you can do as a parent teaching your kid how to apologize and how to repair when you've done wrong.

Jon Fogel @Wholeparent: 39:23

I always say it's impossible to be a perfect parent, but even if it was, it would not be helpful to your kids to be a perfect parent. If you were a perfect parent, you would set them up for a lifetime of striving for perfection and a lifetime of beating themselves up for all the mistakes that they made. The real best way to be a parent is to be an imperfect parent who's willing to admit it and repair. And so when you yell at your kids, first step going back to what we said to Emily at the very beginning we have to move away from. I hate myself for doing this. I understand it's a natural reaction. I often feel it myself. We have to move towards. I did this because of the brain that's been built in me. Some of that's on me, some of it's not. It's complicated, but now I'm going to take responsibility for my actions, not out of self pity, not out of self loathing, not from a place of shame, but from a place of trying to be better. It's growth mindset.

Jon Fogel @Wholeparent: 40:24

If you're unfamiliar with the concept of growth mindset, growth mindset is that you're not stuck where you are. There's this concept of fixed mindset, where this is how many of us are raised you know you are the smart kid, you are the fast kid, you're the athletic kid, you're the musical kid, you're the artistic kid. Growth mindset says you can be to an extent. I am five foot nine and a half, all right. Spent a long time in my life telling people I was 5'11 and I was a lie. I'm five nine and a half at best. I was never going to play in the NBA.

Jon Fogel @Wholeparent: 41:03

There are some things that growth mindset cannot get us to, but there are many ways in which I have grown and we all can grow if we're willing to say that we are not stagnant, and what the research tells us is that brains are not stagnant. What we know now, and what we did not know for a long time in human history, was that brains change, that they're plastic, that they're malleable, that you're not stuck with the brain, that you have, that trauma can be healed, that people who yell at their kids can become people who, by and large, do not yell at their kids. That's growth mindset believing that you're not stuck as the person that you are, that you can grow and so, instead of self-loathing and hatred and shame, begin by just saying hey, sitting down with your kids and say hey, earlier I yelled at you and no matter what you ever do, yelling is not an effective response to that behavior, and so I'm sorry that I yelled John. Many of you will say how quickly do I have to do that for that to be impactful for my kids? Because I yelled at them for the last five years, eight years, 15 years, 30 years of their life, and now I see that that wasn't effective. But is it too late to repair? And to that I would say consider your own parenthood, your own parenting, the parents that you had. If you struggle with yelling, I'm gonna throw out that there's a greater than 75% chance that you probably had parents who yelled, and I want you to imagine that today, if your parents are not alive, if they were alive, or even if they are, they just came to you Thanksgiving, whatever, sat down with you and said hey, when you were a little kid, sometimes I yelled at you and I realize now, 40 years later, 30 years later, that that wasn't helpful, and so I'm sorry that I did that and I wish I hadn't. Tell me, would that? Would that be impactful to you? It's never too late to repair. Of course I would love to repair as quickly as possible. If you can repair within the first half hour after you yell at your kid, great.

Jon Fogel @Wholeparent: 43:30

But if you have to sit down your 15 year old sometime in the next week, work up the courage to sit down your 15 year old and say, hey, I yelled a lot and now I'm gonna try and do better. And that's not gonna help the 10 year old who got yelled at a lot, but I hope it helps you. I think that can be a really transformational moment. And so the short answer is you take responsibility. You have to do your own work. You can't look for your kids, right, if you're apologized. I'll put it this way if you're apologizing to your kids so that they make you feel better about what you've done, you have not done your work yet. You have to come to terms with what you've done through journaling, through therapy, through processing your own childhood. You have to come to terms with what you've done so that you don't have to look to them to fix your emotions.

Jon Fogel @Wholeparent: 44:18

But after that go to them and say honestly, hey, I screwed up, and they may say right, not all kids are very gracious in accepting apologies. Sometimes your kids will say to you what, who cares if you're sorry, I can't believe that you did that to me. I'm so mad at you still that you did that to me. It was so rude. You yelled at me in front of my friends and now my friends are laughing at me and that's all your fault. Or you yelled at me and I was really scared of you. I hope you understand how scared of you I was.

Jon Fogel @Wholeparent: 44:47

I don't like when you yell right, and obviously I'm talking about an older kid here, but you might have a two year old who just says no, no, yelling, don't know yelling right, like it could be anything. Your kid might come to you and say are you emotionally ready to handle that? Because here's what I have learned to say when my kids say I'm so mad, well, that doesn't help me that you're sorry. You know, I'm still hurt by it. I've learned to say yeah, you have every right to be mad at me. You can keep him as mad as me as you want. I will love you, no matter what right. So except that they may not, you know, love your apology, but they may, right, and so that's how you repair. You go to them again, preferably as quickly as possible, but it is never too late and you sit them down and you say, hey, here's what happened, I was triggered and I did this. What you don't wanna do is then turn, and this is how many of our parents apologized.

Jon Fogel @Wholeparent: 45:45

They add a but to their apology, right? Butts have no place in apologies. You know, hey, I'm sorry that I yelled at you. Yelling is not an effective tool, but you were coloring on the walls, and coloring on the walls really bothers me. You've just rendered your apology inadequate, right? You've just sent them back into a shame spiral about what they've done. No, you can't add a but. If you need to add a but, that just means that you have to reprocess with them later. That other thing these can be two separate conversations. Apologize full stop.

Jon Fogel @Wholeparent: 46:15

Take accountability for your actions and remember that what you're doing in this moment is not only building a strong, lifelong relationship with your kids, which you are. They are gonna like you and love you a whole lot more. They are gonna wanna be around you a whole lot more. If you take a responsibility and accountability for your actions. I've never known a kid who faulted their parents in adulthood for taking accountability for their actions. So not only are you building a lifelong relationship, you're also teaching them how to apologize when they mess up.

Jon Fogel @Wholeparent: 46:48

So now, when they mess up with their future spouse, instead of getting defensive, instead of trying to hide it, instead of trying to manipulate the situation, instead of avoiding and all-causing the words I'm sorry or I was wrong which, by the way, the majority of marriages that I'm counseling right now because I also do that, but it's not in my social media world I counsel people on their marriages and relationship issues. At least one person in the relationship usually both struggles so deeply to say I'm sorry and I was wrong. Because they were brought up in a household where mom was never wrong and dad is never wrong and that was never modeled how we say sorry and how we repair. And because repair was never modeled at home, repair was always swept under the rug or dismissed or belittled. Now, as an adult, they don't know how to apologize to the person that they love, because they think that apologizing is a sign of weakness.

Jon Fogel @Wholeparent: 47:39

No, apologizing is the strongest thing that you can ever do. It is a power move for all of the people out there worried that their kids are gonna think that they're weak parents by apologizing. No, it's vulnerability. That's what apologies are. They're vulnerable. Vulnerability is the greatest sign of strength. Truly strong people can be vulnerable. People who are terrified of the world and terrified of their place in it struggle to be vulnerable.

Jon Fogel @Wholeparent: 48:10

So how can you repair the connection after you've lost your cool and yell at them? Short answer is the same you sit them down with vulnerability after you've done your own work, after you've already gotten to the place where you're no longer triggered, in the moment where you can give an apology without a but and you take full responsibility through vulnerability. I was triggered, I was upset and I'm sorry and I'm gonna try and do better. And this is the last kind of little tidbit I'll give here, and this is not gonna be about this episode, but in general, when we talk about discipline, effective discipline and problem solving, that is a great way to go in that moment, right, if you're wondering well, how does that conversation end without saying, but you shouldn't be coloring on the walls, which is again how most of us were connected and how most of us were conditioned to respond.

Jon Fogel @Wholeparent: 48:58

In those cases, any apology that we were given was conditional on our future behavior. But I'll still yell at you if you do that again. So don't. Which is what your parents are saying when they add that, but into their apology, or what you're saying communicating to your child when you add that, but into your apology. Instead, you can say something to the effect of what can we do better next time? How can I respond better next time so that we don't get to that point? That's where we can get into problem solving and collaborative problem solving not, but don't do that, otherwise I'll yell right, which is essentially what we're communicating now. But how can we do better going forward? So I hope this episode on yelling has been an effective tool for you.

Jon Fogel @Wholeparent: 49:41

I am really pleased that this could be our first episode. I feel like this is a topic that I could talk about for hours and hours, but I've already been doing this for going on 40 plus minutes, so I'm gonna end this episode and then just get excited and get ready for the next one. If you're enjoying the whole parent podcast, I'm gonna ask a small favor. It would mean the world to me If you could just take a minute or two right now.

Jon Fogel @Wholeparent: 50:08

Again, I know I've asked you so many times already, but to write a review, it's super easy. All you have to do is go to the write a review button on your podcast app and just let me know what you think. It doesn't have to be long, even a few words that make a huge difference. Each review helps me reach and support more parents and, honestly, it is the greatest compliment that you can give. And, as I said at the midpoint in this episode, I read every single review and I cherish that feedback. Like I said, I don't read everything that everybody sends me. I don't read every email that I get, but I do read every review. Thank you so much for being a part of this first episode and for this community and for spreading the word. You're the best.