Fear.

Do you know that yelling and shouting at your puppy causes them to fear you instead of achieving what you want – them to correct their behavior?

Neither did I. I actually googled that because I was in need of an alternative solution to the incessant yelling sessions. And true enough, I’m very relieved to find out that yelling does not work. Let me repeat that, YELLING DoEs NoT WoRk. It was very triggering for me to go through these sessions as it caused me a lot of unwanted stress. My childhood was littered with yelling, shouting and all kinds of verbal abuse and it did indeed impact me a lot as I grew up. But this experience with my dog? It has indeed shown some light on why I am the way I am as a person.

Sometimes, parents don’t necessarily know what they are doing and they scream, shout or even yell at you because that’s the only way they know how to put their point across.

They are unhappy you did that. Don’t do it again. Does it work though? No clue, as long as I send my message across in the “best” way I know how – with anger. It should work right…? Not really. Also, they probably think that since their own parents did that to them and it worked, it should work for their kids too…?

Admittedly, whenever someone yells at me, I still get the shivers. There is no manual in parenting and understandably, parents, they only wanted the best but unknowingly when my parents yelled at me, it only triggered fear and yes in my mind I was only thinking one thought which was, “I’m going to die”. That is another level of fear altogether.

Perhaps you could also even argue that parents that yell at their children, have problems controlling their emotions.

My thoughts? It’s definitely not the way to go from my experience. Until today, I’m very avoidant of confrontations and any form of yelling or verbal abuse shuts me down completely. I don’t know if I will ever grow out of it but I’m kind of glad I’m starting to dissect when everything went wrong and better understand myself. I’d like to believe that there’s always a better way. It’s just a matter of whether you want to.

Most parents have the tendency to refuse to lower their ego or even admit that they could be possibly be parenting their child the wrong way.

I don’t think there’s a solution in that, they have to realize it themselves that their methodology is not working and well, look for alternatives. Even if sometimes it requires you to do the hardest thing in the world – lowering your ego.

So yes, don’t yell at your dog. IT DOESN’T WORK. And we hate you for it.

Whoops.

D