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.
I am 70 the words uttered by my father when I was 5 still ring in my ears. He said “I wish you had never been born”.
I am 32. I love my dad, he did his best. He was a good dad.
But I will probably never be able to forgive him for the times he shouted and yelled at me when I wasn’t a good kid. He went into fits of rage over mundane things like homework and failing school. I remember everything he said in those fits of rage. Every instance of it. And I definitely remember feeling terrified.
And will remember it until the day I die.
Even at 70 years old.
This makes me sad tbh. I’m 21, and get flashbacks of my dad yelling at me, especially when someone yells at me irl. I was scared that I’d spend my life trying to get rid of them… now I wonder if that’s even possible