It's hard to find a parent who never raises his voice and doesn't let himself be overwhelmed by his emotions when faced with the whims, even the most exasperating, of his children. Difficult, indeed very difficult. And yet, although losing control and yelling every now and then is almost inevitable - to the point of qualifying the parent in his very human imperfection - this must not become an alibi. The task of mothers and fathers should be to commit themselves to overcoming this impasse, to organize themselves to recover their parental role and thus accompany their children in their development.
We talk about this, harmful screams and good practices with Daniele Novara, one of the best known Italian pedagogists and already author, among many publications, of the volume that gives the title to this article: 'Screaming is useless.
Manage conflicts with children to be heard and guide them in their growth' (Bur, 2014). A useful compass to identify alternative ways to yelling and effective strategies to apply in conflict management
family. Why is yelling useless? «Screams can scare, but they don't educate: they are an expression of the emotional incontinence of the parent, who by screaming transmits his anxieties to his child, while the latter would only have
need to find guidance and reference points. In fact, screams are the most evident epiphenomenon of the parent who is always active on an emotional level, and much less on an educational level.
For years I have been advocating a very simple thing: education should coincide with the organization of the process
growth and learning of children and young people. The emotional parent (the one who "is not based on a project, but on a spontaneous vision of education", as stated in the book, ed.) bases his method on a sort of idea of relational omnipotence: "I am human, I of ice, I love my son and he must take me for who I am”. This is a mistake and one of the most frequent misunderstandings: love is not an educational device nor an end, if anything, a condition, a premise on which to base the education of children. Which, as mentioned, is an organizational fact and must correspond to the various evolutionary stages. Let's think, for example, of sleep: the child cannot regulate himself, it is the adult who, while respecting the child's natural rhythms, must choose times and places for him, decide on a custom and enforce it»
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Screaming is useless
by Sara Lanfranchini
