I wonder if there’s a difference between “yelling” and “screaming”? Perhaps not… but in a way, I think “yelling” can be synonymous with disciplining a child — at any volume level. Screaming, to me, connotes a loud, angry form of discipline. So, my mom yelled at me when she told me sternly to do something, but she didn’t usually scream at me. (She did sometimes, though, I think back now to how stressed out she must have been at times! What a saint she was to deal with my sister and me, especially after my parents’ divorce!)

I think screaming — or any kind of angry, loud rejoinder — can be ineffective except in extreme or short-term circumstances (perhaps an emergency where the child needs to be scared into action?). I also think screaming or loud yelling is natural; parents are people too, and they get angry, right? As I said in my previous comment, I’m only pregnant with my first child, so I’m speaking from ignorance here! I know my sister, though, who’s a great mother, has called me, in tears, when she’s screamed or gotten really angry with her daughters. However, she never regrets disciplining them or talking sternly to them. It seems that, for her, the difference is not so much in the content of the message but in the mode of delivery and, more importantly, in my sister’s state of mind when she was delivering that message. When she feels in control and more objective, she feels more confident about disciplining her children — and I think my nieces probably pick up on that confidence. When she loses control (completely understandable considering the stress of parenting!), she also seems to lose confidence in her abilities (and again, I think my nieces have some sense of this, which sometimes makes the situation get worse instead of better). I don’t mean to judge my sister at all because she’s such an amazing parent; I can only hope to do half as good a job! Just thinking out loud (well, online) about the differences I’ve seen in her depending on how she went about disciplining her children. I think it’s inevitable that most parents will scream at their kids occasionally. I suppose the key is making sure that not all discipline comes in a loud, angry format or else discipline will cease to be constructive and reasonable and instead become something a child will try to ignore or avoid through lying or deception.