TRY having a theology discourse with a 6-year-old. A recent experience is enough to make me break into cold sweat.
As a parent, I fear my reply to my son’s queries will either make him a better Muslim or scar him for life.
Of course, I can chicken out by telling my son to ask his religious teachers or suck it up by facing his bombardment of queries head on.
So I bit the bullet and chose the difficult, scary option, praying hard that I made the right one. I guess we will know a few years down the road.
My son is at a crucial juncture of his life now as he is growing up, learning more about life, especially on what will define him as a good man.
Many of us may have heard of the term the formative years.These are the crucial years that will shape our children’s behaviours and personalities. Child development experts have categorised the formative years from 0 to 8 years old.
The World Health Organisation (WHO) has described the early years of a child as critical “because this is the period in life when the brain develops most rapidly and has a high capacity for change, and the foundation is laid for health and wellbeing throughout life”
The same sentiment is echoed by the United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund (Unicef). It said during the early childhood, a child’s newly developing brain “is highly plastic and responsive to change as billions of integrated neural circuits are established through the interaction of genetics, environment and experience”.
Evidence from multiple disciplines has confirmed that investing in early childhood development is one of the most cost-effective ways of improving educational achievement and to boost skills, capabilities, and productivity.
Dear parents, please take note, you only have eight years, either to nurture and shape your children positively or otherwise. After that, things may be a tad difficult as their peers become the key people in their lives.
In my case, I have about two more years to help my son be a person he is meant to be. It is time to hit the ground running, people.
This is why when I see any caregiver is doing other than positive nurturing, I will inwardly cringe in fear for the child.
I have seen a mother who screamed at her daughter who is barely 3 years old, yelling at the child to shut up and calling her stupid. My fear is that the child is likely to grow up thinking it is okay to shout at others.
In my household, we try our best not to yell and the term “stupid” is a no-no word.
If I have mistakenly said “stupid” out loud, especially when dealing with road users who fail to signal when changing lanes, my 6-year-old is fast to point it out to me and I will be equally fast to apologise.
Also, experts are saying shouting will make children learn to tune out and discipline will be harder, since each time one raises one’s voice, it lowers their receptivity.
Before you decide to yell at your children, know this: researchers have discovered that it makes children more aggressive, physically and verbally. If yelling at children is not a good thing, yelling that comes with verbal putdowns and insults qualifies as emotional abuse.
Yelling seems to have long-term effects, including low self-esteem, increased aggression and anxiety, as well as making children more susceptible to bullying because their understanding of healthy boundaries and self-respect is distorted.
Experts, including clinician Dr Asa Don Brown, said yelling as a corrective form is always unnecessary, excessive, and tiresome.
“As a clinician, I have no reservations in saying that yelling decays the human spirit. It breaks the essence of the person receiving the vice, and it is unbecoming of the person enacting or engaging in the tantrum.
“Yes, in most cases, yelling is a tantrum being propelled from one person and being received by another. Yelling is one of the most reprehensible acts of abuse,” he said in Psychology Today at www.psychologytoday.com.
Yelling, he added, is condescending and demeaning, whereas a firm voice can be reassuring, but directive in style.
Another jaw-dropping finding involved a research conducted by a group of psychiatrists at the Harvard Medical School.
Apparently, these researchers have discovered that verbal abuse, such as yelling and humiliation, can alter significantly and permanently the brain structure of children.
They had analysed the brains of 51 children who received psychiatric treatment and compared them to 97 healthy children.
The researchers found that “abandonment, corporal punishment and verbal discipline caused a significant reduction of the corpus callosum, a sort of ‘cable’ consisting of nerve cells that connects the two hemispheres of the brain”.
Yes, I am still reeling in shock.
For all dads, there is a study published in the Journal of Family Psychology, which revealed that when you show hostility towards your children by shouting, criticising, name-calling, your children tend to grow more aggressive and less helpful towards other family members and strangers.
Another study conducted at University of Pittsburgh has found that yelling regularly at children as a form of discipline, “holds many risks for their psychological development, including the possibility of developing an aggressive behaviour or, conversely, becoming overly shy”.
These psychologists analysed 976 families and their children for two years, and found that crying out daily as part of the educational style, could predict the onset of behavioural problems in adolescents aged 13 or depressive symptoms at the age of 14.
In this respect, try to rein in that urge to yell at our children during the formative years.
If we miss the eight-year window to nurture our children positively, we have no one else but ourselves to blame. Be patient, mums and dads.
With more than 20 years in journalism and a masters in Counselling Psychology, Azura Abas is always drawn to the mystery of the human mind and behaviours. She can be reached via azuraa@nst.com.my .