Harsh Verbal Discipline May Harm Teen Behavior

Yelling and shouting may have more of an effect on teenagers than you thought. While it seems like teens don't listen, verbal abuse could be impacting them in ways that you don't realize. Scientists have discovered that instead of minimizing a teen's problematic behavior, shouting might actually aggravate it.

Verbal abuse can include everything from shouting or yelling to using words to humiliate. Although parents might thing this is a good way to curtail problematic behavior, it might not actually work. Even so, a large amount of parents use this tactic. In fact, a nationally representative survey found that 90 percent of American parents use one or more instances of harsh verbal discipline with children of more ages.

In order to find out a little bit more about these effects, the researchers looked at 967 two-parent families and their children. About half of them were European American, 40 percent were African American and the rest were of different ethnic backgrounds. Most of the families were middle class.

What did they find? It turns out that the children of mothers and fathers who used harsh verbal discipline when they were 13 suffered more depressive symptoms between the ages of 13 and 14 than their peers who weren't disciplined in this way. They were also more likely to have conduct problems, such as misbehaving at school, lying to parents, stealing or fighting. In addition, the researchers found that harsh verbal discipline also increases these behaviors. A parent's hostility lowered inhibition and fostered anger, irritability and belligerence in adolescents.

"This is one of the first studies to indicate that parents' harsh verbal discipline is damaging to the developing adolescent," said Ming-Te Wang, one of the researchers, in a news release. "The notion that harsh discipline is without consequence, once there is a strong parent-child bond--that the adolescent will understand that 'they're doing this because they love me'--is misguided because parents' warmth didn't lessen the effects of harsh verbal discipline. Indeed, harsh verbal discipline appears to be detrimental in all circumstances."

The findings reveal how disciplining your child through this method might just cause more problems than it solves. The researchers suggest that parents who want to modify their child's behavior would do better by discussing concerns with them rather than yelling at them.

The findings are published in the journal Child Development.