to think constantly shouting at your kids is horrible?

[Xihha]

Where I am staying at the moment the mums in the flats on either side and downstairs seem to spend half their lives shouting at their children, quite often about the kids making too much noise

I can understand shouting once in a while, or if it's something like shouting wait because the child's run off ahead and won't hear you if you speak normally but this is all the time and its full on screechy shouting right in the child's face not just raising your voice like you might for a child that can't hear properly or who is the other end of the garden, it just strikes me as really unnecessary and horrible, also they carry on shouting for ages, i.e, the kid next door earlier kicked a ball at the window and mum shouted at him for a couple of minutes about how stupid it was, surely thats a bit much? (not explaining that it was a stupid thing to do, but shouting for that long).

I'm not saying my kids are perfectly behaved and never need telling off, they're not, but talking in a normal voice and telling them not to do something seems enough to me.

Am I just being really judgey or do other people think that much shouting is horrible too?

I try really hard not to be a "shouty mum" as I don't think it models great communication but every once in a while I do shout, usually after repeating myself 20 times. Is the shouting actually horrible to the children or more of a "stop doing that" "behave" etc?

shouting after repeating yourself is fair enough, there are times when you just can't help it, but this is quite often as soon as they start doing whatever it is so its not like a last resort.

most of the time its 'fucking pack it in', 'what the fuck are you doing that for?' or 'go do such and such' but the mum's doing it do swear every other word most of the time anyway, it does get to quite nasty shouting if the kid does whatever it is more than once.

In that case you are not being unreasonable. I guess with more than 1 child it may be just to be heard over the chaos but they swearing and words used are definitely not ok

It is horrible, you get a really sore throat after a while.

What you describe does sound unpleasant though. I don't like swearing at children.

Years ago some neighbours were so loud that when the three year old called the four year old a fucking cunt then I knew where he had learned the words - their parents were foul mouthed, loud and unimaginative. They were all used to being called cunts.

So glad when they moved.

How do you know they're not asking quietly first? Surely you wouldn't hear them if they were not shouting?

I try not to shout, but there are few days when one of my 3 DC don't get a voice raised at them, particularly in school holidays.

It's preferable to slapping them, and tbh, 4 weeks into the holidays with no break other than going to work, I'm not beating myself up for yelling sometimes.

Perhaps you could do a bit less judging, and have one of their DC to play occasionally to help them out a bit instead.

This was my house. You were always expected to be on the other end of a bellow. Our parents never just came and spoke to us in whatever room we were in.

How do you know they're not asking quietly first? I don't know all the time but I know that they don't ask quietly first in the garden, where they've spent most of the past 4 weeks, as we have communal gardens so I'm out there a lot as DDs 4 so not old enough to be out there alone. I do have them over to play and offer to take them to the park across the road if i'm taking my DC's over there.

BoozyBear- like I said, this is screechy shouting in their face, not talking louder so the child can hear, none of the children I'm talking about have hearing problems.

Some people just speak like that. It gets into a habit and it's hard to break, they probably don't even notice they're doing it. It does make you think they must be constantly irritated by their kids though, which is a bit sad. I get shouty if I am feeling irritable but it's not all the time and I try not to shout too much.

I know it's not the same but our dowmstairs neighbour did this to her(very barky) dog, She would be in the garden saying stuff like "You fing bad I'm gonna f**ing kill you" and worse. We moved out in the end as I couldn;t bear for my kids to hear it. Tbh if it was to kids I would say something.

We went camping and I hated the intimacy of the tents. Most of the parents shouted at their kids all the time. In fact the only time I heard one woman show conernn was to her dog

OP - I agree with you, it's just plain horrible. Shouting becomes a habit, when I wanted my children to listen I would go up to them and speak quietly so they had to really listen to hear what I had to say.

I just hate adults shouting at children.