underwhelmedandoverstimulated:
Not Yelling At Children is Better Than Yelling At Children, More At 11
“No shit” studies like this get funded because a lot of people still believe that “strict parenting” (i.e. screaming at your kid, using physical punishment) will “fix” their kids’ ADHD symptoms. I only did child therapy for about a year and a huge contributing factor to my burnout was watching parent after parent, no matter how well intentioned, fall into the socially ingrained trap of blaming their kids’ behavior on “lack of respect” or “laziness” or “manipulation.” They had to be constantly reminded that their children’s symptoms were not actually about them. Every time they forgot, they’d slip back into the same parenting strategies that, frankly, landed their family in crisis stabilization therapy in the first place.
The thing is, the success of any given parenting strategy can only be seen over time. Like any behavior modification, you’ll only get valid results if you’re consistent. If you’re calm with a kid most of the time but every now and then you beat them, being calm is going to seem like it “doesn’t work” because your kid knows the other shoe could drop at any second. They’re still in fight-or-flight mode waiting to see what you’ll do next, and it’s almost impossible to make well-reasoned choices when your amygdala is in charge. It can take a long damn time to build a communication pattern in which your kid trusts that you’ll stay calm. Most parents give it about a week and then declare that their kid must just be different or worse than other kids, or that the therapist/caseworker doesn’t understand what its really like.
Studies like this are so important, because it gives us something to point to when parents feel unsure of what to do with a child whose moods and needs aren’t easy for them to understand. I guarantee that for every study like this saying what “we all know,” these parents are exposed to 50 idiots saying they just need to whip some respect into their kids.
Not to mention that a) C-PTSD makes ADHD symptoms worse and b) a lot of people with ADHD also HAVE C-PTSD, because people were abusive and blamed them for being “lazy”/”stupid”/etc
Oh that’s why I got worse as an adult.