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I had a very interesting incident with our three year old son and one year old daughter yesterday.   I thought sharing it with you might cause you to rethink, whether or not yelling at your child is as effective as you hope it is. . . . .

Here’s what happened:

Because our daughter isn’t quite coordinated enough to not fall down our stairs, we have a gate at the base of our stairs that she can’t get through.

As any parent of a three year old would know, our three year old son has no problem opening this gate.  If our son was our only child this would not be a problem, as any three year old should be capable of not falling down the stairs.

The problem comes when he forgets to shut the gate and accidentally lets his sister up the stairs when we aren’t paying attention.

Normally, our son is really good about shutting the gate behind him, and not letting his sister follow.  In this incident, our son was trying to obey this rule of “no sister on the stairs”, that alerted me to the scene I was about to witness.

Upon hearing our daughter wail, I quickly snuck out of my office upstairs, to make sure she wasn’t crying because our son was playing too rough with her.  (He’s been known to do random, flying Sumo attacks on his sister when we aren’t looking

I quickly ran to the top of the stairs, where I could look down and see what was happening.  Sure enough, I caught the tail end of our son fending off his sister with one hand, while closing the gate behind him.  Then he started to come up the stairs.

Fending off his sister is what caused the crying.  My son hadn’t hurt her, but she often gets upset when she can’t come upstairs, especially when the rest of the family is up there.  Both my wife and I were upstairs.

But what happened next was what I really wanted to share with you…

Our son, upon closing the gate, marched about half way up the stairs (he didn’t know I was still watching), then stopped, turned around to look down at his yelling sister, with a sad look on his face.

“It’s okay, Brielle”, he said softly.

Then he walked back down the stairs and gave her a kiss, continuing to say, “Don’t cry, it’s okay”.

I could tell our son was struggling internally.

He knew that it was him NOT letting his sister come up the stairs that caused the crying, and he obviously felt sorry for her.  He wanted to open the gate for her, but he knew that it was against the rules.

So he tried to leave her again.  Once again, he only made it half way up the stairs, stopped, turned around again, to look at his still sobbing sister.

I watched again, as he marched back down, opened the gate and let his sister climb up the stairs.

Now, at this moment, my wife, who hadn’t seen the whole event unfold, (as we as parents, often don’t!) came up behind me and started to walk down the stairs.  She came around the corner and saw our daughter climbing up the stairs, as her guilty looking brother walked behind his sister.

What do you think my wife did?  Would this justify yelling in your household?

To most people, this is a RULE that needs to be punished for breaking, because it can be very dangerous.  It usually ends up with yelling, punishment or being spanked for this misbehavior.

But I’m proud to say that is NOT what my wife did.

Instead, she quickly scooped up our daughter, to eliminate the risk of falling.

Then she turned to my son and asked, “Why did you let your sister up the stairs?”

This is the classic Emotion Coaching parenting technique to use when you catch a child misbehaving.  You stop the behavior, and then dig into the child’s reasons for the behavior before deciding on whether or not to discipline.  There’s no need for yelling

The reason you want to make sure to “Ask Why” before dishing out punishment, is because these are the best types of situations to help teach a child about their emotions, and that those emotions are okay to feel.

If my wife simply saw the scene on the stairs, assumed our son was intentionally being defiant, and instantly started yelling at him, he would not have received the same lesson my wife was able to give him.

True, he did need to learn that letting his sister on the stairs could cause her to really get hurt.  In the future, he will probably be less willing to open the gate for his sister; (especially if he thinks he’ll be caught!).

But there was another lesson that our son would have received if my wife had decided to yell at him.

Yelling at a child teaches them that feelings of compassion are irrelevant, even wrong.

Yelling at a child doesn’t teach him appropriate ways to deal with new types of emotions, and how to handle them.  Yelling results in what best-selling author, Daniel Goleman, calls Low “Emotional Intelligence”.

What is “Emotional Intelligence”?

“Emotional Intelligence” is the ability to understand what you’re feeling, why you are feeling it, and that it is okay.  Learning how your emotions work becomes a foundation for also understanding how other people around you feel.  It is a strong factor in developing your child’s social skills.  You can’t develop good social skills if you don’t care about how others feel.  It turns out that high levels of “Emotional Intelligence” result in being BETTER at reading the emotions of other people.  It’s simply one of the greatest things you can do for raising successful children.

Developing “Emotional Intelligence” in children is incredibly important.  Research is proving that it is far more important than IQ!  In fact, a child who has low IQ, but develops high levels of “Emotional Intelligence”, stands a far greater chance of reaching his full potential.

That is why yelling at our son would have been far more destructive than instructive.

Because we understand the principals of “Emotion Coaching”, we were able to help our son understand what his feelings of compassion and guilt were all about, and how they were noble emotions that are wonderful to feel.

We told him how we understood why he let his sister up the stairs, but that it was not safe for his sister.  We asked him if there was another way he thought he could let his sister up the stairs without getting her hurt next time.

He needed a little help coming up with this solution, but in the end, we came to the conclusion that it would be better to come get Mommy or Daddy if he felt badly for leaving his sister down stairs, and that we would come get her so she could be safe.

This accomplished five things:

1. It stops the dangerous behavior
2. It does not belittle or shame our son for feeling compassion or empathy
3. It becomes a good teaching time about emotions and fosters discussion about this new emotion he was feeling
4. It gives him a more positive way to express the emotion without breaking the rules
5. It models respect to him, which gives him less reason to rebel as time goes on.

I can’t think of 5 better lessons that a parent would want to teach their child.  It’s the perfect outcome to a situation that normally could result in simply yelling at the child, with no deeper emotional development occurring.

Two Additional Resources You Should Consider

If learning more about this approach to parenting and behavior modification interests you, I would strongly suggest you check out these two resources:

1. Raising an Emotionally Intelligent Child, by John Gottman –An excellent book that first exposed me to this concept.
2. Imprinting Success Before 5 – This is my own program that expands on the concepts inside John Gottman’s book, and shows you how to use this concept, in combination with other techniques, to raise successful children

Today, why don’t’ you start looking for those opportunities to begin teaching your child “Emotional Intelligence”? . . . . and Happy Parenting!