Don’t Yell at Me

We adults are prone to yelling, at each other, on the phone, across the hall and at children. It just seems that we like noise (also demonstrated by the high decibel levels in our TV rooms; the cinema which more often than not has really bad acoustics; and the car where we blow the horn “just for the fun of it”).

Yelling at children is psychologically detrimental for them. This has been proven by various studies conducted across the globe. Yet we continue to yell at our children, at home, in schools and even in public places (in the presence of strangers).

I present below a poem, by Jack Prelutsky, that effectively communicates the state of mind of a child who is being yelled at:

–X–

Don’t yell at me !
Don’t yell at me !
I hate it when you do,
it makes me feel so miserable,
I want to run from you.
I simply cannot stand it
when you scream into my ear,
if I knew how to do it, I’d completely disappear.

Don’t yell at me !
Don’t yell at me !
I’ll crawl away and hide,
I’ll detonate to smithereens
or shrivel up inside.
Feel free to thumb your nose at me,
or wiggle all your toes at me,
or even ring a bell at me, but
please, please, please, pleeeease
DON’T YELL AT ME !