Contributed by Cindi Pearce, Catalogs.com Top 10 Guru
Yelling is not the answer or solution, but it is the rare parent who has survived raising teenagers that have not yelled on occasion.
One would have to be a virtual Saint not to succumb to yelling and screaming at times. Kids are masters at making their parents crazy. Parents worry and fret, find themselves going gray, sleepless at night and gnawing their fingernails. The only consolation is that some day the kids will be in the same position as their parents. Paybacks are hell.
Here are the top ten reasons parents yell at their kids:
10. It’s their job
It IS the parents’ job to yell at their kids when they do something stupid, reckless, dangerous or all three. Okay, maybe some parents don’t yell when their kid does something stupid, reckless, dangerous or all three, but I have never met that parent. What WERE you thinking? You could’ve been killed! Didn’t you pay attention when they said DO NOT TRY THIS AT HOME? My, heavens, you are going to be the death of me!
9. Phone bill
The cell phone bill is atrocious. The kid has texted 10 zillion times to the same person. Somebody named Bruno. Who is Bruno? What could a kid possibly have to say to Bruno that many times in a month?
8. Crossing without looking
When they walk out into the street without first looking to see if a car is coming that’s when parents yell. STOP! in the name of the law! Many mothers and fathers have run at the speed of light in an attempt to retrieve their wayward child who is not paying attention, preventing him from stepping off that curb into the path of an oncoming Mac truck.
7. Baby on board
If the daughter gets pregnant or the son impregnates someone this may be cause for some vigorous yelling, which doesn’t much change the situation … but parents are human.
6. Permanent ink
The son or daughter comes home with a big, black, brazen tattoo of the grim reaper on his forehead or piercings in his lip and eyebrow. Yelling comes first and then mom cries.
5. Bad boyfriend
Your 16-year-old daughter tells you that she is dropping out of high school and moving to the desert with her moron boyfriend, who is a real piece of work and has never held down a job and, of course, hasn’t seen the inside of a school since seventh grade. What parent wouldn’t yell? Unfortunately, yelling usually doesn’t do any good.
4. Breaking the law
The kid gets arrested. Oh, that has caused many yelling matches in hometown USA. The kid gets to go to court. The kid gets put on probation. The kid gets in all kinds of trouble.
3. Wrecking the car
When they wreck the car for the third time that calls for some yelling. Enough said.
2. Flirting with danger
Parents yell loudly when their infant is about to stick a fork tine into an electric socket or turn the bathwater on to hot. Of course, the parent should yell at himself because he didn’t have the electric socket covered or a spout cover on the faucet. This yell is intended to interrupt the action, and it usually does, thankfully, because it startles the infant and he forgets what he is about to do.
1. They earn it
Parents yell at their kids because they deserved to be yelled at, the little buggers. They’ve been doing everything they can possibly think of, the wickeder the better, for the past 12 hours to drive you over the brink, and they have finally succeeded.