United for Kids…

One of the best parts for me about being at HOPE Center is being involved in other collaborative efforts that aim to help create a healthier environment for all of us to live in. One of these collaboratives is an effort called United for Kids which is a community initiative promoting literacy and learning for families with children age 5 and under.
At a meeting today we were talking about some of the projects that we have coming up and I had mentioned this great website that is for parents, educators and anyone who cares about kids that helps connects child development and violence prevention
“Understanding Child Development as a Violence Prevention Tool”. Which can be found here: http://actagainstviolence.apa.org/understanding_child_dev.pdf
There are some great tips on handling anger and conflict, parenting tips and techniques and so much more… http://actagainstviolence.apa.org/
I also came across this…

What does the research show?

Most parents, even the most patient ones, lose their temper and yell at their children. According to a 2003 study published in The Journal of Marriage and Family, 88 percent of the 991 families interviewed admitted shouting, yelling or screaming at their children in the previous year. That percentage jumped to 98 percent in families with 7-year-old children.

While occasional yelling is common in American families, parents who constantly yell at their children are subjecting their children to emotional abuse that researchers say can be as harmful as physical abuse. A 2001 study in the American Journal of Psychiatry involving 49 people with depersonalization disorder (a mental disorder in which a person has a feeling of detachment or estrangement from one’s self) and 26 emotionally healthy people, found that yelling and other forms of emotional abuse was a more significant predictor of mental illness than sexual and physical abuse.

Besides being potentially harmful if overused, yelling is often ineffective. “Children can become immune to being yelled at and start to tune it out,” according to psychologist Myrna B. Shure, Ph.D., of Drexel University. Dr. Shure’s research shows that parents whose only way of disciplining their children is by yelling, demanding or commanding have children that at age four or five are more likely to display physical or verbal aggression, social withdrawal, and a lack of positive/prosocial behaviors, such as sharing and empathy. She says instead of yelling, which makes children feel angry and frustrated, parents should use a problem-solving approach in which children are taught to think about their own and others’ feelings. For example, if your children will not pick up their toys, ask them to think of how you feel when they won’t pick up the toys. Then ask them to think of something they can do so you won’t feel that way. This approach can have large and long-lasting effects on children’s behavior (see http://www.psychologymatters.org/shure.html andhttp://www.thinkingchild.com).

http://actagainstviolence.apa.org/specialtopics/yelling.html

Domestic and Sexual Violence are about so much more than just dealing with that… we need to look at parenting, at resources, at prevention, at connecting why businesses should care about these issues, supporting schools to educate about healthy relationships and building safer communities.