How to Stop Yelling at Your Kids: A Positive Parenting Approach for Dealing with Difficult Children to Create a Stress-Free Environment

HOW TO STOP YELLING AT YOUR KIDS

A Positive Parenting Approach for Dealing with Difficult Children to Create a Stress-Free Environment

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JAMIE WILLIAMS

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OAKRIDGE PRESS

Copyright © 2022 by Jamie Williams

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CONTENTS

Introduction

Chapter 1: What Narcissistic Parenting Looks Like

Chapter 2: The World’s Hardest Job

Chapter 3: Paving a Path for Success

Chapter 4: Listening to Effectively Communicate

Chapter 5: You Before Me

Chapter 6: Defusing the Bomb

Chapter 7: Fair Share of the Blame

Chapter 8: In the Control Seat

Chapter 9: Under the Microscope

Chapter 10: Turning Things Around

Afterword

References

Introduction

I think you have heard the saying, It’s not all sunshine and roses (Main, 2013), which you can apply to parenting too. Some parents are very selfish with their children because they are too attached and controlling. Helena is one of them, whose mother was overbearing from infancy and whose daughter’s crying irritated her. She lost her vision at seven years old but got it back after 24 surgeries. Her mother, Maurine, was unconcerned about her daughter's health problems and manipulative, and she frequently pretended to be ill to get attention.

Her father was also a narcissist, a gambler, and an alcoholic who was aware of his ex-wife's behavior and tried to confront and protect Helen. However, her grandparents, who were supportive and did not blame their granddaughter for her mother’s problems, helped her grow up as a healthy individual. Nowadays, Helen and her mother's relationship is still emotionally distant, and Maurine thinks she is the center of attention but keeps in touch.

A famous Arabic poet and philosopher, Khalil Gibran, stressed that you are not the owner of your children because they can make decisions for themselves. They owe you nothing, even though you gave birth to them, took care of them, and raised them. Remember that it is not a merit to have children but a gift to you, and you can learn from them as they grow up because life is not standing still. Punishment and manipulation of children can only cause psychological harm when they do not meet your expectations and they start to resist and fight against you.

The only things you can give them are unconditional love and support. You might also give them the freedom to feel, create, and just be happy. That’s all. Children only need the opportunity to grow up as fully functioning individuals and go in the desired direction with suitable means. This will help them feel like they are brave, valuable, and important members of their family and society.

Yes, as a parent or guardian, you can have a consistent and happy relationship with your children, even when expected challenges arise. You just need to be more considerate and implement the right strategies. Therefore, you need to be open and honest, be more demanding of yourself, and respond appropriately to the growth and development challenges of your children. Simply begin to see your children as they are—their needs and abilities, what they say, and how they feel. It will help to keep a healthy relationship with them.

This book, How to Stop Yelling at Your Kids, will teach you how to parent your children with the objective of establishing healthy relationships. It will offer you useful strategies to deal with your children if they display difficult behavior. Moreover, you will gain an understanding of the challenges that can develop between narcissistic parents and their children. Furthermore, you will realize that there are many other parents who face similar challenges when raising their children. However, most importantly, you will understand the importance of having the right approach when dealing with children who display difficult behavior to maintain their overall well-being.

Chapter 1: What Narcissistic Parenting Looks Like

Parents with narcissistic traits face a unique set of challenges when raising children, often stressing their authority and misusing it. Therefore, if children face challenges later in adult life, the reason might be how their parents raised them.

What Is Narcissism?

In simple terms, narcissism itself is a psychological state when people think that they stand out from ordinary people and are very important, which irritates those around them. Others may find them attractive at first because they appear very confident, even though they are not. It is true that the number of such people is increasing nowadays; however, there is no psychological research evidence. For example, people who are constantly taking selfies of themselves or famous people who show their personal lives to the world. This kind of behavior can become an obsession and disturb normal life.

When you are narcissistic, you might feel the desire to be appreciated, admired, and noticed to feel happy. It may cause harm to your interpersonal and work relationships because you are not easily satisfied and not willing to change your behavior easily, and it becomes hard for others to be around you. It is especially hard for narcissists, who look very pleasant and attractive at first, to truly love someone long-term, be honest, and treat another person equally because they lack understanding of emotions. Moreover, narcissistic people are very strict when it comes to romantic relationships, and they are selfish because they want what those people have for themselves and want to separate from family and friends.

Nevertheless, based on the study, people who suffer from a high level of narcissistic personality disorder (NPD), which is not common, are well aware of being selfish (Psychology Today Staff, 2019). It means they do not truly appreciate themselves, but are so in love with their ideal selves that they hide their insecurities behind masks. But, in the absence of such disorder, people can, from time to time, be selfish, unpleasant, and preoccupied. Besides, people are usually diagnosed with depression or other mental disorders other than NPD.

The problem of narcissism is by no means a new phenomenon, and it has become a frequent diagnosis and the focus of attention among psychologists. In 1979, Robert Raskin and Calvin S. Hall created the widely accepted Narcissistic Personality Inventory (NPI) method, which is very useful to determine whether a person deals with a narcissistic psychological disorder and what the reasons are. The scoring varies from 0 to 40, and usually, the result is somewhere in the middle, although some people