There’s nothing unusual about a child screaming, but sometimes it can become a go-to response to any situation. Janet responds to a parent who says her 3-year-old has become “stuck on screaming… She screams at her friends in the park, at my mom, at my dad, at my husband, at strangers…” And because of this parent’s childhood environment, her daughter’s screaming is triggering. She says it’s very difficult for her to stay calm and reasonable. At times, it becomes too much for her, and although she realizes the irony in this, she ends up screaming back.
Transcript of “How to Stop the Screaming”
Hi, this is Janet Lansbury. Welcome to Unruffled.
A few weeks ago I did a podcast about whining. And I think we can all agree that whining is one of the most challenging things for us to respond to as parents, because it is so earsplitting and it just gets under our skin. The only thing that maybe is worse than that—besides a child, of course, hitting us or hurting us physically—is screaming. Those bloodcurdling screams that even a baby not even one year old will sometimes do. It’s very, very hard to respond to that in a way that doesn’t unwittingly give power to it and encourage it.
I received a note from a parent about screaming, and I hope that I can help her help her child to stop doing this:
Janet-
I’m a longtime listener and a big fan. Your approach and cool-headed weekly soothing and authentic voice have been a cornerstone of my parenting since the beginning.
I have a three- and a two-year-old, and I’ve been noticing my three-year-old becoming stuck on screaming. When something doesn’t go her way or somebody misunderstands her, she will scream at the top of her lungs and often stamp her foot or throw herself down on the floor.
I already know why this is triggering for me. I grew up in a pretty dysfunctional environment where someone was always screaming. It really makes me anxious and sets my heart thumping to hear screaming. I’ve done a lot of work to try to stay calm or take space when I need to, and I’m pretty consistent in my responses: “When you scream and yell like that, I can’t understand you. Can you try again?” At least the first 10 times she screams a day.
But I quickly lose my armor, it becomes too much for me. “Please don’t scream at me. I don’t want to be screamed at,” I end up saying. I can see why this maybe is not the “right” thing to do, but I don’t know what to do here. The next stage after that is yelling back, “Stop screaming!” And yeah, I get the irony.
I brought this question to another parenting leader and she told me to just wear earplugs. This advice didn’t sit well with me, and here’s why. I’m not the only one she’s screaming at. She screams at her friends at the park, at my mom, at my dad, at my husband, at strangers who try to ask her a question when she’s upset. Usually she’s a very sweet and loving little girl, but sometimes she just explodes.
During calm moments, I’ve talked about screaming and why it doesn’t help us get what we want and why it makes the people around us feel bad. She definitely understands that it’s not a good way to react to situations and people, but I feel like she can’t control herself. She’s an extremely communicative, intelligent, sharp, and empathetic little girl, and this screaming has been going on for a little over six months now.
Things that have changed: Her little brother went from being pretty nonverbal to all of a sudden talking in complete sentences after his second birthday in October. Last month, we had a very sudden and violent death in the family. My daughter was spared the gruesome details, but I did not hide the basic facts from her. I think this amplified the situation, but again, this has been going on for some time and I’m not sure what to do here.
A lot of the common parenting advice is to ignore the screaming and praise the “desired behavior,” but this doesn’t feel right to me either. I want to validate her emotions, but I also want to hold the expectation that she treat other people with dignity and respect. And this means don’t scream at them, don’t scream at me. It feels like a hitting behavior, but unlike with hitting, I can’t physically and gently stop her from doing it.
Please send help!
I really appreciate this parent reaching out to me, as I appreciate all the notes that I receive. I was actually thinking I’d like to consult with her and record it for this podcast, but I thought this was a way that I could give her some feedback sooner because that would end up taking longer by the time we schedule that.
I’m just going to take a shot at what’s going on here, and I have to be honest and say that there’s a part of this I can help her with and a part of this that I can’t help her with. The part I can’t help her with is her history. I mean, none of us feels comfortable when our child is screaming, it tends to make everyone’s heart thump. But especially if a parent had to be in this kind of environment as a child where it’s unpredictable, people are scary, they seem angry, so you feel unsafe. It’s almost impossible to feel settled when somebody’s going to explode at any moment. It’s very threatening to you.
For us to help our child in these instances, we have to get to a place where we can understand that our child doing this behavior is not in any way threatening to us. This is not the same thing at all. And I guess that’s obvious. With her common sense, she knows this. But what I can’t help her with is for her to make that transition. I don’t know if she’s in counseling or has a therapist or anything, but I’ve brought a lot of people on to this show that are experts in healing these wounds from our childhood: Elisabeth Corey (here, here, and here), recently Lavinia Brown (here and here). So if this parent hasn’t listened to those episodes, I would look them up or reach out to one of these people who help people with child trauma. Because that is trauma, when you have to feel scared that people are going to be screaming around you, these adults that are already so big and powerful in your life are going to be screaming.
To make that transition from this is a threatening, scary situation that I can’t handle to this is a tiny child that’s got all this scream bubbling up inside them that has nothing to do with me, can in no way hurt me, that’s a big one. But that’s kind of what’s necessary, or at least going a little bit in that direction. What I can help this parent with is how to perceive this and what to do to help this little girl, or any child, stop screaming. That’s what I’m going to talk about. I wish I could help her with the other part, but that’s just not my field and I’m not equipped to do it. There’s some amazing people out there, most of them I’ve had on my podcast, that can help you.
So that’s the big one, is this understanding that our child isn’t screaming at us. It can feel that way, but this little girl screaming is really that she’s still a baby and she’s overwhelmed. And as this parent said, as she knows, she can’t control herself. I think it’ll help me to help her and anyone listening if I kind of go through this letter so I can address some of the details and explain my recommendations.
First she says, “when something doesn’t go her way or somebody misunderstands her, she will scream at the top of her lungs and often stamp her foot or throw herself down on the floor.” So that’s just this impulsive bursting of feelings. And these situations aren’t what’s causing it, nor is her parent causing it. She’s getting touched off by something that’s already there, kind of bubbling around inside her. And it very well may be this situation with the brother. I mean, they’re only one year apart. She was unable to understand the emotions that she had when she had a baby sibling and she’s only a baby still, she’s only one. She probably never really processed this rivalry that children feel when there’s a new baby. She didn’t probably feel it then, but now she does, because now he’s a walking, talking person to her. So it could very much be to do with that.
But then it’s also about this parent’s feelings about it. Because it’s never about what we say or do, it’s always about how we’re feeling. This parent feeling triggered by her daughter’s screaming is making her daughter feel unsafe. Children need us to be the ones that can handle them, that aren’t going to be overwhelmed by them. And there’s no way that they can really feel totally safe or comfortable when we’re overwhelmed by them or when we’re uncomfortable about anything. So that’s another aspect to this.
Somebody dying in the family, gosh, that’s awful. I’m so sorry about that. What that means is not necessarily what the daughter hears about what happened, but the way people are feeling around her. People have to be feeling kind of volatile, intense emotions around that. That’s what children take in more than the facts. They take in, How are the adults feeling? And they’re kind of riding along with you on your feelings. So that’s another element. But I really think a lot of this could be to do with not having processed that transition to being a big sister.
But it doesn’t really matter what it’s coming from. That’s only to help us put it into perspective more. All we need to understand is that she’s three years old, she’s exploding, and it makes her want to stomp and throw herself on the floor and scream. And when she does this, her parent gets really uncomfortable and scared and anxious. And all of this is understandable. I mean, this parent’s feelings are so valid, and that’s why I’m saying that I can’t really help with that part. What I’m saying is that what a child needs is the safety of a parent who can let them fall apart and explode without feeling totally overwhelmed by it.
This parent says, “I already know why this is triggering for me. I grew up in a pretty dysfunctional environment where someone was always screaming. It really makes me anxious and sets my heart thumping to hear screaming.” Yes, yes, yes, so valid. And that’s what’s making it hard and why her daughter’s still screaming so much. This is just something for this parent to look at, not to feel guilty about at all, but to know that anything we feel is going to have an effect.
Now, like I said before, nobody likes screaming, but what helps this kind of behavior to just blow over, we’re going to react, but then we’re going to be able to put it in its place in our mind, instead of feeling threatened by it. And if we’re feeling threatened by it, I love that this parent says she takes her space, that’s the next thing she said. “I’ve done a lot of work to try and stay calm or take space when I need to, and I’m pretty consistent in my responses.” So taking the space, but the way that we take the space matters, because we want to take it in a way that helps our child to feel safe, creates safety. It’s not the same as accepting the behavior, I’m just going to let you scream in my face. Get your distance, do your breathing, feel your feet on the floor. Know that this is actually a very safe situation. And if you can feel that, then your daughter will feel that.
And I wouldn’t try to say too much here because she can’t really hear it if she’s in it. So I would take space with this attitude of, Wow, okay, I’m here when you want to tell me what’s going on. I’m not saying necessarily even say those words, but that kind of feeling like, Okay, that really touched you off and I’m going to allow you to compose yourself before I act on this. That’s how you teach a child, also, that it’s not okay to do that. They learn that it doesn’t get them anything. Like this parent says later, she told her that it doesn’t help us get what we want. But they don’t learn that from us saying it. They learn it through us not jumping up to get them what they want or to get mad at them or try to stop them or do anything for them right there. Not because we’re using that as a tactic, but because we’re allowing space for that explosion. Taking care of yourself, just waiting, seeing her as the unthreatening child she is.
This parent says, “I’m pretty consistent in my responses: ‘When you scream and yell like that, I can’t understand you. Can you try again?'” So I think that might be asking a little too much from her, that she’s going to try again and do it differently. When really, as this parent nails later in the note, she can’t control this. That’s absolutely correct, at three years old. It’s kind of telling that she falls down too and stomps her foot. It is a feeling, not something she’s trying to do just to bother her parent. But it’s being fueled by not only her emotions that are inside her, but the fact that she doesn’t feel safe when she does it. So that just creates more of the feelings that are making her explode, if that makes sense.
This is the thing that we always do with children, or so many of us do. I’m raising my hand, I do it! Even when we know that something isn’t in their control, we still kind of tend to adultify them to the extent that we try to go at them with reason. And that’s a little bit what asking her to try again is. It’s imagining too much consciousness going on there with her, and that’s not where she’s at. When we do it, it’s going to increase our frustration because we’re not going to get the response that we want for that effort of helping her to try it again. So that’s probably going to lead us to feeling worse about this.
But this parent says at least the first 10 times she screams a day that happens, “but I quickly lose my armor, it becomes too much for me.” And then she says, “‘Please don’t scream at me. I don’t want to be screamed at.'” That right there, that’s the child in her talking to the adults in her life. Please don’t scream at me. She probably was never able to say that, because children don’t feel like they have that kind of power. But her child can’t be that person that helps her right there, unfortunately. So this is another kind of response that is going to lead us to feeling more frustrated, more lost, more sad, maybe more scared, that we’re saying, please don’t do this.
And a lot of times we want to do this with all different kinds of behaviors with children. Please stop hurting me. Please just stop. It’s almost like we’re begging our child, and that puts them in this really uncomfortable position. Obviously we don’t mean to, but we’re giving them this power that’s so uncomfortable for them. As this parent says, “I can see why this maybe is not the ‘right’ thing to do, but I don’t know what to do here.” What I would say is you don’t have to do anything, except take care of yourself and do your best to try to see her clearly here as this overwhelmed, tiny child. Unthreatening. This cannot hurt you. She needs us to help her feel safe. That’s what kids need.
Then she says, “The next stage after that is yelling back, ‘Stop screaming!’ And yeah, I get the irony.” Yes, we’re going to lose it if we’re trying reason, right? “Try it another way, I can’t understand you.” Then, “Just please stop. Please, please stop.” Now that doesn’t work. Yes, we’re going to be screaming. Any of us are going to be screaming, because we’ve given away all our power to our child.
She says that she brought this question to a parenting leader and she told her to wear earplugs and it didn’t sit well with her, and here’s why. She said, “I’m not the only one she’s been screaming at. She’s screaming at her friends at the park, at my mom, at my dad, at my husband, at strangers.” So this explosive device keeps going off because it’s not getting deactivated. This is where we have so much power to help her. And this parent can do it, I know she can. Help her to feel safe when she’s having that screaming explosion by knowing that we are safe, she is tiny. Reacting from that perspective and that understanding, allowing her to explode and then recover and be okay. When this mom can feel safer about her screaming, she’s not going to explode as much. That’s happening because she feels unsafe with these feelings.
And talking about the screaming and telling her why it doesn’t help to get what she wants. These are things she already is sensing, that it makes people around her feel bad. She’s already picking up on that. She’s overwhelmed and she’s really doing her best. This is a scream coming from inside her. It’s not something she’s doing to her mom, although I know it can feel like that.
She says, “A lot of the common parenting advice is to ignore the screaming and praise the desired behavior, but this doesn’t feel right to me either. I want to validate her emotions, but I also want to hold the expectation that she treat other people with dignity and respect. And this means don’t scream at them.” So in terms of the parenting advice to ignore and praise the desired behavior, that sounds like kind of behaviorism and it just doesn’t work for behavior that’s emotionally-fueled, impulsive to the point where it is involuntary, like this.
What happens when we ignore and just praise the good behavior? Well, for one thing, that feels really inauthentic to a child. I love that this parent said right at the beginning that she values the authenticity, that’s so important. And that’s why the work is so much about the inner-work that we have to do when we have a situation like this, where we’re getting touched off. Because that’s the only way that we can be authentically safe is because we feel safe. But when we’re ignoring someone when they’re falling apart and exploding and they’re just three years old, it doesn’t feel safe, it feels invisible. It feels like we don’t exist when we do this behavior and that we lose our parent’s affection, we lose our parent’s care. That’s not what parents mean by it, but that’s how it feels to a child: If I do these things, I lose you. You don’t see me. Instead of you seeing me as the tiny, unthreatening, overwhelmed child I am, who doesn’t want to be doing this behavior. You are safe and you can help me feel safe when you feel safe.
And then validating her emotions. That would be after she screams, after she’s done, after she falls on the floor. You see your dear little girl had another explosion, not at you, but from inside herself. She’s not doing well right there, and she picks herself up or she’s still down on the floor. At this point, actually, I wouldn’t recommend this parent says anything, but just feels these things that we’re talking about because of the way that she sees the behavior in her child. And then the words, if there are any, come to her. Her child probably wants to move on and ignore that she did that too. But maybe there’s something you can notice there. After she’s already screamed at the person, you can’t control that, right? She’s already done it. But you can say, “That was surprising to you,” or “You didn’t want them to talk to you,” or “That felt overwhelming, it sounds like.” But the screaming will stop when she feels safe, because it’s all about her feeling threatened in some way.
And that’s interesting, right? Because this parent has the power to give her child what she needed. She needed that safety, and she didn’t get it. But now this parent has the opportunity to see that in her child, that her child needs safety and she’s feeling unsafe, in a much less harsh way than this parent did as a child. But it’s still the element that’s getting in the way here. And when that’s resolved, the behavior will resolve. It will lessen.
This parent says, “It feels like a hitting behavior, but unlike with hitting, I can’t physically and gently stop her from doing it.” Exactly. It’s interesting that she said “physically and gently stop her from doing it.” I should have written back and asked her, but I wonder if this parent feels she has to be so gentle about things. She doesn’t have to be gentle in her response to the behavior. If someone’s screaming, your tone doesn’t have to be way down here, you can be, Whoa, alright! You really didn’t like that. That kind of attitude, seeing it as powerful (but not scary) behavior. But sometimes if we feel that we have to be so gentle and careful and all that, that gets in our way too, because then we’re kind of tiptoeing around a little bit and it’s not going to feel authentic to us and it’s not going to feel safe. There’s that word again, sorry, I keep saying it! It’s not going to feel safe to our child. Why do they have to be so careful around me and so gentle, when I’m hitting? Instead, I’m going to stop you hitting, firmly, with my hand.
So when there’s behavior like this that we can’t physically stop our child from doing, the way to help it stop is to create safety around it and take the power away. The power comes from when it sparks other people off or we feel uncomfortable. And that’s not to say the child feels a good feeling of power around that. They don’t. They feel a scary feeling of power, that makes them feel more like screaming. And that’s really the solution, even with hitting. We’re not going to give this power to throw everybody into a tailspin. We’re going to help you feel safe and stopped, and we’re not going to buy into the behavior by giving you what you want because you scream. It doesn’t sound like this parent is doing that, so that’s good. We’re not going to reinforce it in any way. We’re just going to create a sense of, If you need to go to those places, I am going to try to understand and I have your back. And I know you don’t want to be doing that with strangers or the grandparents or anyone else. Sometimes it’s going to happen, but it’ll happen less and less and less if you have that attitude.
This parent has an opportunity here that she can absolutely meet, and that’s creating safety for her child. And part of doing that, which I can’t help her with, is the visceral responses that she’s having that have nothing to do with reason or me telling her, this is how you should see it and all of that. Just like with children, my giving someone some reasonable advice of what to do is not going to help until we deal with the emotional part.
Again, thank you to this parent, and I’m sorry you had that upbringing and that it’s making your life more complicated right now. But I know that you can do this. You might want to check out my No Bad Kids Master Course for more help with understanding what kids need from us in terms of our responses. Let’s put it bluntly, we just want them to stop screaming, right? This will help them stop screaming.
I really hope some of this helps, and thank you all so much for listening. We can do this.
