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Is it ok to yell at your kids when instructing them in cases of emergency/survival?

  • Absolutely

    Votes: 1,549 89.6%
  • Hmmm....not sure

    Votes: 7 0.4%
  • Depends on the situation/child

    Votes: 153 8.8%
  • Absolutely not

    Votes: 20 1.2%

  • Total voters
    1,729

Deleted member 176

User requested account closure
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Oct 25, 2017
37,160
Failure as a parent? Naw. people yell that's what we do , kids yell that's what we do.
Yeah kids do it. I don't respect any adult who screams out of frustration or anger, it's an emotional failure on the level of throwing your controller at the wall when you're mad at a video game. Set a better example.

Yeah that won't help anyone, haha. But there is a lot of variation in shouting when it comes to volume-levels. Top of voice screaming will do nothing good in most cases. Except when you scream for help.
Oh true, I guess I would scream if I got stuck under a rock lol
 
OP
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brainchild

Independent Developer
Verified
Nov 25, 2017
9,482
It makes them less alert because they're panicking because they're children and their parent is screaming at them.

This statement contradicts itself. If you are panicking, you are physically in a higher state of alert. And not all children panick to the point of incompetence when being yelled at. At some point your child will understand the tone of voice associated with dangerous situations and interpret them as dangerous situations.
 

Deleted member 176

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37,160
This statement contradicts itself. If you are panicking, you are physically in a higher state of alert. And not all children panick to the point of incompetence when being yelled at. At some point your child will understand the tone of voice associated with dangerous situations and interpret them as dangerous situations.
No. You're having a shocked reaction to the high volume and your body is too busy focusing on that to actually listen to the advice.

Like if a kid is holding something fragile and you scream at them to be careful they'll probably drop it because you screamed at them.
 
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brainchild

Independent Developer
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Nov 25, 2017
9,482
No. You're having a shocked reaction to the high volume and your body is too busy focusing on that to actually listen to the advice.

Like if a kid is holding something fragile and you scream at them to be careful they'll probably drop it because you screamed at them.

That's still a higher state of alert; doesn't mean it'll magically make you a competent survivalist, but the adrenaline pumping through your veins in response to fear physiologically raises awareness of danger even if you're not particularly adept at removing yourself from the dangerous situation.
 

Deleted member 176

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37,160
That's still a higher state of alert; doesn't mean it'll magically make you a competent survivalist, but the adrenaline pumping through your veins in response to fear physiologically raises awareness of danger even if you're not particularly adept at removing yourself from the dangerous situation.
I think anyone who works with children will tell you that it's not constructive. I don't like justifying bad behavior with half-baked logic.
 
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brainchild

Independent Developer
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Nov 25, 2017
9,482
I think anyone who works with children will tell you that it's not constructive. I don't like justifying bad behavior with half-baked logic.

As I've mentioned many times in this thread already, I have five children. I have hardly ever yelled at my kids over the years, but if I had ever found myself in a Bird Box situation when they were much younger, I absolutely would have spoken to them similarly to the way Malorie did with her children. You might see it as bad parenting but I see it as a means of survival.
 

Deleted member 176

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As I've mentioned many times in this thread already, I have five children. I have hardly ever yelled at my kids over the years, but if I had ever found myself in a Bird Box situation when they were much younger, I absolutely would have spoken to them similarly to the way Malorie did with her children. You might see it as bad parenting but I see it as a means of survival.
You can have children and still be misguided about effective parenting techniques.
 

SliceSabre

Member
Oct 25, 2017
4,556
No, yelling at your child traumatizes them more than being horribly killed like what happened to people in that movie.

/s

Of course it's ok to yell at children in a dangerous situation!
 

Elandyll

Avenger
Oct 25, 2017
8,827
I'll go further.

If getting your child out of a frozen/ panic attack trance requires a slap in the face, I think it would be justified (as in to get out of dodge and away from danger), specially if yelling only adds to the panic.
 

game-biz

Member
Oct 25, 2017
4,724
I've never not heard parents yell at their children. Rather that, instead of ignoring them.
 

$10 Bagel

Banned
Oct 25, 2017
2,481
Multiple times throughout the movie Sandra Bullock talks to Boy and Girl in a calm voice and Girl still does whatever the fuck she wants, like kids usually do

Anyone saying they wouldn't is laughable. Your kid about to get mauled by a bear, you're just gonna sit there and in low monotone voice say "hey watch out"

Oh shit you got mauled. Well, at least you died going out as an equal
 

Josh378

Member
Oct 27, 2017
3,521
Added a poll to a get a better sense of consensus.



Yeah, some people are against it no matter what. I'm curious to see how many though.


The real question would be, how would these same parents react in a Zombie Apocalypse. If it means my Kids lives to see another day, I am going to yell to get their attention. At the same time, yelling could alert nearby Zombies...or see movie "A Quiet Place."
 

McScroggz

The Fallen
Jan 11, 2018
5,973
You are given a set of circumstances to consider in which yelling at your child could save their life (though it's possible that yelling wouldn't accomplish this); they aren't inherently acceptable scenarios (as acceptability is a matter of subjectivity) and they're not prescribed as the right circumstances, just the relevant ones. The only emergencies that are excluded from this set are emergencies where yelling could not possibly help to save the life of the child; such emergencies are paradoxical with respect to the question, so I have deemed them irrelevant for the purposes of this poll. If there were more room in the thread title and poll title, I could've mentioned that the emergencies I'm referring to are ones where yelling can actually save the life of the child, but frankly, that seems implicit in the question, so it didn't occur to me that I would need to spell that out.

As for why the poll only includes emergency/survival situations, that's simply because I thought about what Malorie did in Bird Box and wondered how many people would agree or disagree with her actions in such a scenario and built the premise of this thread from there. More specifically, I was interested in seeing if there was a significant portion of people who have more consideration for the type of emergency involved, and wondered how many people felt that the type of emergency didn't matter.

With consideration of the relevant emergencies where yelling at your child could save their life, your options to vote on if it would acceptable to do so are as follows: a categorically affirmative response, an uncertain response, a conditional response, and a categorically negative response. These options should be sufficient to cover the potential spectrum of opinions on this issue. If you answer "absolutely", you are not just saying "yes", you are saying "yes, without qualification or exception", which includes all emergencies where yelling could save the child's life. If you answer "Depends on the situation/child" you are saying, "it could be acceptable in some emergencies, and it could be unacceptable in other emergencies, so whether it is acceptable or not depends on the emergency and/or the child involved in the emergency".

If more people would read the OP, I don't think it would be that confusing. I made it pretty clear that this poll was based on what happened in Bird Box so complaining about what this thread isn't is really getting beside the point.

I do, however, appreciate your input and I can see how going into this thread and voting right away could lead to confusion.

I'm empathetic to the nuance you are trying to find and I appreciate you inovlving yourself instead of just seeing a thread backfire and walk away. Like I said I believe the confusion is, number one, the general idea that somebody (especially a parent) wouldn't do something as socially normal as yell at their child in an emergency/survival situation is ludicrous - granted that's not the discussion you want to have, but that's the first barrier for the discussion. The second part is that specific to your topic is whether or not Sandra Bullock's aggressiveness in how she communicated with the children in Bird Box is okay given the circumstances but the poll, in my opinion, doesn't really reflect that.

That's what I said having a delineation between only to save a child's life or protect them from grave harm and yelling to get their attention or get them to listen is an important one. Because saying "Yes. Absolutely," still covers a wide range of situations regardless of the interpretation and it makes it redundant to have another response that's only in certain circumstances.

Even taking it a step further the people who chose "Yes. Absolutely," still would admit there are plenty of circumstances where it's not okay either socially or strategically to yell at a child in an emergency or survival situation. Baked into whether somebody would yell at the child is the idea that it depends on the situation.

That's why, to me, the third option isn't helping the discussion. But these are just my interpretations of course.
 

Fiction

Fanthropologist
Member
Oct 25, 2017
6,778
Elf Tower, New Mexico
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brainchild

Independent Developer
Verified
Nov 25, 2017
9,482
I'm empathetic to the nuance you are trying to find and I appreciate you inovlving yourself instead of just seeing a thread backfire and walk away. Like I said I believe the confusion is, number one, the general idea that somebody (especially a parent) wouldn't do something as socially normal as yell at their child in an emergency/survival situation is ludicrous - granted that's not the discussion you want to have, but that's the first barrier for the discussion. The second part is that specific to your topic is whether or not Sandra Bullock's aggressiveness in how she communicated with the children in Bird Box is okay given the circumstances but the poll, in my opinion, doesn't really reflect that.

That's what I said having a delineation between only to save a child's life or protect them from grave harm and yelling to get their attention or get them to listen is an important one. Because saying "Yes. Absolutely," still covers a wide range of situations regardless of the interpretation and it makes it redundant to have another response that's only in certain circumstances.

Even taking it a step further the people who chose "Yes. Absolutely," still would admit there are plenty of circumstances where it's not okay either socially or strategically to yell at a child in an emergency or survival situation. Baked into whether somebody would yell at the child is the idea that it depends on the situation.

That's why, to me, the third option isn't helping the discussion. But these are just my interpretations of course.

Thanks for your input. I agree that the poll could have been constructed a bit more thoughtfully so as to better reflect the actual question that I had, which was more about Malorie's actions and actions similar to that than the general idea of yelling at a child in an emergency. However, given the options available, and how they've been defined for the purposes of this poll, I think it's still possible to answer that question sufficiently, though I do agree that at face value the poll might come across as being prohibitively confusing. My apologies for that.