Why Do I Keep Yelling at My Kids? A Father’s Honest Reckoning

Personal Essay

A father tries to stop screaming at his kids. It goes about as well as you’d expect.

Illustration by Zohar Lazar

I didn’t grow up with a lot of yelling. Any decent therapist would hear that and say, “We have to stop now. Enjoy your remaining 47 minutes somewhere else.” But that’s the setting I came from. My southern mom was eternally polite and patient. My Connecticut dad made non-reactivity an art form. And adding to the quiet, we were Detroit sports fans in Boston, so I got zero chances to scream in public places. Instead, I learned to keep any big feelings deep inside.

But as I got older, I started playing softball and tennis and, apparently, I could be something of a yeller—and quite a good one. Sure, it looks stupid when someone else does it. Dude, it’s slow-pitch. Your shortstop is wearing a fishing hat. But when I let loose, my words have lilt and a nuance that made others stop and say, “I gotta hear this guy. He’s got some majestic issues.”

When my wife and I had our second child, the tennis and softball stopped. So did the yelling. I was under the impression I was more responsible and didn’t have time for such foolishness. But the yelling was still in there and needed to come out every so often. Mostly, it was at clueless drivers who, my God, wouldn’t leave the parking space I was waiting to get into, or, seriously, were looking at their phone while driving by a school, or—holy eff—just sitting there while I was trying to back out of my driveway and…oh, you were letting me back up and trying to stay out of the way. Sorry. Hope you can’t read lips. I’m just happy that I can drive away and never see you again.

But I admit there’s been another target for my yelling. My kids. I don’t do it around their friends or when I’m coaching their teams, but when we’re home, and other eyes aren’t on me—and that includes in the driveway because that’s totally private—I might, on occasion, slightly raise my voice. It’s usually because my first seven requests, said in a calm, loving manner, haven’t worked, and the only way to break through is to…yeah, I got no good reason.

Yelling is rarely not dumb. No matter how much it might “work,” I never think, I feel so much better now. Look at all the smiles I created. Yet I persist in doing it with my 14- and 11-year-old sons, and I can guess why. I’m tired. I’m done with a conversation before they are. I’m frustrated that they won’t heed my nuggets of wisdom, such as “Come on. Focus,” or “You gotta step it up,” or my number-one hit: “If you just did it the first time, I wouldn’t have to.”

I want to yell for the reasons we all do. I want to be heard, and I want to be right. I want to be appalled, outraged, and aggrieved. I want someone to hear my pointed words and get some justice—namely, free shipping.

And then, in general, sometimes I just want to yell, because, well, I want to yell for the reasons we all do. I want to be heard, and I want to be right. I want to be appalled, outraged, and aggrieved. I want someone to hear my pointed words and get some justice—namely, free shipping. For a few minutes, I don’t want to be in control, in charge, or an adult. Sometimes, I just want someone to make me a sandwich and let me go to my room to listen to records.

Since that’s not happening, I need better outlets for my yelling. But where? At whom? Ticket agents and customer service representatives are no more. Chat boxes simulate caring and conversation while achieving neither, and no matter how forcefully I type “no” or slam “not likely” on a survey, there is no release. In desperation, just to get any response, I go to a company’s Frequently Asked Questions page, which amazingly never includes a question that I’ve ever asked. Check that. Once, as an icebreaker, I asked someone if they knew how Xfinity was making their life better. (They didn’t.)

Could I take responsibility for my behavior and try to be a more reasonable person? Sure, but there’s no fun in that. Instead, I blame you, AI. You have made me yell at my babies.

Or possibly you didn’t. Maybe I should just try to yell less at my kids. And I decided to do just that with my version of a sober December.

The last month of the year seemed like the perfect time: All we had going on was my younger son’s birthday, Hanukkah, Christmas, the longest public school vacation ever, and the fact that we don’t ski, so there would be gobs of downtime that would never be filled. My next goal is to refrain from carbs on Thanksgiving.

Before I entered this gauntlet, Beth Kurland, a psychologist in Norwood, gave me some reminders. Be aware of what puts me in a less-than-stellar mood. Realize that yelling is a protective move, part of the fight-or-flight response, and that while the threat might be under 54 inches, insistent, relentless, loud, unreasonable, not moving out anytime soon, and often doing all of this during a car ride, the threat isn’t so dire. Plus, most everyone ends up failing since “there’s only so many times you want to ask for this thing to happen,” she says. “We reach a tipping point.” At least she didn’t mention the importance of breathing.

And then she did. But it’s not just breathing. It’s the exhalation that matters. When it’s longer and slower, it calms down the nervous system, and holy eff, another breathing tip. Really?

But I had nothing else that seemed to be working, so I gave it a shot and goddamned if it didn’t help. It gave me just enough pause to think, You want to be less like a lunatic right now? And the answer was usually, Why yes, I do, and so I did. Whenever a skirmish between the kids would bubble up, I’d do my routine: Exhaaaaaale and then think of how I wanted to be. I kept doing that, and for the first five days, I was killing it. I was so happy, and I had to imagine everyone else was. I was cured. I was never gonna have to yell ever, ever, ever again, and I’d probably get nominated for some national, or at least regional, award, which would probably be Dumbass of the Year.

Because on Day 6, it was trash day and it was a windy trash day. I was outside trying to corral my barrels. One lid came off, and the same box flew down the street for a second time, and Who was the crazy person yelling four-letter words at cardboard? Oh, it was me. But my kids were at school, so it was okay. I was just doing a little self-care. It was me time.

I never imploded over the month, but the non-yelling became less easy. One Saturday afternoon, my son and I pulled in opposite directions on a bowl. Tortilla chips were lost, and I reacted. Was it a yell? Technically, yes, made worse by the fact that it was over tortilla chips. It was a stupid use of yelling capital, if such a thing even exists.

The problem, I realized, was that my son was right in front of me. My initial success stemmed from always being in another room whenever a tussle happened. Even if it was just the kitchen, I could take three calming steps, enough to prepare my head. But on this afternoon, with this bowl, it was, “Boom. Guy stole the ball. Time to get back on D. No time to think.”

I could shake off that slip-up, which has never been easy for me. My parents, remember, were quiet folks, and each time I yell, it feels like a kind of failure. But I tell myself that there’s no perfect score to this game, a thought I might one day fully buy into.

The bigger problem was that even while I was yelling much less, I didn’t feel much better. I actually felt worse. My volume might have been down, but is saying something through clenched teeth really any better?

Of course it is. One is harsh and unnecessary, while the other is a completely gentle, sweet kind of communication that has its own weekend workshop at Kripalu.

It’s like most things. You can do everything right, and it still doesn’t work. I did mention all the holidays, the birthday, school vacation, the money going out. Did I mention AI is coming for my job while I’m busy not yelling?

The thing is, not yelling is the bare minimum for decent behavior. It’s not some salve for happiness. Oh, and there’s also a scientific reason for my mood.

“Some days you feel shittier than others,” Kurland says.

If that were on a pillow, I’d hug it every night to fall asleep.

Things eventually evened out. I still had moments of non-glory, because video games have not disappeared from the earth. But I also checked myself before bursting into an early-morning scuffle with a pep talk that might have involved “Sack up.” (Also another great pillow phrase.)

Even though December ended, it’s not like I decided, “Glad that’s over.” I’ve continued to tinker with my ways. One is trying to say what I want maybe just five times. The other is playing with my voice, changing the tone and the cadence. It seems to work, if only because it’s different enough to make my kids stop and wonder who that strange, calm man is. The one reminding them that, yes, we brush teeth before we go to bed.

I actually have a good feeling about this method. I see it lasting past the novelty stage and leading to big, big things, like a book, media appearances, and hopefully a coffee mug. I’ll finally have a social media presence, only because I’ll have the cash to hire someone to manage it. I’ll become a parenting expert, The Delivery Man (trademark pending). I’ll do trainings, workshops, and one-on-one sessions. Use any accent you want. It’s your voice. This might be the greatest invention ever—right after I design a metal water bottle that doesn’t dent and fall over.

Now that’s a reason to yell.

This article was first published in the print edition of the March 2026 issue with the headline: “Yelling in Cars With Boys.”