“Bennett! We don?t flush our underpants down the toilet! Do you understand"! No underpants! Only pee and poop and toilet paper!? I bellowed.
My then four-year-old son, caught red-handed with his fingers on the flusher, looked at me with wide-eyed shock and then covered his ears with his hands, while his Nemo briefs swirled down into the sewage system. I?d been telling Bennett for weeks not to flush toothpaste, shoes and even a book down the commode. This underpants transgression was the last straw. I went berserk, morphing from rational parent to screaming psychopath in seconds. To make matters worse, the bathroom window was open, and the neighbours had been serenaded with my crazy-lady tirade.

I don?t yell often, but when I do raise my voice, it?s because something has pushed me over the edge. I am not alone in exercising my vocal cords with my kids. Whether parents yell because they believe in old-school discipline or just lose their cool sometimes, a 2003 study published in the Journal of Marriage and Family found that close to 90 percent of the nearly one thousand parents surveyed copped to getting shouty with their children in the previous year. What?s more, for families with kids older than seven, almost 100 percent of parents admitted to yelling. ?Parents yell because they?re getting pulled in a million different directions and something happens that makes them frustrated. They see their kids fighting or the child is doing something...