Before you start

This is a short book and you can read it in two or three sittings. It's about one habit. You ask your child to do something. You ask again. You ask a third time, louder. Then you shout, and they do it, crying or sullen, and the evening is spoiled. At bedtime you look at them asleep and feel wretched. You promise yourself that tomorrow will be different. On Thursday it happens again.

I'm going to argue three things. The first is that shouting makes sense from the inside. It works, in the moment, and you've usually tried everything else first. The second is that it works for a reason that makes it worse over time. A child who's asked three times and then shouted at learns that the first three asks aren't real, so the shout becomes the only instruction they answer, and you have to shout more. The shout isn't fixing the not listening. It's teaching it. The third is practical. You ask once, close and quiet, you follow it through, and when you do shout, you put it right the same day. Chapters 17 to 21 cover how.

This book doesn't say that you're a bad parent, that children should never be told off, or that you should never raise your voice. A child about to step into the road needs to be shouted at. It says that shouting as the routine way of being obeyed costs more than it gives, and that most of the cost lands on the child.

Four cautions.

If you hit your children, or you're frightened that you might, that's beyond this book. The NHS says smacking doesn't have a lasting positive effect and teaches children that hitting is acceptable, and the research on physical punishment points the same way. Please talk to someone. Your health visitor, your GP, or the free Family Lives parents' helpline on 0808 800 2222.

If your temper frightens your partner as well as your children, or there's violence or threats in the house from anyone, the National Domestic Abuse Helpline is free and open day and night on 0808 2000 247.

If the shouting is new, or has become much worse, and you're also sleeping badly, feeling low most of the day, or finding no pleasure in anything, treat that as a change in your health. See a GP. Parents of small children are often exhausted and sometimes depressed, and the shouting can be the first sign.

And if your child's behaviour is far outside what you see in other children of the same age, at school as well as at home, that's worth raising with the school or a GP, because there may be something to understand before there's anything to fix.

The notes at the back give my sources and their limits. Where I'm giving my own reasoning and not a finding, I'll say so.