Raise Your Voice for a Reason

Sometimes you need to raise your voice when you raise your child.

I raise my voice not because I am mad. It is possible not to lose cool if you are cool with her constantly and consistently. This is not the best way to put it, but if you exercise more discipline during the peace time, you don't got to war with her because she drags you into it. You are at ease to pick your battles. You don't get emotionally effected when she is emotional or not behaving properly. To me, it's not bad to get mad, your child needs to encounter some negative emotional confrontations in order to get immune. It's simply useless to get mad.

I raise my voice because I need to stress the seriousness and urgency. I make sure that I carry in my voice the SPECIFIC instructions that she CAN follow at that moment: 1) what she must do and 2) the consequence of such doing or not doing. More specific, the better.

"FINISH your dinner, otherwise you don't HAVE your snack." If she chooses not to finish her dinner, I don't give her snack. I let her choose. She chose already. End of the story. You say, well, she still doesn't get to finish her dinner, but she gets her consequence. Fair enough.

So I raise my voice to get her into the action or to get her to make up her mind. I don't raise my voice to show her that I am mad. At this age, they know well enough how to make you mad and they don't have all the willingness to make you otherwise.