Journeyer’s Chronicles

I initially saw Screamfree Parenting: The Revolutionary Approach to Raising Your Kids by Keeping Your Cool, by Hal Edward Runkel, a licensed marriage and family therapist and relationship coach, in a New York Times bestseller list. I passed over the book at first, as I don’t read a lot of parenting books. I have my tried and true favourites and tend to feel that reading the latest fad parenting techniques only confuses things for me.

I came across the book again later on and decided to give it a go, as it was still in the bestseller list. I have to say I’m glad I picked it up. It was a lot different than I expected - lots of common sense, with only one section that seemed initially fadish (later in the book it made more sense to me).

What was really surprising was the focus of the book. It wasn’t, as I had expected, about changing or moulding the behaviour of your children. The focus was fairly and squarely on the parents’ behaviour. This is something I haven’t come across before.

Why do we scream?

In Screamfree Parenting, screaming (or withdrawing or whatever negative behaviour is exhibited when situations escalate) is described as a loss of control, both of ourselves and of the situation. The philosphy behind Screamfree Parenting asks

How are our kids supposed to cope with a situation, when we’ve lost control of it

The author explains that when our kids make mistakes or break the rules, they look to us for guidance. Instead we often blow our tops, stressing out ourselves and the kids. Then kids then react to our behaviour, on top of trying to figure out what went wrong initially. This leads to a vicious cycle of arguments, yelling and other anti-social behaviour.

The Screamfree mantra

The following words are repeated a number of times throughout the book:

You are not responsible for your children. You are responsible to your children.

Runkel explains that when we feel responsible for our children, we tend to see their mistakes or misbehaviour as a reflection on ourselves. We tend to focus on fixing things or doing things for the child which can also be detrimental to raising an adult who can fend for themselves in the real world.

When we change our approach to being responsible to our children, it is easier to take a step back from potentially angry confrontations and put some of the methods from the book into practice. It also stops our children from feeling they need to behave a certain way just to make us happy. Instead, in theory, the good behaviour comes intrinsically.

The book

Topics covered in the book include:

• Focusing on yourself and discovering why you react the way you do
• Recognising what parts of parenting you find challenging
• The impact of labels on both parents and children
• The creation of space and place for family members
• Implementing strategies to make consequences meaningful and consistent

Each chapter finishes with a series of reflection questions that help to reinforce the thinking behind the methods described in that chapter.

Scattered throughout are case studies which help to expand on the theories put forward. All seem to be realistic and what the average parent could expect to be dealing with, making the content even more relevant.

My opinion

Who doesn’t want a screamfree relationship with their kids? The book, on the whole, makes a lot of sense and I’ve decided to give the methods advocated by Runkel a go.

A couple of chapters into the book, I thought that the Screamfree approach would fairly easy for me to implement. I like to think I am a reasonably calm person, able to take most matters in my stride. I was in for a shock, however. The book made me more aware of my reactions to the kids’ behaviours. I realised I don’t always act in a calm manner, and doing so in the heat of battle is a lot harder than I thought it would be.

I have noticed, when I am screamfree, that situations don’t escalate. You know the story - you start yelling at the kids, they yell back, you yell louder. The whole episode is calmer, which is a good start

I have one major question of Screamfree Parenting. What happens to the anger that is suppressed by the parent? Once the method has been used for some time, the initial response is less likely to be anger. However, initially and for more serious misdemeanours, there is bound to be some anger felt by the parent. Runkel provided advice regarding a support network for parents, however I feel this may not always be a practical solution at the time a “blow up” is happening.

I recommend this book to parents looking for a way to reduce anxiety in their relationships with their kids. As Runkel suggests in the introduction, you may not take on board the whole book but there’s plenty to make you think. This is a parenting book that will continue to provide relevant advice from when your kids are preschoolers through to teenagers. It is one that I will be referring back to a number of times.