How to keep your kids quiet

Published: 7 July, 2011

• “SCREAMING kids are bad for your ears”? (Letters, June 30) Bloody painful… but, so simple to stop.

There is a clear difference between a cry of genuine distress, and shrieking and bawling for the sake of it. 

Start early in infancy: facing them squarely, tell the infant “Stop that!” If the child doesn’t stop, simply pinch the nostrils and seal the mouth for a few seconds.

Repeat as necessary, without any fuss or further ado, and, above all, be consistent and be firm.

Don’t waffle on or try to “negotiate” with the child as they will just continue to manipulate you.

In his daft world, where a child riles the parent, that child is seen and, worse still, heard!

Sadly, many adults are so inept now that we constantly hear of the situation boiling over, with frustrated adults finally lashing out and harming their children; or in one recent case, as with the couple in a restaurant with their continuously shrieking brat, when a couple at another table complained, the man was hit over the head with a wine bottle, in a violent gesture of desperation. 

Of course, that should never have been allowed to happen, and it was wrong. But, so was the mother in not controlling the child, when she could have sensibly removed the tired and fractious infant to a more appropriate setting.

MARGARET MILNER
Address supplied, N6