How Gordon Ramsay Made Me A Better Parent

Or How I Learnt Why I Yell At My Kid

A short while back I happened to be watching this short video on why chef’s yell.
A light bulb moment for me however, was in one of the comments below the post that said this:

“You don’t need to yell to run a well organized kitchen and if you can’t train staff adequately it certainly says something about a Chefs managerial skills.”

If you put this in the context of parenting, the implication is quite profound.

Every parent yells at their child. But now it became clear as to why I was screaming at mine.

It wasn't his fault at all that he didn't do what I was asking him to do.

It was mine.

It was a reflection of the piss-poor job I’d done of what I expected out of him in any of those situations.

The moment I realized this, the number of times I yelled at my kid went down dramatically.

Now, depending on how old the kid is, the number of times you have to tell or show him the same thing will vary. But that’s ok. If that’s what it takes, then that’s what it takes. Yelling because he’s not “getting it” is not productive in any way.

Every time I felt that I’d said or shown the same thing a hundred times and there was still no change, I figured out that the flaw was likely in the way I was communicating what I wanted rather than in my kid’s ability to understand anything. After all it was a reasonably smart guy, one Albert Einstein that said:

“Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”

To be clear, I still yell at my kid for unwarranted reasons.
But I’m now in a position to evaluate whether that truly was unnecessary or not, and (try to) do better the next time.

The bottom line is that if I expect my kid to see whatever light I want him to see, that’s not going to happen until I put in the effort needed.

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Anuj Adhiya is experimenting with writing about whatever comes to his mind. He’s not quite sure what to expect next. You can connect with him on Twitter