A friend recently passed along this New York Times article that made me really think about my actions as a parent.

In “For Some Parents, Shouting is the New Spanking,” writer Hilary Stout explores the way some parents punish their kids by yelling.

“I’ve worked with thousands of parents and I can tell you, without question, that screaming is the new spanking,” Amy McCready, the founder of Positive Parenting Solutions told The New York Times. “This is so the issue right now. As parents understand that it’s not socially acceptable to spank children, they are at a loss for what they can do. They resort to reminding, nagging, timeout, counting 1-2-3 and quickly realize that those strategies don’t work to change behavior. In the absence of tools that really work, they feel frustrated and angry and raise their voice. They feel guilty afterward, and the whole cycle begins again.”

Does this sound familiar? While reading the story, I felt as though the reporter was writing about me.

In her article, Stout interviewed parenting experts who said that some parents resort to yelling as a way to release stress especially since so many moms and dads lead such as hectic lives.

Yelling has become the norm in many families, but its effects can still be harmful, according to sociologist Murray A. Strauss. “But it affects a child,” he told the New York Times. “If someone yelled at you at work, you’d find that pretty jarring. We don’t apply that standard to children.”

How often do you find yourself yelling at your kids? What can parents do to curb this behavior?

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