There is no place for squealing in kids’ play. Yelling a bit and generally carrying on? Fine. Being loud because you’re outdoors, with other kids, possibly full of sugar, and excited? No problem - kids need time to go a bit nutso without fear of “the rules”. Playground time is kid time. But that particular ear-splitting/emergency/I’m-being-torn-limb-from-limb-by-a-hungry-lioness SQUEAL ( and we all know the specific style I’m talking about ) is not a vital part of growing up. Your little girl will not need later therapy if she wasn’t allowed to wake up half the neighbourhood as a spoiled brat child. Actually, the poster who mentioned therapy reminds me a bit of Ned Flanders’ beatnik parents (Them’s RULES maaaaan!).
And who knows, the father may have been getting that squealing all day. He taught his little girl appropriate public behaviour. Sorry, I don’t have a problem with that at all. Good on him.
An essential point here is that girls shriek and boys tend to do it much less or not at all.
Siege has been the only one to point out how much women shriek, I think the importance of this cannot be understated.
Many grown women shriek when they see their friends, or meet babies, or get good news, or when Robbie Williams comes on television (in the case of a particular English woman I worked with). I have (mercifully) never noticed men doing this.
Kids probably learn the rule: if female, shriek; if male, don’t. So boys cut it out once they realize that men don’t do it.
Actually, I don’t see how this is an essential point.
I don’t think the OP is referring to that annoying “squeal of delight”, but rather an actual scream. In the case when it became an “issue” in my neighbourhood it was because, as TheLoadedDog said, it was an I’m-Being-Torn-from-Limb-to-Limb scream.
The first few times, I bolted out the door to the rescue, as did my neighbour who was armed with a baseball bat. It’s a very primal scream that you hear in movies like the Texas Chain Saw Massacre – I’ve certainly never seen any adult woman do that when they see their friends, meet a baby, or get good news.
Even when you see the hysterical screaming and crying in old Beatles footage, it’s not like that primal scream.
I live with a night club across the street. If you like, I could send you a recording of men braying like asses at the top of their lungs. Will that suffice? Often it’s WOOOOOOO! But other times, they bellow things like YAAAAAAAH! And I do believe I have some video footage of a guy standing on his car bellowing
MAURYYYYYYYY! Woo-oo-ooo-ooo! to a chap across the road.
Apropos of nothing, my stepsister had an extremely dangerous and annoying play-habit of crying, “Eeek, rape!” I’m glad she learned not to carry that habit out of childhood.
One more vote of praise for the father. I can not stand it when parents take their kids out somewhere and the kids insist on shrieking so. Ugh. I have a 2-year-old brother, whom I love to death, but this is a behavior that has to be addressed. He handles himself pretty well (for a 2-year-old) in public, because he is reprimanded for screaming inappropriately. If parents don’t take this on, their kids become completely insufferable. Kids can and will learn to keep it down a bit, if they’re taught.
As a side rant, parents should also know that kids are kids and will act accordingly. They cannot just sit and chill patiently the way that you can when you get a little older, and it is unreasonable to take them to a place (church, movies, restaurants, etc.) where sitting still and being quite for an extended period of time is the norm. It is simply cruel, imo, to take a kid somewhere that they don’t belong and then punish them for acting like a kid.
Our neighbors have kids, and they sometimes shout and carry on like kids outside do, no big deal. But the people up the hill from us have little grand-daughters who visit and shriek bloody murder. If I’m outside to hear it, it’s enough to make my heart skip a beat and wonder if I should call an ambulance since obviously one of the little brats has fallen out of their tree house. Then they laugh or shout to one another, and I go inside wondering what the hell is wrong with their grandparents for letting them scream that way. I fear someday one of them really will be hurt and no one will do anything since they’re always screaming that way.
I still think the father acted rather dictatorially. Yes, as a child I was allowed to go outside and screech loudly. I grew up in a semi-rural area, we could have farm animals but also there were close neighbors. I remember one of my favorite past-times as a child was to go outside and start crowing like a rooster until the roosters all around the neighborhood would join in. I would do this for hours at a time and I am sure it irritated everyone much much, it was a harmless childs play and no one said a word of discouragement so I remember those times fondly.
The father not allowing his child to scream, ever, is from the idea that a child should be seen and not heard. His actions are telling the child that excitement should be muted. He has not taken into account that he should be teaching her when she can be very expressive. I think the park is a great time for allowing that. If she had continued to scream loud and long, a reminder of courtesy to others and their hearing would be order since children forget and need to be reminded of what had been talked about. Also in this talk a reminder of the consequences for yelling loud enough to hurt others hearings should be given. THEN the consequences being taken.
Yes they might have talked about this before the park, but what she did did not put anyone in danger, so why not allow for some leeway in the judgment. He would have been better off telling her, if I have to tell you more than once that you are not behaving in a manner I find acceptable we will have to leave the park today.
She is a child who still has the ability to play and enjoy the simple things, so let her even if that play is loud. Children are growing up so fast now a days.
Speaking as a kid who did a lot of weird noises and such when she was a child (but no shrieking, see below), there’s a massive difference between childish shouts and yells and the ear-splitting SHRIEK of a little girl who…who can’t find her french fries, who found her french fries, who fell down and skinned her knee, who pushed someone down and is pleased about it…
Not necessarily correct. I was a seen-and-heard child, piping up with the weirdest stuff whenever possible. I had no particular problem with playing Flying Monkeys of Oz on the playground, Let’s Be Kittens on the schoolbus, or The Fairy and the Deer in the front yard, each with its odd varieties of squeal, yell, or (in some cases) strange mew. I talked to grown-ups, constantly.
I also didn’t do the high-pitch super-sonic squeal that I hear many little girls do. Correction: I might’ve done it once. After that once, it was made clear to me that this was inappropriate behavior either inside or out, though yelling was just fine outside and talking and laughing was just fine in.
My voice is naturally pretty loud. Even now my mother occasionally gives me keep-your-voice-down looks when I’m proclaiming so loudly in a restaurant that people can hear me across a noisy room.
I’m not sure you get the sound we’re talking about – the squeal that can clean glass, liquefy earwax, and kill low-flying birds. If I hadn’t seen it in action, I wouldn’t think it could come from a human, or from any living being.
I’m sorry, really am I. I try and try to control my sneezing, but without luck. I hate that I’m loud. Please know that I’m working on it, and would take most advice on how to sneeze quietly.
Agree completely. My younger daughter had one of those high-pitched voices that would shatter glass. When very young she was also completely unable to sit still for much more than 5 minutes. After one or two incidents when some adult had to spend a half hour in the car, parking lot or lobby of a restaurant with her, we stopped taking her to those kinds of places. (Our older daughter had been taken everywhere, and had been perfectly content to sit quietly and watch the passing scene.) When the younger one was able to understand and comply with the rule that you must stay in your seat and only talk quietly, she was then allowed to come with us. No punishments, just the rule that certain places require certain behavior.
My son maintains that teenage Australian girls communicate entirely by alternately screaming, saying OMG!, or I KNOOOOOOOOOW! Maybe this is best nipped in the bud.
I college I lived in a college-owned apartment complex that was set back from a main road on a circular drive. My building was the one closest to the main road. Downstairs we had a pair of women who were in the habit of emitting blood-curdling screams for absolutely no reason. After knocking on their door multiple time to find out if they were alright, we pursued the policy of ignoring them.
One day a woman walking down the circular drive was attacked. A man tried to grab her and pull her into his car. She fended him off and wasn’t hurt, which is great. But no one came out to help her. Me and my roommates heard her screaming but figured it was those %$#@! girls downstairs yelling again.
Everyone in my building felt very guilty. But we’d gotten a little dead to “I’m being attacked” level screams, thanks to the women downstairs. It really sucked.
I have one of each, a 6 year old son and a 5 year old daughter. In my house my son is the loud one unless my daughter is laughing, she’s a pretty loud laugher. I don’t allow the screeching outbursts, there is no reason for that IMHO. My neighbor has a 7 year old daughter and a 15 month old son, they are both squealers. I know if that little girl is near because she’s screeching at the top of her lungs. When my children gather with their friends in the backyard they are usually pretty quiet except for the laughing until SHE comes over. She gets them all screaming at high pitch tones that make chills run down my spine. Both of her parents are quiet people who just don’t want to deal with her so she gets away with anything she wants to.
I applaud the father in the OP for doing something about his child’s outburst. You have to stick to the rules you make with your kids. It’s not easy but that’s part of the job.
Actually, I don’t see how this is an essential point.
Often it’s WOOOOOOO! But other times, they bellow things like YAAAAAAAH! And I do believe I have some video footage of a guy standing on his car bellowing