University of Wisconsin - Extension

Contact Pam Peterson, 920-746-2260, pam.peterson@ces.uwex.edu

Sturgeon Bay, Wis.--We all remember the childhood chant "sticks and stones can break my bones but words can never hurt me!" We had it wrong. It seems that hurtful words can cause profound emotional harm--especially when parents do the name-calling.

Research conducted by Natalie Sachs-Ericsson at Florida State University suggests that people who were verbally abused as children grow up to be self-critical adults prone to depression and anxiety. People who were verbally abused had 1.6 times as many symptoms of depression and anxiety as those who had not been verbally abused. They were also twice as likely to have suffered a mood or anxiety disorder.

Sachs-Ericsson studied data from more than 5,600 people ages 15 to 54 and was surprised to find nearly 30 percent reported that they were sometimes or often verbally abused by a parent.

Verbal abuse included insults, swearing, threats of physical abuse and spiteful comments or behavior. Parents may have learned this parenting style from their own parents or parents may be unaware of positive ways to motivate or discipline their children. Parents who use verbal abuse may also have a psychiatric or personality disorder that interferes with their ability to parent. According to Sachs-Ericsson, parents must be educated about the long-term effects of verbal abuse on their children.

Over time, children begin to believe the negative things they hear about themselves and start to use those negative statements as explanations for anything that goes wrong. Children who don’t get invited to a party or do poorly on a test at school will believe the reason is that “I’m no good” or “I’m stupid.” When the message is repeatedly conveyed by a parent, the pattern of self-criticism and negative thinking will follow the child into adulthood. Self-criticism has been shown to make a person more prone to depression and anxiety.

Most research on child maltreatment has focused on physical or sexual abuse. Little attention has been paid to the destructive nature of parental verbal abuse such as parents swearing or belittling their children. However, verbal abuse has been associated with increased rates of physical aggression in children, delinquency and interpersonal problems.

Recent research findings of Martin Teicher at the Department of Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School, raise the possibility that verbal abuse during childhood can have an impact on mental health that is equal to or even greater than, other forms of abuse that are typically thought of as more damaging.

In a 1991 nationwide study, Yvonne Vissing and Murray Straus defined verbal aggression as "communication intended to cause psychological pain" including name calling, nasty remarks, stony silence and sulking. They found that approximately two-thirds of children were victims of verbal aggression by parents. In that study, verbal aggression by parents occurred an average of 12.6 times per year, one third of families reported eleven or more instances. More boys were victims of verbal abuse than girls and children over age six were more likely to have experienced parental verbal abuse.

The study found that verbal aggression by parents leads to physical aggression by the child. The more frequent the rate of verbal abuse by the parent, the more likely it was that the child engaged in physical aggression or delinquent behavior. They also found that psychosocial problems in children were more related to parental verbal abuse than physical abuse.

The consequences of verbal abuse should not be underestimated. Physical abuse may leave actual scars but verbal abuse leaves invisible scars. The impact of verbal abuse on vulnerable, developing regions of the brain can have damaging effects that last a lifetime. Sticks and stones will break our bones but unkind words from a parent are even more destructive.