When dealing with a misbehaving child, most parents talk too much.

"And they have too much emotion," said Mary Ann Nemoto, an administrator for Center on the Family at the University of Hawai'i-Mänoa. "The more they talk, the more emotion they have and the anxiety level gets raised. Then they yell and scream, and that can lead to hitting."

Parent educator Kathy Bentley is well acquainted with the cycle that can leave parents feeling guilty.

"The majority of parents have gotten the message that it's not OK to spank their kids, but they don't know what to do instead," Bentley said.

A recent New York Times article dubbed high-volume hollering — the point at which parental loss-of-control tops out — as the "new spanking."

Nemoto, who for many years has worked closely with families in their homes and in the classroom, said: "In all that I've learned, the No. 1 thing is we have to be in control of ourselves."

And how do we do that when a child persists in pressing our buttons?

"The first thing you can say is: 'Stop,' " Nemoto said. "You have to say it calmly and slowly."

She added, "When parents do that, they become more in control of themselves and don't get in a rage."

A pleasant side effect: "When you calm down, the child will calm down," Nemoto said.

Conversely, Bentley said, "When you escalate, your child escalates with you."

She added, "If you're arguing with your 4-year-old, or even your 8-year-old, you have lost."

TIMEOUTS FOR MOM

Bentley said parents who have a hard time keeping their cool should give themselves a timeout.

"Even in the moment, if you're really frustrated with your child, sometimes it's really beneficial," she said.

"If a parent takes a timeout, saying, 'You know what? I'm really upset right now. I need to go calm down,' she or he is also teaching the child how to do that by modeling."

Bentley, who offers home visits through her business, Kathy's Parenting Solutions, said timeouts for both children and adults should be viewed as chance to gain control over strong emotions, which are normal. "They should not be about punishment," she said.

Nemoto said moms and dads should occasionally take time to thoroughly evaluate their own strengths and weaknesses as well as family goals.

"There's a lot that's counting on them as parents," she said. "They need to know what they want, and what they don't want of their child, and set down rules for themselves."

Nemoto continued: "Then they need to have a plan on how they're going to deal with their child. They have to realize that what they do will affect their child when he or she heads out into the world."

Wayne Watkins, director of the University of Hawai'i-Mänoa Childcare Center, added that parents should ask themselves: "What do I value, and what am I putting at risk by yelling or spanking?"

One recent study on the effects of corporal punishment, led by a researcher at Duke University's Center for the Child, concluded that spanking toddlers can slow intellectual development.

Experts generally recommend avoiding yelling because it can hurt a child's sense of well-being and self-esteem.

Murray A. Strauss, director of the Family Research Laboratory at the University of New Hampshire, told The New York Times: "We're so accustomed to this that we just think parents get carried away and it's not harmful."

He added, "If someone yelled at you at work, you'd find that pretty jarring. We don't apply that standard to children."

WHY THREATS FAIL

Many parents recall that during their childhood, the threat of being spanked was often enough to keep them in line. Bentley advises against tweaking that strategy to a "don't-make-mommy-mad" yelling threat.

"No. 1: You can't make mommy mad. Mommy gets mad," Bentley said.

"The problem with threats is if they call your bluff," she said. Most parents who issue threats do so hoping that they'll serve as a behavioral quick fix. If they don't work, "then you're backed into a wall," Bentley said.

Watkins said families with "house rules," guidelines for expected behavior and clearly spelled-out consequences for breaking rules, tend to have fewer flareups.

Families without guidelines are often led by "permissive parents," who tend to "let things go until they cross an invisible line," Watkins said.

When a child is starting to lose control on the playground, for instance, permissive parents might say: "Oh, no, no. Don't do that," but they're not ready to intervene, Watkins said. Then, as the scene escalates, "I already told you once," followed by more pleadings, which finally erupt into: "STOP IT!" and some sort of intervention.

"They might as well run straight to the hollering, because it's going to get there anyway," Watkins said.

Most parents fall into at least one of three types, Watkins said: permissive, authoritative or authoritarian.

Authoritative personalities set rules with a more flexible connection to the way things work, Watkins said. With this type, he said, "The process involves both child and parent, but that doesn't mean that the parent gives up all power."

Authoritarians issue rules in which nothing is up for discussion.

PARENTING TOGETHER

Bentley said house rules can be more complicated when more than one adult is in the picture.

"Frequently, parents don't know how to parent together," she said. If Mom's rules are different from Dad's, you can expect confusion and inconsistent enforcement.

On home visits, Bentley said, "The first thing that I usually find myself doing is sitting the parents down to come up with good, workable family rules that can be enforced."

She suggests tying rules to tangible daily tasks and activities rather than reaching for concepts, such as "respect."

When articulating rules, Bentley said, it's important for adults to watch their tone of voice.

"Sometimes it's the way that you talk. Parents don't hear the way they talk," she said, noting that sarcasm, insult and anger can lead to feelings of rejection. And children learn to parrot tone — sometimes with stunned parents responding: "How can you talk to me like that?"

There are, of course, a few scenarios in which shouting is the right thing to do.

Watkins said, "If a child's going to go into the street, you better do everything humanly possible, including screaming your head off and scaring the heck out of the child."

But the more a parent yells at a child, the more the child tunes it out, experts say.

Consequently, Bentley added: when a tuned-out child is "running for the street and you're yelling at them, they don't hear you. They're thinking 'Oh, it's just mom yelling again.' They actually don't hear you."

When enforcing rules, Watkins said, calm and brevity can help ease parent-child friction.

"Stop talking," he said, — other than to ask the child: "What is the rule?"

Then follow through with house guidelines. "Anything else just diverts from the issue at hand."

GO THE EXTRA MILE

Nemoto said sometimes an effective enforcement means going — or driving — the extra mile.

She recalled standing in front of Longs one day, explaining to her 4-year-old son that they were there just to pick up a prescription — not to hang out in the toy aisle.

Once inside, though, the boy headed for the action figures. Nemoto then quietly took him by the hand and left the store. Without making a fuss, she dropped off her son with a baby sitter and drove back to the drug store.

"He was shocked," she said. "Because I was consistent, though, my son knew the next time."

Some parenting habits can be hard to break. Experts say it takes at least three weeks to lose a potentially harmful habit before learning how to replace it with one that's beneficial.

You can expect more harmony your home immediately, though, just by "catching yourself" at the beginning of the talk-persuade-argue-yell-hit cycle, Nemoto said.