Shouting no at your toddler over and over again is not good parenting as it can actually be as psychologically harmful to the toddlers development as physical abuse is.
Shouting no at your toddler over and over again often triggers power struggles, lowers the toddlers self esteem and also causes the word "NO" to lose it's effectiveness over time, which makes it a non productive and ineffective method of communication with your toddler.
Regular yelling at your toddler can negatively impact the toddler's brain development, health and social emotional abilities.
The more you say "no" to your toddler the less effective the word "no" becomes.
Constantly shouting no at your toddler can also turn discipline into a power struggle and result in increased tantrums and the toddler may also internalize the verbal aggression, which leads to anxiety and in some cases, disruptive behavior.
Instead of saying "no" constantly, say for example, "We jump on the floor and not on the couch".
Take a 10 second pause before reacting to your toddler and give them time to process or to let your emotions calm down and save the word "no" for genuine health issues and safety issues.
Toddlers can remember being yelled at, although the toddler remembering being yelled at is often not a detailed and conscious memory and instead the toddler stores the incident of being yelled at as a somatic body memory or an emotional, physiological reaction like an increased heart rate or feeling of insecurity that can also lead to emotional, behavioral and social patterns later in life.
Toddlers often won't remember the specific words that were yelled at them, but the toddler will often remember the fear, the yelling and the shift in the parents or caregivers face.
And while the toddler might not consciously recall being yelled at such as in a booster seat, their body will retain the stress reaction of that experience.
Regular yelling at a toddler can cause them to feel insecure and lead to anxiety, difficulty in attachment or even learning to be unnaturally quiet to avoid punishment.
And while occasional shouting at a toddler won't usually cause them long term trauma, but repeated and consistent yelling can affect the toddlers development.
And if you yell, it's also important to follow up with positive interactions, like with kisses, hugs and playtime to repair the secure attachment.
Toddlers can start forming lasting memories by the time they are 2 years old to 2.5 years old.
However these memories that the toddler can form are often also fragmented and disorganized memories.
While the toddler can recall specific evens for several months at age 1 to 2, the true and long term or episodic memories which are context rich and personal recollections often begin around the ages of 3 to 4 years old and are usually aided by development of language.
Most adults can recall events from as far back to as age 2.5 on average.
And memories that are made before age 2 are often lost, which is also known as childhood amnesia, if the child can't verbalize the memories at the time they occur.
A 13 month old toddler might even remember a single event that occurred for up to a week, while an 18 month old toddler might even remember 4 events that happened for a week.
Things that can factor into a toddlers memory are emotional or highly distinct events, which are often remembered better.
And long term memory capacity also increases significantly around the ages of 17 months to 24 months of age.
And for children under 4 years of age, memories usually lack full context and are also remembered as fragmented images, emotions and behaviors.
New research now also suggests that before the age of 7, you can also remember plenty from before you were age 3.
Although at around age 7, you start to forget those things and the memories will fade away from you forever.