Excellent lesson from your father; you were very fortunate to have learned this as a child. I was never a yeller, and raised my voice at my father at the risk of extreme peril (which is to say I rarely if ever had the courage, or enough outrage at his behavior, to stir that pot ). But he was definitely the type to use volume as a control measure. My husband was the same way. He knew how traumatized I was in regards to being the object of someone’s rage, and he used that fear to keep me in line.

I’ll never be the type to raise my voice to an obscene level, but I have gotten more bold.

Your point made me think of something else, though, too. Many years ago, I taught elementary school. Only for a while; I became pregnant with my daughter and never returned to teaching after her birth. Anyway, one of the best pieces of teaching advice I received my first year (and one I was fortunate to observe in practice) was in regards to classroom management. I was told that instead of meeting a volume increase in my class by raising my voice as well, I should meet each increase in them with a decrease in my speaking volume. As they grow louder, I grow softer. It totally worked; they had to cooperate with each other to reduce the noise in the room enough so that they could hear me.

It was kind of miraculous. :)