Being angry

I just saw an article in the NY Times about how this generation of American parents almost universally yells at their kids.   And of course, like spanking, we shouldn't do it because it might harm the little tykes psychologically.

I think that's ridiculous even with neurotypical kids, but with autistic kids it's just downright wrong.

See a lot of the early research showed that autistic individuals don't recognize emotions, but that's not exactly true.  It's relatively easy to learn the 'big' emotions:  happy, mad, sad.  This person is very happy, and they can see that.

But almost universally, they never learn to recognize more subtle emotions, like say this

 So what does this have to do with yelling?  Well, if your child can't tell you're upset if you're only a little bit upset, then you have to act upset enough so that they recognize it.  They have to understand that what they just did was bad, or dangerous, or mean, and that their actions have an impact on the people around them.