What to do when you’ve yelled at your child.
It happened before you even realized what you were saying. You yelled at your child. Maybe you even cussed or slammed a door. Your stress got the best of you and you couldn’t process it before you let it out in a way you regret. Now you feel a mix of emotions that might include guilt, defensiveness, helplessness, all of which contribute to you experiencing more stress.
The first thing I want you to know is that every parent loses their temper at some point. Parenting is relentless and exhausting, and we only have so much capacity to deal with everything that comes at us. Yelling at your children is not ideal, but it also isn’t going to cause irreparable damage, especially if you build the skill of relationship repair.
Parents do not need to be perfect. In fact, I argue that “perfect” parents might be more detrimental to a child than parents who are a bit messy or unpredictable sometimes. You don’t need to be perfect, because you aren’t trying to raise perfect people. We’re in the business of raising real people, ones that make mistakes.
When you raise your voice, or miss an important event, or realize you’ve been dismissive of something important to your child, you’re being human. We are our child’s first model for what it means to be an imperfect human. We want them to see our mistakes because we want them to see how to recover from mistakes. Repair is an essential life skill that many people don’t learn in childhood.
Once you realize that you’ve messed up somehow with your child, you have a fantastic opportunity to build an even stronger relationship with them. The challenge is that you have to get comfortable with the idea of acknowledging your mistake and apologizing. This, it turns out, is very difficult for a lot of people. If you can get comfortable with this, you can build an incredibly strong relationship with your child.
Here are a few examples of repair statements you can try:
“I’m sorry I yelled at you. That must have been scary for you to hear me yell. Next time I’m frustrated, I’m going to use a calm voice.”
“I realize I wasn’t really listening earlier when you were telling me about playing with Susie in the sandbox. Is it okay with you if we sit together now and you can tell me again while I have my listening ears on?”
“When your toy broke earlier and you cried, I said something mean to you. I told you to be a big boy and not cry. It was okay for you to cry. Big boys are allowed to feel sad and frustrated. I bet you felt pretty sad when your toy broke. Would you like a hug?”
Sometimes, our pride or our inner perfectionist can get in the way of us acknowledging our mistake and apologizing. It can often feel like, if we admit to our failings, everything might fall apart. But I have great news for you! Your child is the most forgiving audience you will ever have. There is no person in the world more willing to forgive your mistakes and move on than your child. Their love for you is a gift that can help you build the skill of relationship repair and apply it to other people in your life.
As your child grows and sees you own your mistakes and work to make things right, they will build that skill in themselves. They can grow into people who are totally comfortable acknowledging their mistakes, apologizing, and working to fix it. The entire family system benefits when you take the step to build relationship repair skills.
