You hear yourself raise your voice and immediately think:
“Why do they do this to me?They made me act like that. Why can’t they just listen?They ignored me three times!!”
Those shoes have been sitting in the middle of the floor taunting me all morning long.
Next thing you know you are ironically screaming, “I’m NOT YELLING!” Sound familiar?
Immediately, the guilt creeps in.
Yelling usually isn’t about the moment in front of you. Most often it’s about the sequence of events leading up to the explosion.
It’s the accumulation of physical exhaustion, sleep depravation, and an itty bitty sprinkle of work stress on top. It’s endless audiovisual input that slowly boils over from within. It is the need to complete 5 different tasks simultaneously, and they are all important. It is not feeling seen, heard or supported and the not knowing what to do about it. It is the exactly 0 seconds in the day when you don’t have someone else’s hand somewhere on your body, the total aching void of personal space. In the very back of your mind, on repeat, is the nagging thought- “Am I forgetting something? I feel like I am forgetting something.” It starts to feel like there is an air horn blowing inside your mind, and the button is stuck.
Your child leaving their shoes on the kitchen floor AGAIN is rarely the actual trigger.
Rather the shoes pour a single, juicy drop into an already overflowing cup.
It should come as no surprise that one drop quickly develops into a flash flood of roaring emotions.
Children are so gifted at finding the exact button that activates our nervous systems and they rarely hesitate to slap that sucker, often with a smirk of satisfaction on their face.
An activated nervous system can sometimes misinterpret this button-pushing as an act of manipulation. That is very rarely at play.
In most cases, children test limits to understand the world. They repeat behaviors because their brains are still developing impulse control. They push boundaries because boundaries are how they learn where safety exists.
But as many parents are often unintentionally running on the mere fumes of self neglect, our nervous systems can interpret these behaviors as threats to our sense of control.
Many of us grew up believing something like this:
“Good kids don’t make their parents angry.”
But that belief quietly teaches children something dangerous; That they are responsible for adult emotions.
The reality is this:
Adults are responsible for their reactions.
Children are responsible for learning behavior.
Those are two different jobs.
When you finish reading this, you are not going to magically stop yelling, unfortunately. Parenting is messy and imperfect. There will still be moments when your voice gets louder than you intended.
What this awareness grants you is a most precious pause.
A fleeting moment that provides the opportunity to make the small shift from:
“Why are they doing this to me?”
to
“Why is my nervous system so overwhelmed right now?”
That small shift is the powerful seed for your growth. Kids actually learn better from calm correction than from loud reactions. When voices rise, brains shut down. A dysregulated child cannot learn. A dysregulated parent cannot teach.
Sometimes the most powerful parenting move isn’t discipline. It’s regulation. Even better – teaching the SKILL of self-regulation.
If you still find yourself in full crashout mode, hold on to hope. We will try again with a 2nd, BIGGER pause.
Set the expectation for your child: “Pause. I need a two minute break. I promise you when I return, everything will be okay and we will repair, but in this very moment I need space.”
- Take a deep breath.
- 2. Drink water.
- 3. Step into another room for 10 seconds.
Your child may initially be uneasy with this. The separation can feel scary. Come back, when you said you would. Be okay, like you said you would.
Every parent yells sometimes. What matters most is what happens next. Repair teaches children something incredibly important:
That relationships can bend without breaking.
You can say:
- “I shouldn’t have yelled. I was frustrated, but that wasn’t the right way to handle it.”
- “Let’s try that again.”
- “We both needed a reset.”
When kids see adults take responsibility for their emotions, they learn to do the same.
The goal isn’t perfect parenting. The goal isn’t to ban yelling. The goal is not to shame yourself. Shame is actually extremely dysregulating and counterproductive.
Instead, the goal is understanding what’s underneath it from a place of compassion.
It’s about a parent who has been strong for everyone else all day. Parents have strength we never realized, but that doesn’t mean that strength comes without limits.
Instead of shaming, simply take notice. This is not a failure; this is your boundary. Parents are human.
And awareness like this is your first step over the threshold of a calmer home. Within these walls, fortified through repair, you gain access to the potential for a more trusting relationship with your child, your partner, and even yourself.
References
Gottman, J. M., & DeClaire, J. (1997). The heart of parenting: Raising an emotionally intelligent child. New York, NY: Simon & Schuster.
— Demonstrates how children learn emotional regulation primarily through parental modeling and co-regulation.
Siegel, D. J., & Bryson, T. P. (2011). The whole-brain child: 12 revolutionary strategies to nurture your child’s developing mind. New York, NY: Bantam Books.
— Explains how a child’s developing brain responds to emotional states and why calm parental responses support regulation and learning.
Crnic, K., & Low, C. (2002). Everyday stresses and parenting. In M. H. Bornstein (Ed.), Handbook of parenting: Vol. 5. Practical issues in parenting (2nd ed., pp. 243–267). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
— Research showing that parental stress and overload strongly influence reactive parenting behaviors such as yelling.
