What to Say to Your Child After You've Yelled

A line has been going around the parenting articles this summer, and I keep running into it in new clothes. It says a fight you repair can leave the relationship stronger than if there had been no fight at all. I don't buy it. Nobody has ever been grateful for the night they got yelled at, and I'd bet the people who say this are mostly parents who need the night to have been worth something.

Repair is good and I'll spend the rest of this post on how to do it. But a child who was scared and then comforted is a child who was scared. We can say that and still be decent mothers.

How do you apologize to your child after yelling?

Wait until you're both level, which sounds obvious until you're standing in a hallway wanting to fix it right now because your own guilt is loud and you'd like it to stop. A child who's still crying hard doesn't want your speech. A glass of water, ten minutes, the bathroom door open a crack. Then go find them.

The parenting people who write about this agree on one thing that I think is right: say what you did and say it was wrong and stop. "I yelled at you and that was wrong." One of the pieces I read this summer puts it at three words, "I was wrong," with no "but" after it. The "but" is where most of us go. I'm sorry I yelled but you'd been told four times about the shoes. By then you haven't apologized at all and have made your case with a soft opening.

I'd bend the formula on reasons, though. The advice says give none, and for a teenager I think that's right, since a fourteen-year-old will hear any explanation as a defense. A younger child is another matter. When I taught third grade I learned that an eight-year-old who gets yelled at is mostly trying to work out one thing, which is whether it was about her. One sentence does it. "I was tired and my voice got big, and you didn't cause that." Then you're done explaining. Two sentences of reasons turn into a speech, and a speech turns the child into the one who has to listen to you feel bad.

The part I think gets skipped most is that you shouldn't ask to be forgiven, or ask "are we okay?" and then wait for the answer. The child owes you nothing at that moment, and a small person who says "it's okay, Mom" because she can see you need it has just taken care of you, which is the wrong direction for it to travel.

What does the Savior's patience actually ask of a tired parent?

The picture a lot of us carry is a Christ who never raised his voice and never ran short, and we hold ourselves up against it at about six in the evening. The Gospels don't give us that man. In John 2 he makes a scourge of small cords and drives the sellers out of the temple and overturns the tables, and the verse about it says the money was poured out. Nobody calls that a tantrum, and I'm not about to either, but it isn't serenity.

The place I'd send a tired mother is Gethsemane, and not for the prayer everyone quotes.

Look at the disciples.

Watch and pray, that ye enter not into temptation: the spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak.

Matthew 26:41

He had just asked them whether they couldn't stay awake one hour. That's a rebuke, a fair one, then he turns around and gives the reason for their failure in a sentence that excuses nothing and understands everything. Their eyes were heavy. When he comes back the third time, he doesn't ask for any more watching than they have left. I don't want to make too much of one verse. But a Savior who names weakness out loud and keeps going is nearer to what I need than the one on the poster.

Moroni 7:45 is the verse a lot of us have used as a stick, so let me look at it again. "Charity suffereth long, and is kind, and envieth not, and is not puffed up, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked." The word is easily. Being provoked is allowed, and the verse sets a threshold without claiming there's no such thing, which is a different thing from the standard I hold myself to at six p.m.

D&C 121 is harder going, but verses 41 and 43 pair long-suffering with a pattern I find oddly useful, "reproving betimes with sharpness, when moved upon by the Holy Ghost; and then showing forth afterwards an increase of love." I should say that the passage is about priesthood leaders and not about a mother at six p.m., and that "when moved upon by the Holy Ghost" is a bar my worst moments don't clear. The shape still holds, though: sharpness, then afterward more love, so the other person doesn't decide you're their enemy. The repair belongs to how the thing is supposed to go and was never an optional extra.

What patience asks stops short of taking everything, since long-suffering is staying in the room and doesn't require absorbing every blow in silence and a parent can set a firm limit and enforce it and still apologize later for the volume. The limit is about what the child did while the apology is about what you did, and mixing the two is how you end up taking back a rule you were right about.

When you're apologizing for the same thing every night

A repair does its work when the rupture is rare enough to stand out. If the apology is a nightly event it has become a ritual that lets the yelling go on, and I say that kindly, because anyone can want the ritual to be enough.

I don't think the answer at that point is a better apology. Maybe it's sleep, or maybe one adult is doing the hours of two, or maybe something in the house has to be cut, like a calendar or a standard that nobody asked you to meet. Mosiah 3:19 says the natural man puts off his nature by yielding to the Spirit and through the Atonement, which sounds to me like something received, not something I manufacture by trying harder in the kitchen. Asking for help is a real response to this. So is a doctor, if the anger frightens you or feels bigger than the day can account for.

I wrote about believing a kid who says church is boring, and the same order applies here. Believe the child first and change the setup second. A child who tells you "you scared me" gets the same treatment.

Frequently Asked Questions

What should I do right after I yell at my child?

Stop talking and get yourself level first, with water or another room or just some slow breathing, and then go find them. If it's close to bedtime, the apology can wait for the bedtime hug, and often that's the best moment because everyone's quiet.

Does apologizing make me look weak in front of my kids?

A child who has watched a parent say "I was wrong" and survive it learns that being wrong doesn't end anything, and I'd call that authority built on something sturdier than volume. D&C 121:41 says influence is kept "by persuasion, by long-suffering, by gentleness and meekness, and by love unfeigned," and that doesn't read like someone worried about looking weak.

Is one apology enough?

For one bad evening it usually is, though children sometimes bring it up again days later, out of nowhere in the car, and then the answer is short and warm: "I'm still sorry about that. I love you." If you're the one who keeps raising it, ask yourself whether the apology is still for them or has turned into something you need.

Does one yelling night damage my kid?

A single night that you repaired doesn't, no. Yelling as the weather of a house is different and worth taking seriously, which is why that section on nightly apologies is there, but please don't carry one hard evening as if it were the other thing.

I'd like to end this on something kind and can't quite do it. I still dislike the line that says if you do your best, you've done all God expects. I'd love to believe it and I think it's meant well. But it asks me to be the judge of my own best on the exact night I'm least able to judge, and a woman at the end of a long day with four children can find that either too easy or too hard depending on her mood. I also don't like that every piece of this advice, the calming down, the clean three-word apology, the patience in the hallway, asks the most from the person with the least left. Somebody besides the tired person ought to be carrying part of it, whether that's the other adult in the house or the ward or the people writing the articles. The repair is worth doing. It's still the tired person's job, and I haven't made my peace with that.

with love, Melissa