After You Have Lost Your Temper

Ten to seven on a Thursday. The pasta water is boiling over, the seven-year-old has asked for the fourth time where her PE shoes are, her brother is kicking the table leg, and their mother, who has been answering emails with one hand and stirring with the other, hears herself shout. Not raise her voice: shout. Loud enough that the kicking stops. How many times. Do I have to. Tell you. And then, worse, the thing she swore she would never say, because it was said to her: What is wrong with you?

The seven-year-old’s face does two things in a second. It startles, and then it goes still, the way a child’s face goes still when she has decided to make herself small. Supper is eaten mostly in silence. Bath and bed are brisk and careful. Long after bedtime her mother is lying awake, running it back, hearing it in her own mother’s voice, and wondering what she has done.

In our work, parents describe this evening often, and usually with shame. It is also one of the most hopeful things a parent can bring, because the parent lying awake is the parent who will go back. This chapter is about what happened that evening, and why, and mostly about what happens next.

What is actually happening

Nobody decides to shout. It happens when the demands of the moment outrun what is left in the tank, and by the end of a Thursday there is often very little left. Parents who are tired, hungry, worried about work or money, or simply doing too many things at once are more likely to be harsh with their children. One study of new parents found that the strain of parenting was one route by which a parent’s low mood turned into harsher parenting, and another found that mothers who slept badly showed less positive parenting. Knowing that helps, because it points to what can change.

There is also a physical tipping point. The American psychologist John Gottman, studying couples in conflict, described flooding: a surge of arousal, the heart racing, in which listening and thinking become very hard and the body is ready for a fight. Most parents know the feeling. Once you are flooded, the part of you that would have chosen gentler words is not available, and nothing useful will be said until the surge has passed, which takes longer than it feels. The Gottman Institute’s advice to couples is a break of at least twenty minutes.

And then there is history. The sentence that comes out at the worst moment is very often one we heard as children. Daniel Siegel and Mary Hartzell’s book on this is introduced with a thought most parents recognise: “I can’t believe I just said to my child the very thing my parents used to say to me.” The psychoanalyst Selma Fraiberg called these inheritances ghosts in the nursery. Siegel’s point is a hopeful one. What best predicts a child’s security with a parent is less what happened to that parent in childhood than how much sense the parent has made of it since.

It is also worth looking at your own health. A parent who is depressed or anxious finds patience much harder to come by, and research consistently links a mother’s depression with harsher parenting; the library’s chapter When You Are Not All Right is written for that situation. For mothers in their forties, perimenopause is worth knowing about. The NHS lists mood swings and low mood among its symptoms, and says that the poor sleep it can bring may leave you feeling irritable. If your fuse has shortened without an obvious reason, that is a conversation worth having with your GP, and NICE’s guidance includes treatment for the low mood that can come with the menopause. None of this lets anyone off the hook, and fathers lose their tempers too: one large study of harsh shouting found the same effects whichever parent was doing it.

What a shout does, and does not do

Parents lying awake tend to imagine the worst, so it is worth being clear about what the research says, in both directions.

The reassuring part first. Relationships between parents and children are not smooth, and were never meant to be. Edward Tronick, the developmental psychologist best known for his studies of babies and their mothers, found that even in ordinary, loving play, a mother and baby are closely in step only some of the time, by his estimate about 30 per cent of it. The rest of the time they are slightly out of step and finding their way back. What seemed to go with healthy development was the frequent repair of these small mismatches, not their absence, and Tronick concluded that brief upsets which are quickly put right may even help a child to grow. Donald Winnicott’s phrase, the good enough mother, is often misread as permission for low standards. He meant something closer to this: a parent whose care is devoted, and who gradually fits the child’s needs less perfectly as the child becomes able, a little at a time, to manage the gaps.

So there is no evidence that one shout, followed by a repair, does a child lasting harm. The less comfortable part is about patterns. In a study that followed nearly a thousand American families, teenagers whose parents regularly shouted at them, swore at them, or called them names such as stupid or lazy showed more behaviour problems and more symptoms of depression a year later, and a warm relationship the rest of the time did not cancel the effect out. Notice what those parents were reporting: how often, across a year, they had shouted at, sworn at or insulted their child. That is a different thing from a raised voice on a bad evening. It is also a reminder that what you say matters as much as how loudly you say it. What is wrong with you?, said often enough, is heard as an answer as well as a question.

Physical punishment is a separate matter. A review of sixty-nine studies found that it predicts more behaviour problems over time, and is associated with no good outcomes. It is unlawful in Scotland and in Wales; in England and Northern Ireland the law still allows a limited defence of reasonable punishment. If you have hit your child, or are frightened you might, the box later in this chapter is written for you.

How to repair

Repair is the part that matters most, and it is a skill rather than a feeling. It can be learned, and it gets easier with practice.

Calm first. Do not try to repair while you are still flooded; it will come out as a second lecture. Get yourself back to steady, which may take twenty minutes or the rest of the evening. With a young child, repair is best the same day. With an older one, the next morning can be better than a tearful knock on the door at eleven at night.

Go back, and name what happened. Plainly and briefly. The American psychologist Becky Kennedy suggests three parts: name what happened, take responsibility for it, and say what you will do differently. “I shouted at you earlier. That was too loud, and I think it must have felt scary. It wasn’t your fault. I’m working on staying calm when I’m frustrated.” If you said something unkind, name that too. “I said ‘What’s wrong with you?’ Nothing is wrong with you. I was cross, and I said something I didn’t mean.”

No “but”. The apology that ends “… but if you’d found your shoes when I asked” is not a repair; it hands the responsibility back to her. Her part in what happened, if she had one, is a separate conversation for another day.

Do not ask her to look after you. “You do forgive me, don’t you?” asks a child to manage her parent’s guilt, which is not her job. A study of apologies to teenagers counted pressing for forgiveness as defensive, alongside excuses, blame and minimising. Apologies centred on the teenager’s experience went with more forgiveness and a more satisfying relationship; defensive ones left teenagers no happier with the relationship than no apology at all. Offer the repair, and let her respond however she responds.

Let the apology be followed by change. Apologies that are never followed by change start to sound hollow, to children as much as to adults. The most convincing repair is a different ten to seven next week.

It is never too late. Philippa Perry puts it simply: it is not the rupture that is so important, it is the repair. She adds that even if you realise years later that you got something wrong, you can still tell your child where you went wrong.

One caveat. Most of the research on repair comes from studies of babies, and studies of older children and teenagers are fewer and smaller. What there is points the same way: in one recent study of mothers and teenagers, recovering well after conflict went with a relationship that grew closer through the early teenage years. No trial has yet shown that teaching parents to repair improves children’s outcomes, and we would not claim one. We would say that a household in which adults take responsibility and say sorry is one in which children learn to do the same.

Changing the hour it happens in

Repair matters, and so does making the next rupture less likely. Many parents who shout do so at the same time of day, in the same circumstances, for the same few reasons. Find yours, and change one thing about it.

If it is the hour before supper, move supper earlier, or put a snack on the table at five for everyone, you included. If it is the morning rush, do half of the morning the night before: shoes found, bag packed, uniform out. If it is the moment you walk in from work, give yourself ten minutes on the doorstep or round the corner before you open the door. If it is the phone in your hand while you are also parenting, put it somewhere else for that hour. Small, unglamorous changes to the hour do more than resolutions about patience.

Learn your early signs. Most people get a few seconds of warning: the jaw, the shoulders, the voice going up, a particular thought (she’s doing this on purpose). When you notice them, act before the words come. “I’m getting too cross to talk. I’m going into the other room for two minutes, and then I’ll come back.” If a young child is with you, make sure she is safe first. With a baby, put her down in her cot or pram, close the door and go into another room for a few minutes; however you feel, never shake her. Two minutes in the next room is far better for her than staying and shouting.

Be kinder to yourself. This sounds soft, but there is some evidence behind it: in a small UK study of parents with depression, those who were kinder to themselves were less critical of their children. Shame makes people defensive, and defensive parents find it harder to repair. Treat the shout as something you did, not something you are.

Get support. A partner who can take over for ten minutes; a friend you can text bad evening; your own therapist, if the shouting is tangled up with your own history.

At different ages

The bands below are descriptions, not boxes.

If your child is under five. Keep it short and concrete. Come back into the room, get down to her level, and say a few plain words: “I used a cross voice before, and that wasn’t fair to you. I’m sorry. I love you.” A cuddle, if she wants one, says the rest. Very young children cannot follow an explanation, but they understand a parent who has come back.

If your child is between five and eleven. Use the three parts: what happened, that it was yours to own, and what you will do differently. Let her tell you what it was like, if she wants to, and listen without defending yourself. Keep it to one repair rather than a week of guilt, and then do something ordinary together, because ordinary is what tells her things are all right again.

If your child is between eleven and sixteen. Apologise briefly and specifically, and then give her room. Teenagers often do not accept a repair at first, and pressing for forgiveness can make it worse; let her come back in her own time. If she had a point in the argument, say so, separately from the apology. In our experience teenagers are acutely sensitive to fairness, and a parent who can say “You were right about that” earns a great deal of trust.

If your child is sixteen or older, or grown up. It is not too late. If there are things from earlier years that you regret, you can say so, simply and without asking for anything in return, and listen to what comes back without defending yourself.

The parent you had

Many of us shout in our own parents’ voices, and many of us grew up in families where adults never said sorry to children at all. If that is your history, the repair you offer your child may be the first in your family for generations, and it will feel strange to give. If your own childhood was frightening, and you find it coming back to you in the hour before supper, that is worth taking to a therapist of your own; that hour often changes too.

The longer arc

No childhood is free of rows. What children carry from them, and what shapes them, is whether the rows were survivable and whether the adults came back. A child whose parent shouts and then comes back to put it right learns several things at once: that relationships survive conflict, that adults take responsibility for what they do, that her feelings about what happened matter, and how to apologise herself.

By the time her mother is lying awake, the seven-year-old is asleep. In the morning, before the shoes and the bags and the rush, her mother sits down beside her at the breakfast table. “I’ve been thinking about last night,” she says. “I shouted, and I said something unkind, and I’m sorry. Nothing is wrong with you. Shall we find those shoes together tonight, before bed?” Her daughter looks at her for a long moment, and then asks whether there are pancakes. There are not, but there will be on Saturday.

NOTES

1. Le, Y., Fredman, S. J. and Feinberg, M. E. “Parenting stress mediates the association between negative affectivity and harsh parenting: a longitudinal dyadic analysis.” Journal of Family Psychology, 2017. McQuillan, M. E., Bates, J. E., Staples, A. D. and Deater-Deckard, K. “Maternal stress, sleep, and parenting.” Journal of Family Psychology, 2019.
2. Brittle, Z. “Manage conflict, part 4.” The Gottman Institute, 2015. Flooding, and the advice to take a break of at least twenty minutes.
3. Siegel, Daniel J. and Mary Hartzell. Parenting from the Inside Out. Tenth anniversary edition. Scribe, 2014. Siegel, Daniel J. Mindsight: The New Science of Personal Transformation. Bantam, 2010. Fraiberg, S., Adelson, E. and Shapiro, V. “Ghosts in the nursery: a psychoanalytic approach to the problems of impaired infant-mother relationships.” Journal of the American Academy of Child Psychiatry, 1975.
4. Lovejoy, M. C., Graczyk, P. A., O’Hare, E. and Neuman, G. “Maternal depression and parenting behavior: a meta-analytic review.” Clinical Psychology Review, 2000.
5. NHS. “Menopause and perimenopause: symptoms.” Reviewed 2026. NICE. Menopause: Identification and Management (NG23). Updated 2026, 1.5.21.
6. Tronick, E. Z. “Emotions and emotional communication in infants.” American Psychologist, 1989. Tronick, E. and Beeghly, M. “Infants’ meaning-making and the development of mental health problems.” American Psychologist, 2011. Rose, J. “Critical processes for infant development: an interview with Professor Edward Tronick.” Norland Educare Research Journal, 2024. Tronick, Ed and Claudia M. Gold. The Power of Discord. Scribe, 2020.
7. Winnicott, D. W. “Transitional objects and transitional phenomena: a study of the first not-me possession.” International Journal of Psycho-Analysis, 1953.
8. Wang, M.-T. and Kenny, S. “Longitudinal links between fathers’ and mothers’ harsh verbal discipline and adolescents’ conduct problems and depressive symptoms.” Child Development, 2014.
9. Heilmann, A. et al. “Physical punishment and child outcomes: a narrative review of prospective studies.” The Lancet, 2021. Children Act 2004, section 58; Law Reform (Miscellaneous Provisions) (Northern Ireland) Order 2006, article 2; Children (Equal Protection from Assault) (Scotland) Act 2019; Children (Abolition of Defence of Reasonable Punishment) (Wales) Act 2020.
10. Kennedy, Becky. Good Inside: A Practical Guide to Becoming the Parent You Want to Be. HarperCollins, 2022. Kennedy, B. “The single most important parenting strategy.” TED, 2023. NPR. “Becky Kennedy aka Dr. Becky: No parent is perfect! So try to get good at repair.” TED Radio Hour, 6 October 2023.
11. Robichaud, J.-M., Schumann, K., Kil, H., Koestner, R. and Mageau, G. A. “Should parents apologize to their adolescents to mend their parent-adolescent relationship? A multi-method, multi-phase investigation.” Journal of Research on Adolescence, 2025.
12. Perry, Philippa. The Book You Wish Your Parents Had Read (and Your Children Will Be Glad That You Did). Penguin Life, 2019.
13. Li, X., Lougheed, J. P. and Hollenstein, T. “From friction to flow: dyadic affective flexibility during and after conflicts predicts trajectories of mother-adolescent relationships.” Developmental Psychology, 2026.
14. Psychogiou, L. et al. “Self-compassion and parenting in mothers and fathers with depression.” Mindfulness, 2016.
15. Circle of Security International. “You Don’t Have to Get It Right, You Just Have to Come Back.” 7 April 2026.
16. NHS. “Anger.” Reviewed 2026. NHS. “NHS Talking Therapies.” NHS. “Soothing a crying baby.” HM Government. Working Together to Safeguard Children. 2026, glossary, on emotional abuse. Respect. Respect Phoneline.

Where to go further

Philippa Perry, The Book You Wish Your Parents Had Read Named in the body of this chapter. The kindest book we know on how our own childhoods shape the way we parent, with a section on rupture and repair that many parents read more than once.

Ed Tronick and Claudia M. Gold, The Power of Discord The developmental psychologist behind the research on rupture and repair, writing with a paediatrician for a general reader. The best account we know of why the ordinary mess of family life is where children grow.

Becky Kennedy, Good Inside A clinical psychologist’s warm and practical guide, with the clearest wording we know for repair at every age.

Sarah Naish, Ellie Jelly and the Massive Mum Meltdown A picture book for children of about three to seven, about a mother who loses her temper and puts it right. Unusual, and useful, because here the grown-up is the one who gets it wrong.