"I try to repair and make up for this. I apologize (a lot). And I work hard on building my kids up, and on playful parenting. But I'm terrified that the yelling when they were younger did them serious harm, which manifests in the way they handle the times I yell at them now. One kid is neurodivergent (like me-his dad), and he yells back. The other one is more pliable, and she cries."
"I was preternaturally patient as a parent-that's just a fact (though most people don't believe me when I tell them I never once yelled; you'd have to ask my now-grown daughter before you'd believe it). But even though I never yelled at her, I made other, really terrible parenting mistakes. Every parent fails in some way. All we can do is try our best not to, and do everything we can to repair whatever damage we did after we mess up."
A parent describes struggling with frequent yelling that has decreased after focused work on triggers but still occurs when exhausted or repeated instructions fail. The children respond differently: one neurodivergent child yells back while the other becomes tearful and says yelling makes her feel like the worst person in the world. The parent apologizes often, emphasizes positive reinforcement, and tries playful parenting. Repair, apology, and continued effort to change can reduce harm. Ongoing self-awareness, consistent apologies, explicit reassurance of the child's worth, and building positive interactions support healing and resilience.
Read at Slate Magazine
Unable to calculate read time
Collection
[
|
...
]