How to Repair with Your Child After Yelling: 3 Steps for Reconnecting

Are you sitting on the floor rewinding all the things you wish you could have done better with your kid? Thinking of all the “I should haves” or wondering when exactly did everything go wrong? Or maybe you do recall when things went south, but you didn’t know how else you could have avoided the yelling or losing your cool part. 

The good news is: all parents lose their cool (if you’ve met one who hasn’t, please introduce them to me — I’d love to learn from them too!). The important thing is to actually do the work to repair with your child after yelling (or snapping or whatever rupture it was), and of course, to do the work to be better next time. 

Whether you’ve yelled at them, were unable to be firm AND kind, or didn’t handle the situation the way you’d hoped, here are the three steps you can take as a caregiver or parent to repair with your child:

1. Acknowledge the Rupture

To our kids, we mean the world to them. So when they do something ‘wrong’ that causes us to yell, they feel shame, self-doubt, and even a healthy dose of self-blame – because surely their parents didn’t (or couldn’t) do anything wrong, right? 

As Dr. Becky Kennedy often says, to a child, it is better to be a sinner in a world ruled by God, than to live in a world ruled by the devil. 

Hence, the first step is to acknowledge that we ourselves were unable to stay calm, that we made a mistake, or we that we could have done better. And most important of all, to NOT put the blame on our kid. 

Instead of: “I know that I shouted at you earlier, but that’s because you didn’t listen when I told you not to carry the milk jug.”

Try: “I’m sorry I shouted at you earlier, Mummy is still working on how to communicate better even when I’m feeling overwhelmed.”

2. Identify How to Make It Better

Remember that there’s also a reason why you yelled. Maybe your kids were fighting and things were starting to escalate. Maybe they spilled the juice again even when you told them to hold the carton properly for the nth time. Or I could go on and on, because really, as parents, we always have a lot of things on our plate. So remember the main reason and problem solve together with your kiddo how to make it better. 

It’s easy to fall into the trap of victim thinking that our kids are out to get us, or that they’re such a piece of work that is making life harder for us. But the truth is, they’re just being kids, whose brains are still under construction and simply are developing their executive functioning skills. And our role as parents are to guide them. 

Remember: it’s not you vs. your child, it’s you and your child vs. the problem.

So instead of forcing an apology out of them or refereeing what should be done next, you can simply ask their help in brainstorming what they can do to make the situation better. 

Maybe a dance party while cleaning up? A storytelling session where you narrate and they reenact the moment? Or maybe just simply reconnect with your child by doing something that they want to do with you. For kids, it doesn’t have to be something grand, it just has to be something intentional, conscious, and following your child’s lead. 

3. Make a Plan to Do (and Be) Better

Beneath the surface of yelling due to our kiddos making a mess or doing something they shouldn’t be doing is an underlying need. Hence, here is the next hard part, holding space for the unmet need that caused us to yell. It could have been a need for control, a need for space, or a need to address some parenting triggers. Our job is to identify this need by taking the time to reflect or to move the emotion out of your nervous system. 

It is imperative to note that our job is NOT to suppress or stop our anger, but to simply hold space for this anger or undesirable feelings and to allow it to move through our body in a more aligned way. In simple terms, don’t hurt yourself, others, or damageable property. Think for yourself on how to process these emotions in a way that is more suitable to you. Or even have an arsenal of scripts or a backup plan when you think that you’re about to lose your cool on your kid. 

You may also need to do the deeper work of meditating, journaling, or therapy. All three of these support emotional regulation. What’s important is that you choose to do the work of processing your emotions or triggers healthily, in a way that can be even aptly modeled to our kids. 

Nevertheless, it is important to remember that we are not perfect parents, nor were our parents. We would all mess up at certain points in our parenting journeys. At the same time, all of us are just trying our best to become better parents, with the tools that are made available to us at the time. Hence, the key is to model healthy repair when we have conflicts among loved ones and to always choose kindness. 

If any of this resonated with you, do sign up for my email list through this link, and grab yourself a printable freebie containing 5 Repair Phrases to Reconnect with Your Child. 

And here’s another blog post on some of the Ways to Repair with Your Child After Yelling at Them.

It sucks when we mess up with our kids, but it’s also an opportunity to show them how to own up to our mistakes, how to communicate more respectfully, and to do the work to try better next time. Let your guilt guide you to become better, at the same time, let the guilt go, and don’t let it consume you. Again, we are all trying to do our best. Continue to do the hard work, and just like anything worth something in life, they are all so worth it. 

Cheering for you dear parent in this journey we have together, 

Kristine 💐