Michelle Gale on Recovering After You Lose Your Temper as a Parent
When a parent blows up, what actually helps them come back from it? That's the question. There are really two separate skills tangled together here. One is your own ability to climb back out after you've reacted in a way you didn't mean to. The other is staying steady enough to make room for a child who is melting down or pulling away. Both matter, and they ask different things of you.
Every parent ends up with their own set of practices. Mine know exactly how I recover, because they've watched me do it for years. I try to circle back quickly rather than letting it sit. There was a day with my oldest, Ty, that went sideways and I yelled. It felt terrible. A little while later I was driving him to a batting cage, and in the car I told him, 'I'm really sorry about earlier. You know I never feel good when I raise my voice.' He looked at me and said, 'Mom, I know. I was kind of waiting for it. I knew it was coming.'
So one of the main ways I repair things is simply to apologize. Plenty of parents never do this with their kids. Apologizing isn't the same as taking all the blame, and I'm careful about the wording. I don't say the whole thing was my fault. I say I'm sorry for how I reacted, because the reaction wasn't skillful and it leaves me feeling lousy. I don't want to carry that, and I don't want them carrying it either.
The other move is catching it before it peaks. If a situation is climbing and I can feel myself slipping, I'll say out loud, 'I'm going to step out for a minute. I'm not fully in control of my emotions right now and I don't want to say something I'll regret.' Then I leave the room. My husband and I even have a small signal between us, a little wink. Either of us can ask for it, sometimes both at once, and whoever needs it walks away. The kids notice. They understand that one of us needs a moment, needs some distance, and will be back.
If there's a real takeaway in all of this, it's that the repair work mostly lives upstream. Walking away before the blowup beats having to clean up after one.