Yelling Remorse

I recently wrote about the dangers of yelling at one’s children. Although the column was aimed at people currently raising children I received a very strong response from many people whose children are now grown up. The response was invariably along these lines: “I feel terrible about what I did to my kids. I was a yeller. I know I yelled too much. I feel so guilty like such a bad parent. I know I caused damage.”

While some of these parents may have lost their children to yelling the majority enjoy good parent-child relationships today. Obviously in between the yelling episodes they managed to show enough love and goodwill that their kids got the message: “I love you even though you sometimes make me so mad!”

If all’s well that ends well why are these people so filled with terrible remorse?

The truth is they know they are very fortunate that they got off lightly. Deep down — and even on the surface — we all know that yelling is an aggressive destructive behavior that always provokes negative emotions in its victims. We all know that parental yelling is a high-risk behavior a habit that can particularly when harsh and frequent cause irreparable developmental harm and permanently destroy the parent-child relationship.