Help! How do I Stop Yelling at My Kid: Understanding What's Underneath
By Georgia Meneguzzo Caldart, PsyD
Why do even the most loving parents lose their temper?
Picture this: it’s 2am and you’ve finally fallen asleep after finishing all of the housework and an epic battle with your five-year-old, who refused to go to the bathroom before bed. This after an exhausting day of work, parenting, and running on fumes. You’re jolted awake by the footsteps of your child padding into your room, saying “mommy, I peed on my bed.” Bleary eyed and depleted, you sit up and feel a wave of emotion rising and hear yourself yell, “I told you this was going to happen! Why do you insist on acting like a baby, you should know better!”
But is that really your voice? It doesn’t sound like the calm, reasonable voice that you usually use with your child. No, it’s not yours, but it sounds familiar to you. It sounds exactly like your mother – that angry, harsh tone, the exasperation and disgust infusing every word. It’s the voice and the words that made you feel scared, sad, and ashamed as a little child.
What is happening here? Why do you find yourself saying and doing the same things your parents did with you, particularly when you’re tired or distracted? Maybe even when you promised yourself you’d be a different parent? Why do you get irrationally angry when your child says she doesn’t like a specific food, or find yourself terrified and overreacting each time your child falls and hurts themselves or climbs something new?
What are ghosts in the nursery? How past experiences affects your parenting
Many of these knee-jerk reactions are a stress-response from a nervous system that is working in overdrive. More importantly, it is not a sign that you are a bad parent or that you are destined to recreate the exact parenting you received. Parenting is a never-ending path of trying your best, making mistakes, and learning and growing. Mistakes, such as yelling, ignoring, or spanking, often come from a place of a parent doing the best they can with limited tools and a pre-existing framework from their own childhood.
In her famous psychoanalytic paper, Selma Fraiberg described the idea of “ghosts in the nursery” – a metaphor that describes how parents’ unhealed past trauma, neglect, or loss can unconsciously transfer to their children. In her paper she describes how all nurseries have ghosts, but the truly problematic ones are the ones that take over the nursery and drive the parenting. Even without significant trauma or loss, the way you approach parenting is shaped by the way you were parented and your earliest attachment experiences.
How does your attachment style affect how you parent?
Attachment theory, developed and expanded by Bowlby, Aisnworth, and Main, is a framework that describes how our earliest emotional bonds shape how we navigate trust, intimacy and relationships throughout our life. It’s also often the blueprint from which we learn to be parents, even before we decide what kind of parenting style we want to follow, and often even in spite of our choice.
Attachment theory explains that humans are biologically hardwired to seek connection, starting with their caregivers in infancy. It is from these relationships that children develop a safe “base” from which to explore the world. This first attachment in infancy then forms the blueprint for a person’s understanding of how to relate to others. Bowlby found that infants who received attuned and responsive care from at least one caregiver tended to have more favorable outcomes in cognitive, behavioral and social domains².
What is responsive parenting and how does it build strong attachment?
A responsive parent is one who is able to reliably and consistently attend to the child’s physical and emotional needs, notices what the child is experiencing, and responds with warmth and sensitivity. Remember that responding with warmth and sensitivity differs across cultures. While some cultures show affection with hugs, kisses, and words of praise, others might show it through acts of service (feeding the child, dressing them warmly, etc), anticipating needs, integrating the child into the adult sphere, or babywearing and bedsharing.
Many new parents have learned in the past few years the importance of attunement and attachment, and strive to be better parents than the previous generations. Although this is great, it also places an immense amount of pressure on new parents.
What’s important to note is that it’s not just attunement that creates a strong attachment, but also the concept of “repair.” When we inadvertently misstep and create a rupture in the relationship, we are given a beautiful opportunity to model healthy repairing and thus create a stronger bond.
Why being a good enough parent is better than being perfect
Winnicott, a famous pediatrician and psychologist, described the concept of a “good enough [parent]” – the idea that children will develop more resiliency and emotional health by having a parent who fails in small, manageable ways. It means yes, parents should strive to respond promptly to their baby’s needs - and, normalizes that as they grow, parents will inevitably fail to respond to them perfectly every time. That is not only okay and expected, but minor parental failings actually create the beginnings of becoming an adaptive person.
When we speak about attachment, we generally think of an infant and their primary caregiver. Although this relationship is one of the first experiences that a child has with attachment, children then go on to create attachments to other caregivers such as another parent, a grandparent, or a foster or adoptive parent. For those infants whose primary caregivers were unable to provide a secure attachment, other caregivers can serve as a contrasting and healing experience. In fact, even adults can have a new attachment experience, such as within a therapeutic relationship! These corrective experiences serve to rewire the nervous system for secure connection and to dispel the expectation of negative reactions within a relational experience.
Whether you yourself have experienced an insecure attachment, or you worry you’re recreating a difficult pattern with your child, rest assured that attachment is not static or permanent. It is never too late to seek out healthy attachments for yourself and to change the way you approach your own child, thus strengthening your relationship.
It is only by first paying attention to how you parent and why that you can begin to make lasting changes in your relationship with your little one.
Ways to self-reflect when responding to your child’s emotions
Now that we’ve established that our own experiences as children shape what kind of parent we will be, let’s dive into some illustrative examples. In my professional experience as a therapist, I’ve found that many parents struggle with their child’s emotions - especially when they are big.
When your child gets loud and angry
You have a 12-year-old child who up until a few weeks ago was sweet, easy-going, and generally happy. Recently, they’ve started raising their voice at you, slamming their door, and generally expressing their anger outwardly. You’ve been assured by other friends with pre-teens that this behavior is normal, but you find yourself becoming increasingly uncomfortable. When they get angry, you shut down, become very quiet, and walk away. You find yourself ignoring their outbursts, pretending they aren’t happening, and avoiding your child when they seem irritable or sullen, which causes your child to escalate their behaviors. You also start giving in to their desires so as to avoid their anger. When you see your partner and child arguing, you recall when you were a child there were times when your father and brother would yell, scream, and throw things at each other. You remember watching your mother retreat to her room to cry and the way you desperately looked for places to hide away from all the threatening anger.
When people talk about anger and parenting, we often talk a parent managing their own temper. But someone else’s anger can be an incredibly difficult emotion to sit with. First of all, it’s important to know that it’s okay to have difficulty being with and responding to your child’s anger. Anger can be scary, threatening, and off-putting, even if it is an essential emotion.
If you noticed having difficulty managing your child’s anger, or your own, take a moment to ask yourself the following questions:
What emotions come up for me when my child is angry? (Some common ones include: fear, exasperation, shame, and your own anger)
How do I usually respond? Do I meet my child’s anger with my own anger, or do I retreat? How would I like to respond?
How did my caregivers respond to me when I was angry as a child?
Was it okay for me to show my anger, or did I have to hide it?
Slowing down to self-reflect can help you clarify why you react the way you do. It’s only by understanding that we can begin to change how we respond.
When you’re impatient with your child’s tears
You have a three-year-old son who cries and cries when feeling sad, and you find yourself becoming increasingly irritated and unable to tolerate his crying. You try telling him to stop, explaining that he has no reason to be crying, saying he is a big boy and he can use his words. Over time, you feel yourself becoming more and more on edge and unable to tolerate his crying, and you start to ignore him. You notice increased tension in your body when he cries, or even when he simply tells you he feels sad or upset. You also start noticing that you feel ashamed, angry, and dysregulated whenever he cries. In therapy, your therapist asks how your parents dealt with your tears. You remember your mother being removed and ignoring you, and you recall your father telling you “boys don’t cry,” and yelling at you to stop. You remember that you eventually stopped crying, and now you can’t remember the last time you even teared up.
Kids can cry for a variety of reasons, and some kids are temperamentally more inclined to cry very often. For many people, hearing a baby or child crying can be incredibly uncomfortable. The function of crying also changes as children grow from helpless infants to bigger kids, and a parent’s tolerance for crying can change as a result. Some parents can handle a crying baby but get irritated when they hear a 6-year-old whining and crying. Other parents start to crawl out of their skin at an infant mewling but are fine with talking an older kid through a crying spell. We’re all different, and we can be different parents even on different weeks!
If you find yourself having difficulty handling your crying baby or child, ask yourself:
What does crying mean to you? Does it represent weakness, is it a way to communicate a need, or do you see it as manipulation?
How have my tears been handled in the past? How do I treat myself when I cry?
What is my child needing from me at this moment?
Remember, the emotions and reactions you have to something are always acceptable, but that doesn’t mean your behavior is. Remind yourself that crying is a way to communicate a need at all ages, and that you do not necessarily have to stop the crying. Sometimes it’s as simple as needing someone to sit with and witness their feelings. If you feel unable to handle it, step away for a moment or let someone else respond, so you can focus on grounding yourself first.
When you know your kid’s fears aren’t “real”
After being startled by a very large dog barking in the street, your sensitive 6-year-old daughter begins showing signs of fear towards all dogs. She starts crying uncontrollably when she sees a dog coming down the street, refuses to read books or watch shows with dogs, and adamantly refuses to go to the park for fear of running into any dogs. She even says she feels scared when you sing “Old McDonald” because she doesn’t want to hear the “woof!” Initially, you laugh at her reactions and reassure her that she’s okay, but as time goes on you get increasingly frustrated. You consistently tell her this is silly and continue to expose her to dogs in the hopes this will blow over. You think it harmless when an older brothers play pranks on her by startling her with a dog plushie, and you dismiss her fears as “just a phase.” You believe that by not feeding her fear and anxiety, she’ll eventually get over it.
Another difficult emotion for parents to deal with is fear, or anxiety. When a child is afraid, parents can fall somewhere in the spectrum between dismissing them, like the parent above, or coddling them. A parent who is frequently fearful themselves might err towards protecting their child too much and attempting to shield them from feeling any sort of fear or anxiety. Alternatively, a parent who is outgoing and brave might be unable to understand why their child is afraid and minimize their feelings. Anxiety and facing fears is important, as long as the child has the proper support and encouragement in place.
Ask yourself this if you find yourself consistently struggling with your child’s fear or anxiety:
What emotions does my child’s fear bring up for me? Does it remind me of how afraid I was as a child?
How do I feel towards my child when I see their vulnerability or ongoing need for reassurance?
What are your views about facing your fears and where did they come from?
You won’t always get it perfectly - there are moments you want to comfort and protect, and other moments you want to help your child grow. What you want to look out for is whether you always do one or the other, as that might indicate that you have some unresolved feelings of your own.
These scenarios are just a few examples of the numerous ways that a parent’s emotions and expectations color the way they respond to their children. In the scenarios above, sometimes the parents had personal insight. But for many people, that is not the case. As parents, we can get caught up in the day-to-day with our kids and if we’re overwhelmed, we’ll resort to what comes naturally and easily - which in general is an amalgamation of our own experiences as children, our expectations, and our unconscious beliefs.
What if I keep losing control with my child’s emotions?
There are also cases in which Fraiberg’s “ghosts” take up residence without a parent even realizing. This is often the case when parents have experienced significant childhood trauma, abuse, or neglect. In these cases, parents may find themselves so depressed or anxious that they are unable to respond warmly to their infant or child. They may have the tendency to ignore or be unresponsive to their child, or they may reproduce their own trauma by engaging in spanking, verbal or emotional abuse towards their children.
Research has shown that there is a clear correlation between a parent’s own difficult childhood and subsequent parenting behaviors, with parents with higher incidences of abuse, neglect, or trauma showing less emotional availability and utilizing harsher and more punishing discipline. The good news is even if you’ve had many of these experiences yourself before becoming a parent, prioritizing your own emotional wellbeing with support can strengthen your parent-child bond and improve parenting skills.
Breaking the cycle: What to do when your child’s emotions trigger you
So let’s say that you’ve noticed a reaction in yourself you don’t love, or your co-parent has accused you of mismanaging a situation with your child, or you’re finding that parenting is fraught with more anxiety than you expected. What now? Where do you go from there?
Notice.
Take notice of what triggered you, what your reaction was, and when it’s most likely to happen. It’s tempting to want to solve the moment or just move on when it’s over, but being able to notice what’s happening and your patterns is crucial.
Step back.
If you reacted in a way that scared or frightened yourself or your child, give yourself a moment to remove yourself from the situation. Go to the bathroom, get a drink of water, it does not need to be a long break, but interrupting the moment instead of accelerating it is a good step.
Regulate, regulate, regulate!!
Keeping yourself calm enough is the best way to make sure you’re parenting the way you want, so find ways that help you calm down both in the moment and throughout the day. That might be deep breaths, taking a walk, texting a sympathetic parent friend to vent, or putting on some music and silly dancing it out.
Give yourself grace.
Self-compassion goes a long way and parenting is an endurance sport. Remind yourself that you are human and flawed and that it’s okay to make mistakes. You and your parenting are not defined by this one reaction or moment.
Apologize and reconnect.
When you’re calm, go back to your child, apologize, and focus on ways to reconnect. I promise that apologizing to a child for losing your cool will not undermine your parenting, it will model a healthy way to relate!
Get support for yourself.
If you feel that you’re not able to change your reactions or cope alone, consider therapy for parenting stress. You don’t have to figure parenting out all on your own. Knowing you’ll have consistent professional support can already take some weight off your shoulders.
Therapy for parenting stress
There’s a reason the saying is “it takes a village”. Navigating the relentless demands of raising children can easily push your nervous system into chronic overload, but you don’t have to carry that weight alone.
Therapy for parenting stress provides a compassionate, non-judgmental space to unpack the underlying reasons, generational patterns, or daily struggles that so easily lead to parents being burned out and emotionally reactive with their children.
By working with a therapist, as a parent you can learn practical emotion regulation skills, understand why your nervous system responds how it does to specific moments with your child, and have dedicated space to invest in your wellbeing and growth. Receiving support means you can get what you need to show up for your child and continue building a strong attachment.
Our team of psychologists at Manhattan Therapy Collective have expertise in perinatal mental health, attachment patterns, emotion regulation, mood, unresolved trauma, and many other areas that can support your parenting journey. We are trained in a number of different therapies, including psychodynamic therapy, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, Dialectical Behavioral Therapy, and somatic therapies for trauma such as EMDR and IFS. If you’re interested in learning more, reach out to schedule a complimentary consultation call.
About the Author: Dr. Georgia Meneguzzo Caldart is a postdoctoral fellow at Manhattan Therapy Collective who enjoys working with parents on fostering deeper understanding of their children and their own emotions in relation to them. She ties her clinical expertise with her knowledge in childhood development to help folks become the parents they wish to be.
References
Bowlby, J. (1988). A secure base: Parent-child attachment and healthy human development. Basic Books.
Fraiberg, S., Adelson, E., & Shapiro, V. (1975). Ghosts in the nursery. A psychoanalytic approach to the problems of impaired infant-mother relationships. Journal of the American Academy of Child Psychiatry, 14(3), 387–421. https://doi.org/10.1016/s0002-7138(09)61442-4
Rowell, T., & Neal-Barnett, A. (2021). A Systematic Review of the Effect of Parental Adverse Childhood Experiences on Parenting and Child Psychopathology. Journal of child & adolescent trauma, 15(1), 167–180. https://doi.org/10.1007/s40653-021-00400-x
Winnicott, D.W. (1953). Transitional Objects and Transitional Phenomena—A Study of the... Int. J. Psycho-Anal., 34:89-97