Angry at your child: what’s really behind it

Seven forty-two. Kindergarten starts at eight. Ben puts on a shoe, the left one, on his right foot, and roars like a dinosaur while he does it. Sarah breathes. And then it bursts out of her: “Hurry up, for goodness’ sake!” Ben’s dinosaur goes very quiet. Afterwards Sarah thinks: “He just has to learn to be on time.” What she doesn’t know: this is hardly about the shoe. Start by finding out what drives your anger at your own child.

Anger is part of parenting

Children dawdle, defy and squabble, usually just when parents are under pressure anyway. As early as 1991, the American developmental psychologist Theodore Dix described emotions as the core of parenting, the lovely ones and the difficult ones. So anger is not a sign that something is wrong with you. But Dix also shows that how strong the anger gets doesn’t depend only on the child. It depends on how parents interpret the behaviour and which of their own goals feel threatened². If you think “He’s doing it on purpose”, you get angrier than if you think “He’s five and tired”.

The tip of the iceberg: anger as a secondary emotion

The Canadian psychologist Leslie Greenberg, founder of emotion-focused therapy, distinguishes between primary and secondary emotions. Secondary emotions are a reaction to another, more original feeling. His example is exactly the kind of anger that is really responding to fear or sadness¹. In family life this means: beneath the loud anger there is often something quieter that’s harder to bear. Exhaustion. Helplessness. Shame, when everyone in the supermarket is watching. Or the fear of failing as a mother or father.

In the moment, you usually don’t notice this quiet feeling. Sarah is convinced she’s scolding because of punctuality. That a dawdling Ben feels to her like “I can’t get this right” remains unconscious. How to recognise and name such feelings in the first place is described in Naming feelings.

Four inner conflicts behind the anger

The German OPD conflict model describes basic inner conflicts that show up again and again in close relationships⁹. In our psychodynamic reading, four of them often sit behind anger at one’s own child. In MindMotion they are called patterns:

• Being Enough (self-worth conflict): your child’s behaviour becomes a report card on you. The anger is louder than the feeling of not being good enough. More in Self-worth.
• Fit In & Take Charge (submission versus control): a “no” feels like a power struggle you mustn’t lose.
• Taking & Giving (care versus self-sufficiency): you keep giving and get little back. The anger comes when your own tank is empty.
• Responsibility (guilt conflict): you feel responsible for everything your child becomes, and every mistake turns into yours.

Each of these patterns has a hidden benefit: as long as you’re angry, you don’t have to feel the powerlessness, the shame or the exhaustion underneath. That’s why the scene repeats itself, even though every evening you resolve to stay calmer tomorrow.

Perfectionism and exhaustion: when the tank is empty

The Belgian psychologist Moïra Mikolajczak and her team studied what parental burnout does, with more than 2,000 parents: exhaustion, emotional distance from the child and the feeling of no longer being good enough as a parent. Burnout predicted more neglect later on, and more verbal, physical and psychological violence towards the children³. A Finnish study of 1,725 parents found the strongest risk factor in perfectionism, especially the feeling that others expect perfect parents. Mothers were affected more than fathers⁴.

That fits Sarah’s sentence “I’m only good when everything runs smoothly”. If you hold yourself to standards that high, you run empty faster, and an empty tank makes the fuse short. Being kinder to yourself is therefore not softness but prevention. How that works is explained in Self-compassion.

Old sentences, new role

Many parents get a fright when they suddenly hear themselves saying things they heard as children. The psychoanalyst Selma Fraiberg called this “ghosts in the nursery”: experiences from your own childhood reappear in the parent role without you noticing⁸. The psychiatrist Daniel Siegel and the educator Mary Hartzell describe how parents get swept away by old, unresolved issues in such moments, and how self-understanding helps keep this from continuing with their own child⁷. More on how old family patterns keep working into adult life can be found in Still seeking your parents’ approval and Enmeshed with your parents?. How a parent’s own pattern repeats itself in family life is also shown in “Daddy has to work”.

After the outburst: repair is what counts

The good news first: nobody has to be perfect. The American developmental researcher Ed Tronick showed that ruptures in contact between parent and child are completely normal. What gives children security is that these ruptures get repaired soon⁶. An honest apology shows your child that a relationship can survive conflict.

The serious news: frequent yelling is more than a slip. In a University of Pittsburgh study of 967 teenagers and their parents, frequent harsh verbal discipline, meaning shouting, cursing and insulting, was linked to more behaviour problems and depressive symptoms. Parental warmth did not protect against it⁵.

What helps in the moment

• Notice the rise: when you feel it tipping, pause. If your child is safe, step out of the room for a moment.
• Look below the water line: ask yourself: what am I feeling underneath right now? Tired? Helpless? Ashamed?
• Say the quiet feeling: “I’m completely exhausted right now” often works better than “Hurry up, for goodness’ sake!”.
• Repair: if it did happen, come back, apologise and explain in simple words what was going on.

How MindMotion picks this up

MindMotion is not therapy and doesn’t offer it. The app is a tool for psychological self-reflection, closer to coaching. In the Mind-Check you start from a concrete scene, such as the last morning you raised your voice. Step by step you look at what you wished for, what you feared and where you know it from. That makes visible which pattern lies beneath your anger. At the end there’s a small plan for the next morning at seven forty-two. Start the Mind-Check, it works without signing up. Psychology in short stories is waiting in the video blog.

Frequently asked questions