What to Do Tonight After You Snap at Your Kids (And Feel Guilty About It)
What to Do Tonight After You Snap at Your Kids (And Feel Guilty About It)
If you’ve ever snapped at your kids and immediately felt that wave of guilt, I want you to know something right away.
You are not alone.
Every parent has moments where they lose patience. Even when you are working hard to use strong effective parenting skills, there are days when you are tired, overwhelmed, and not as regulated as you want to be.
What matters most is not that you made a mistake.
It’s what you do next.
The Moment After You Snap
That feeling right after you raise your voice is heavy.
You replay what happened.
You wish you could take it back.
You wonder if you handled it the wrong way.
This is where many parents get stuck.
But this moment is actually one of the most powerful opportunities for growth using positive parenting techniques.
Because this is where repair happens.
Why Repair Matters More Than Perfection
There is no version of effective parenting skills that means you never mess up.
That is not the goal.
The goal is to model what it looks like to take responsibility, repair relationships, and move forward.
When you learn how to apologize to your child, you are teaching them:
Accountability
Emotional awareness
How to repair relationships
These are life skills that matter far beyond childhood.
And they are part of every healthy approach to parenting styles that prioritize connection.
What a Real Apology Looks Like
Not all apologies are equal.
A real apology is not:
“I’m sorry you feel that way”
A real apology is clear, direct, and takes ownership.
Here’s what it includes:
1. Say What You Did
Be specific.
“I yelled at you.”
“I used a voice that was too loud.”
This is a key part of effective parenting skills because it helps your child understand what actually happened.
2. Explain Why It Was a Problem
You are helping your child connect actions to impact.
“That voice probably felt scary.”
“That was not a kind way to talk.”
This is where positive parenting techniques come in. You are teaching, not just correcting.
3. Take Responsibility
This is the hardest part for many parents.
You are not blaming your child.
You are not justifying your behavior.
You are owning it.
Learning how to apologize to your child means saying:
“That was not okay, and I’m responsible for it.”
Strong parenting styles are built on this kind of accountability.
4. Share What You Will Do Differently
This is what turns an apology into growth.
“Next time, I will take a breath.”
“Next time, I will use a calmer voice.”
This step strengthens your effective parenting skills and shows your child that change is possible.
5. Give Your Child Space to Respond
This part is often overlooked.
Ask:
“Do you want to tell me how that felt?”
This is one of the most powerful positive parenting techniques you can use.
It gives your child a voice.
It also deepens connection, which is at the heart of healthy parenting styles.
What NOT to Do
There is a strong temptation to say:
“You made me do that.”
But this undermines everything.
Even if your child was not listening.
Even if they were pushing your buttons.
You are still responsible for your actions.
That is a core part of effective parenting skills and one of the most important lessons you can model when learning how to apologize to your child.
Letting Go of the Guilt
Once you’ve made a real apology, something important happens.
The guilt starts to lift.
Not because the moment didn’t matter, but because you handled it in a way that aligns with your values.
That is what positive parenting techniques are really about.
Not perfection.
Alignment.
When This Keeps Happening
If you notice that snapping is happening more often than you would like, that is information.
It might mean:
You are overwhelmed
Your child’s behavior is triggering you repeatedly
You need more support or structure
This is where strengthening your effective parenting skills can make a huge difference.
And sometimes, adjusting your parenting styles or learning new strategies can help reduce the situations that lead to those moments in the first place.
Final Thoughts
If you snapped at your kids today, you have not failed.
You have an opportunity.
An opportunity to model accountability.
An opportunity to practice how to apologize to your child.
An opportunity to use positive parenting techniques in a real, meaningful way.
This is what strong effective parenting skills look like.
And over time, these moments of repair build stronger, more resilient relationships than perfection ever could.
LET'S CONNECT:
Love having expert tips you can actually use? Join our newsletter and get a beautifully designed PDF of each episode’s top 3 takeaways—delivered straight to your inbox every week.
Are you a provider? Subscribe here for professional insights and parenting resources!
-
[00:00:00] Leah Clionsky: It is been a long day. You are super irritated and after what feels like a lot of provocation, you have snapped at your kids. You've raised your voice and you did not sound nice, and now you feel really guilty. The parent guilt is settling in and you really wish you could just go back in time and unsnap at them, but it's too late.
[00:00:22] Leah Clionsky: What do you do about this? How do you repair the relationship? That's what this episode of the Educated Parent Podcast is all about. I hate that feeling where I know that I've been dysregulated and snapped at my kids. Even if they were really doing something annoying, the fact that I was operating out of a place where I wasn't feeling in complete control and I wasn't regulated that.
[00:00:50] Leah Clionsky: That leads to a lot of guilt and shame for parents, and I've been there. I, we've all been there. I can think of this one day where I was in a really bad mood. Something problematic had happened in work and there was something else going on in my personal life and I was just trying to like finish this text conversation and my kids were both insistent on being near me and hugging me at the same time, which sounds adorable, right?
[00:01:20] Leah Clionsky: How sweet is that? I think that they could pick up on the fact that my attention was absolutely diverted elsewhere, so they really wanted to connect with me. One thing I've learned about myself over the years is that one of my biggest like emotional trigger points is when people are like touching me too much and I need physical space and no one listens.
[00:01:43] Leah Clionsky: So they're there hugging me and I say, I'm having a really bad day. I just need to finish this text. I need you to give me some space. Can you please give me some space? They both giggled and they kept hugging me. So my irritation went up and I'm like, guys, I need you to give me some space. I know you're hugging me and that's nice, but I need some space now.
[00:02:06] Leah Clionsky: Please give me some space. And then my kids hugged me even tighter. And by that point I lost it. I'm singing this really angry voice. Give me some space now. Don't touch me. The Beast voice. It came out. If you've, um, listened to my episode about losing it in the morning with my kids, the Beast voice is what my daughter calls the angry voice.
[00:02:30] Leah Clionsky: That sounds like the beast from Beauty and the Beast, not proud of it. I really try for it not to come out, but under the right circumstances that voice comes out, so I snap at them. I say that both kids look at me with huge eyes. Not like, oh, like mom set a boundary, but like, oh, like mom is scary.
[00:02:50] Leah Clionsky: Right? Huge eyes. They let go of me. My daughter says, I'm sorry, mommy. And then the guilt, the parent guilt just dis senses, right? That's not how I meant to talk to them. That's not what I, how I meant to say that. I did need to set a boundary, but I didn't mean to set it that way, and now I just feel bad. So what do we do?
[00:03:14] Leah Clionsky: What do we do when we mess up? None of us are perfect parents. It's okay to not be a perfect parent. It's how you handle the moments that you mess up. It's how you repair your relationships with your child that really matter the most. And the way that it's important to repair is by making a real and genuine apology.
[00:03:42] Leah Clionsky: I really believe in apologizing to my kids when I mess up. I believe in owning my mistakes. I believe in taking responsibility. I believe in changing my actions after I make those mistakes. Part of the reason I apologize to them is to fix the relationship. The other reason I apologize to them very intentionally is to model how to take responsibility and apologize when you've messed up.
[00:04:12] Leah Clionsky: It's a life skill, not a skill that everybody has. I think it's a really important one, and it's in integrity and alignment with how I want to parent and how I believe humans should treat each other. So let's give that situation as an example. So I had to go calm down.
[00:04:37] Leah Clionsky: I had to go calm down.
[00:04:42] Leah Clionsky: I had butterscotch. Sorry, my dog. I had to go calm down and then I came back to my kids and I said, I just snapped at you. I just talked to you using the Beast voice and I am really sorry. I was feeling really frustrated because I needed a little bit of space, but it was not okay for me to talk to you in that voice, and I know that it was not okay.
[00:05:20] Leah Clionsky: Sorry. Give me a minute
[00:05:25] Leah Clionsky: enough.
[00:05:29] Leah Clionsky: You can't do that.
[00:06:09] Leah Clionsky: It was not okay for me to talk to you in that voice, and I know it made you feel. Scared and uncomfortable next time. If I'm starting to feel that frustrated, I will make sure that I use a calmer tone of voice and I'll ask you in a different way. Ken, do you have anything you wanna say to me about what I did?
[00:06:38] Leah Clionsky: And then my kids both said like, you did scare us. Mommy, I just wanted to hug you. And I'm like, I know you did. You're only, you are only four and six. You just wanted to hug me. You wanted to be close to me, and I was upset about some grownup things that had nothing to do with you. And that's why I use that voice.
[00:06:56] Leah Clionsky: But it's not okay, and it's not your fault. And I'm sorry that I scared you. So that to me is a really solid apology. I took responsibility. I took responsibility. For the way that I acted and the decisions that I made, and I explained to them how I would handle it differently in the future. Now, there is a real temptation in that moment to say, you made me do this because you didn't listen to me and you didn't let go of me when I asked you four times.
[00:07:31] Leah Clionsky: Right? Because that's part of what happened is that I was asking and they were ignoring it, but that doesn't change how I behaved. They are kids. They did what they did, but I'm responsible for my own behavior and my own emotions. There is a discussion to be had later about when I ask you to do something, you need to do what I tell you to do.
[00:07:55] Leah Clionsky: That, that, is a problem sometimes, right? So like there's a discussion to be had, but there, I don't wanna blame them for my actions because I'm in charge of my actions. And if they had been someone else's kids, I wouldn't have yelled at them. If a therapy client had ever come up and hugged me like that, you bet.
[00:08:15] Leah Clionsky: I never would've raised my voice. I'm responsible and it's okay to take responsibility, and it doesn't diminish you in the sight of your children when you own your mistakes because kids pick up on hypocrisy and disingenuous so quickly. Okay, so let me tell you how to make an apology like that. The first thing you're gonna do is you're gonna describe what you did That was a problem.
[00:08:43] Leah Clionsky: So in my case, the problem that I did is that I used a tone of voice that was way too loud, and I talked to them very sharply. Luckily, I didn't say anything mean to them. I just didn't talk to them nicely, right? If I saw them talking to each other like that, I would step in and correct. So that tone, and I took responsibility for the fact that loud voice scared them.
[00:09:12] Leah Clionsky: So I took, I described what I did and I described why it was a problem, and I took responsibility. So you want to identify what it is that you did and why it was a problem. That's the first step. You want to take responsibility and apologize for it. It's me. I'm the one who did this. I'm sorry that I did it right.
[00:09:37] Leah Clionsky: The real apology, not sorry. You feel that way, right? Real apology about the harm that I did, intentional or not. And the last thing I did is I asked them how they felt about it, and I gave them a chance to talk. I gave them a chance to process it with me. Yes, I did feel scared. Again, in those moments there's a temptation to say, well, like why were you scared?
[00:09:59] Leah Clionsky: You knew I wasn't gonna do anything to you. , My kids are not afraid. I'm gonna hurt them. But being yelled at by someone so much bigger than you or being yelled at by your mom, like that's scary. That's part of why we do it is it's intimidating. So acknowledging, yeah, I can see why that would be scary.
[00:10:18] Leah Clionsky: Yep, I understand. And to me that is what makes the kind of apology and reparation it let us hug. It let us connect again. And the mom guilt went away because I made a mistake and I handled it in a way that I'm okay with. And that's what all of us can do. We're all gonna make mistakes, but we can all apologize and take meaningful action.
[00:10:42] Leah Clionsky: So that's the other part to this. But I just told you the steps for making a good apology. But it's something then that I really work on. Alright. I'm starting to feel this way. What am I gonna do so that I don't repeat that same behavior? And if you're a parent who's a human, this is gonna come up for you too.
[00:11:02] Leah Clionsky: If you notice though, that you're yelling a lot more than you want to. If that's a time where you might really think about seeing us at Thriving Child Center, we get it. We're not gonna shame you, but we can help you figure out how you wanna handle it, and we can also help you figure out how to get rid of some certain challenging behaviors so that you're less prone to it.
[00:11:23] Leah Clionsky: If your kids are, and you are in this control cycle where they're constantly pushing your buttons and you're kind of stuck with them. Doing things that are really difficult and not listening to you, and then you are escalating 'cause they're not listening to you. Another thing we can do is give you some strategies to improve their listening to you and then you won't be in that situation quite so much.
[00:11:44] Leah Clionsky: And that's really what we can do with Parent Child Interaction Therapy, PCIT, where we teach you specific strategies for connecting with your kids and then having specific ways of giving directions and following through. It's also where we can help you with Thriving Child Center. If you have an older child and you need some other more older kid strategies to manage those kinds of behaviors,
[00:12:10] Leah Clionsky: I. Or you need some older kid strategies to manage those kinds of behaviors. But it's human. It's really human. We're all gonna make mistakes. But I hope this script, these words really help you when you, as a human being end up snapping at your kids, feel that guilty feeling, and then repair things with them.
[00:12:31] Leah Clionsky: I hope this was helpful and I'll talk to you again next time.