“Mom, You’re Mad A Lot”: Why Anger Management for Parents is Important
C. S. Lewis pointed out in Mere Christianity,
If there are rats in a cellar you are most likely to see them if you go in very suddenly. But the suddenness does not create the rats: it only prevents them from hiding. In the same way the suddenness of the provocation does not make me an ill-tempered man; it only shows me what an ill-tempered man I am.
I consider this when I remember the stick-figure drawing that changed my life.
Baden was three or four. Curls bobbling, he produced a drawing in red marker, his favorite color, of our family flying kites. My stick hands rested on wonderfully slender stick hips, and hair sprouted in mattress springs all over my egg-shaped head.
But my eyebrows arrowed downward.
“I made you look mad on accident, but you’re really happy,” he explained.
This time, only my left eyebrow arched (the one my teenagers now freely imitate). “Am I usually mad?”
“Well, you’re mad a lot, but not in this picture.”
“I’m mad a lot?”
His eyes flickered, drifted. “Well, you’re mad sometimes. Like when we break stuff that’s important to you.”
I cocked my head.
This might not have stung so much if it hadn’t been one of those weeks anyone over four feet tall would have identified me as hormonal. All my children were shorter at that time. So I just seemed consistently, irrevocably irritated.
But my son’s words were also hard to digest because I had dedicated tremendous prayer and effort to overcoming anger—and because I was starting to realize I had an anger problem.
Typical does not mean harmless
I could have handed you a card deck of ways I was a gentle, nurturing parent. But those smoke and mirrors would distract your attention from the fact that I was easily angered and typically overreacted in ways hurtful to my children. I was metaphorically toting a gun to a fistfight.
And typical does not mean harmless.
My anger was like a fire, incinerating my kids’ tender emotions. But did I want my kids to have to protect parts of themselves from me? I needed to fervently, forensically examine what was fueling my anger—no excuses or ego allowed—and also the destruction it was causing.
Ending harmful anger meant cutting off the source of that fuel so I could handle conflict in ways that actually built up my family rather than destroyed it. As Proverbs 14:1 says, “The wisest of women builds her house, but folly with her own hands tears it down.”
Studies show that parents who regulate their own emotions are more likely to use skills that develop emotionally smart kids. They empower kids to problem-solve, chatting about and showing empathy for kids’ feelings and encouraging kids to express themselves in healthy ways.
One scientific review of 53 studies conducted over 20 years found that parents who regulated their emotions were more likely to have better parenting skills and kids who were able to regulate their own feelings—to the point that they were able to better avoid anxiety and depression.
But what about when I lose it—again?
So we know our emotional management matters intensely. But still: Is there a place for self-compassion in our anger with our kids? I believe that despite the very real effects of our anger on our homes and our kids, God has compassion on us and carries deep redemption for our families. His slow anger means we’re not consumed by His rage (Psalm 86:15; 145:8; Joel 2:13; Lamentations 3:22–23). He’s also designed our kids and us as resilient—people who can overcome and conquer, despite the ways we tend
to break, well, everything. You’ll hear me say it more than once: Confession, repentance, and redemption in my home—as well as my own need for Jesus, verbalized—has proven far more powerful than my own flawlessness. Not only that, but lacking self-compassion portrays my failure as bigger than God and what He says about me.
Author Jackie Hill Perry observes in Upon Waking, “We tend to suppose that our closeness to God, holiness, and the like, is all rigidity. Dying to and cutting off. Confession of and repenting for. But what if godliness is elusive (at times) because of our failure to believe that Christ has sympathy?”
“Death and life are in the power of the tongue” (Proverbs 18:21) when speaking to myself too. Does my self-talk, and forgiveness of myself, restate God’s life-giving mercy, love, and grace over my failures? Or is it antigospel, lashing my back with lifesucking fear, judgment, and a lack of belief that He and His righteousness are bigger than every screw-up (Genesis 50:20, Romans 8:28)?
Adapted from How to Stop Yelling Up the Stairs: Keeping Your Cool While Raising Your Kids. Copyright © 2026 by Janel Breitenstein. Published by Kregel Publications. Used with permission. All Rights Reserved.
Janel Breitenstein has spent six years in youth ministry, five years overseas, and far more years writing and speaking to parents. She has over twenty published works and more than a decade of publishing and marketing experience. Mom to her own messy family of six, Janel writes with an authentic, intimate style that connects with readers around the globe. You can find her having uncomfortable, important conversations at janelbreitenstein.com.