Moms and Dads

Getting Angry Doesn’t Make You Any Less of a Parent

by Kevyn Gohu
April 26, 2022

As parents (moms and dads both), we sometimes feel like we’ve lost our right to get angry.

Because of social media, it’s easy for us parents to be shamed for certain things. One of the most common things to be parent-shamed for is getting angry. Yelling, snapping, shouting — a lot of those things are highly looked down upon since the rise of Gentle Parenting. But considering the stress of parenting and other things, it’s impossible to constantly and consistently maintain a gentle stance in parenting.

“They don’t listen! They can’t hear me!”

One of the biggest reasons why we end up yelling, snapping, and shouting is because we feel unheard. Especially in the process of disciplining our kids, we harden up our stance and raise our voices a bit. This gets our kids to stop because they can sense in the air that they’re in trouble. But when everything is too much, as parents, the only thing we feel we can do is to scream and yell because everything seems to be falling on deaf ears.

“I want them to listen to me!”

It’s not a matter of right or wrong in this heated state. Here, we just want to be heard regardless of how it comes out. Unfortunately, some people expect parents to have the patience of a god. So whenever parents get angry or do something to relieve themselves, the guilt sets in real fast soon after. Being mindful of our rage and our words is something that takes a lot of practice and is not something we can get overnight.

Then, the shame sets in.

In Philippine culture, we have a strong sense of hiya which is often loosely understood as “shame”. More so when we’re parents. But the truth is, our shame comes from our knowledge of owning that anger. It’s painful to sometimes accept that we parents lash out at our kids because we’re angry. But, it’s better than sweeping it under the rug, never talking about it, and most of all, not apologizing for what we did.

Our being angry doesn’t make us any less of a parent. It reminds us we’re human.

A lot of times, we forget that we’re human because we try our best to be superhuman for our kids. They need their favorite food at this certain time but at the same time, the house needs to be fixed simultaneously so they won’t notice something is off. That’s a lot to juggle for both parents. But, as parents, there’s nothing wrong with being angry. It’s how one deals with it that counts.