On repair, which children are unusually good at

One thing that is not on any list. When you have shouted, you can go back.

Not a speech and not a performance of guilt, which puts the child in the position of comforting you. Something short. I shouted this morning and I should not have. That was not about you.

Children take repair remarkably well, and what they learn from it is worth more than the calm they would have had instead: that adults get it wrong, that getting it wrong is survivable, and that somebody can come back. Nobody is asking you to be a parent who never shouts. That parent does not exist.