Alice over at finslippy posted yesterday that she had screamed at her son until her throat hurt, and now was feeling pretty guilty about it. She asked her readers to post their own Bad Mommy stories to make her feel better and last I checked, there were 180 replies. There’s dozens of stories there that I’ve lived through myself, times when parents had a meltdown when their kid wouldn’t put any socks on or yelled at their kid in the mall for asking for a toy just ONE. MORE. TIME.

I was all set to add my own tale to the list — an event from a few weeks back when the Captain and I had a miscommunication, and 30 tsk-tsking grandmothers watched me bounce him down the escalator at Zellers, where he wound up with ripped pants and a bloodied forehead. But someone actually beat me to it — they’d had almost exactly the same experience. Nothing like the internet to let you know that no matter how crappy a parent you are, someone has been there before!

The other day I was talking to FameThrowa and I was telling her how surprised I was that, every now and then, something comes out of my mouth that sounds just like our mother. I warned her that someday, if she has kids, it’ll happen to her too, and she shook her head in total disbelief. I think it’s quite common for people who don’t have kids to think that they would never scream at their kids in frustration, never physically force their kids into their beds, never have an unreasonable, over-the-top reaction to a small infraction. But I say this to all parents, everywhere: it will happen to you. No one can be patient and loving and understanding all the time. No one can be at their best every hour of every day. No parent — no human being — can take having their buttons pushed over and over and over again without blowing a gasket every now and again.

I think it’s important to know that it’s going to happen, so that when it does, you don’t overreact and give the kids away to social services while locking yourself in your basement as penance. What’s important is to figure out how you’re going to handle it when an unfortunate parenting incident like this does happen.

Sir Monkeypants and I work well as a parenting team, and when one of us is losing patience, the other one usually notices and steps in, telling the other in a supportive way to take a little break, and then diffusing the situation. When I’m at home alone with the kids though, there are times when I’ve shrieked, there are times when I’ve slammed doors, and there are times when I’ve sent kids upstairs to their rooms for their own safety. After I’ve calmed down, instead of acting like everything is forgotten now, or worse, acting like everything was my kids’ fault (as my own parents were wont to do), I try to talk to my kids about what happened. I explain why Mommy was mad. I explain that yelling isn’t a good thing, and I apologize. I try to make sure that they calm down themselves, and we talk about how we can try to make sure that this doesn’t happen again.

Then I try to put it behind me, and try again tomorrow with a clean slate.

Being a parent is really, really hard. You just have to try to do the best you can, and when you have a failing day, pick yourself up and try for that A+ the next day.