I recently wrote about the dangers of yelling at one’s children. Although the column was aimed at people currently raising children I received a very strong response from many people whose children are now grown up. The response was invariably along these lines: “I feel terrible about what I did to my kids. I was a yeller. I know I yelled too much. I feel so guilty like such a bad parent. I know I caused damage.”

While some of these parents may have lost their children to yelling the majority enjoy good parent-child relationships today. Obviously in between the yelling episodes they managed to show enough love and goodwill that their kids got the message: “I love you even though you sometimes make me so mad!”

If all’s well that ends well why are these people so filled with terrible remorse?

The truth is they know they are very fortunate that they got off lightly. Deep down — and even on the surface — we all know that yelling is an aggressive destructive behavior that always provokes negative emotions in its victims. We all know that parental yelling is a high-risk behavior a habit that can particularly when harsh and frequent cause irreparable developmental harm and permanently destroy the parent-child relationship.

When our yelling doesn’t leave external marks — like children who reject us or our beliefs and lifestyle — we know that there might still be internal ones. We know too that we only yelled when we lost control of our higher faculties. None of us carefully consciously and purposely crafted our yells to accomplish an important educational objective — we were just plain mad.

And because of all this we feel guilty and brokenhearted. We wish we had never gone there.

The fact that parents feel so bad about their past behavior is proof of their innate goodness and fullness of heart. Their intention was never to hurt their children. They have always loved their children. So why did they yell in the first place?

We could say “They were only human — everyone loses their patience with children especially difficult uncooperative children.” Or we could say “They didn’t know better. Today we have lots more parenting courses offering many more options for discipline and guidance.” Or perhaps we might say “They felt it was the right thing to do their parents and grandparents did it before them they learned it was a mitzvah to discipline children and they knew their children needed to have the law laid down time and time again.”

And we’d be right on all counts. So what’s changed?

The only thing that’s different is that we have become more psychologically sophisticated. We now know the costs of our anger.

Our Sages have never condoned anger but we have conveniently “forgotten” or neglected their teachings on this subject. We have always been admonished to speak gently to correct others with sensitivity and respect to build on the positive. Only in the case of the rarest of most serious offences is a parent permitted to feign anger in order to make a point. All of these directives have been right there in front of our eyes but now we can see them due to the changes in our culture and the world around us. Our anger is humiliating now making public fools of us. Child services other parents colleagues and neighbors will no longer tolerate our babyish fits of rage. We ourselves are horrified at our behavior. Now we have to find another way.

All of us have made parenting mistakes marriage mistakes and other mistakes. All of us are fallible human beings. Now all we can do is go forward learning from our errors and continuously improving.

If we’ve yelled in the past we can use our remorse to help us speak more respectfully to our children and grandchildren. If we’ve been unreasonable or quick to anger we can now take charge of our emotions calm down and become more flexible. We can express our regret at not being able to do better earlier and we can convey our understanding of damage that we might have done.

All of this is a powerful lesson for our children. We are now teaching them how to acknowledge and apologize for wrong behavior and we are showing them that people can change at every stage of life. In so doing we are being what we’ve always wanted to be: excellent parents.