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.

There is a line for the shape of that and it is one sentence. Every son of Adam commits sin, and the best of those who commit sin are those who repent. It does not say that getting it wrong is better than not getting it wrong. It says that among the people who get it wrong, which is everybody, the ones who come back are the best of them. The report is about sin before Allah and this step is about an apology to a six year old, so the step across is ours.

Nobody is asking you to be a parent who never shouts. That parent does not exist.