Some day my daughter is going to say, “Remember when you grabbed my hair?” I am going to say, “Yup.”

Yesterday my daughter screamed a lot of threats at me when I did something she didn’t like. (I did not start this.) She got in my face. She was doing her best to intimidate me.

Uhhh. Yeah. I got one hand on her head and said, “You want to threaten me?”

I didn’t yank. I didn’t shove her around. I didn’t do anything harsh to cause pain. But I did put my hand on her head and growl at her.

That happened. Because if you get in my face and scream that you are going to humiliate me and make me sorry…

Well. We’ll see.

Is it my finest moment? Probably not. Am I deeply ashamed of it? No. Do I think I abused her?

I haven’t known families who have had zero physical contact between each other? I didn’t hit her. I didn’t grab her hair and yank her through the house like happened to me. I just made it very clear that screaming in my face and threatening me was a bad call.

I asked her later if I hurt her. She said no. She said she didn’t like it, but it didn’t hurt.

Good. I’m glad my level of control was where I meant it to be. I was not trying to hurt you. I was just trying to make it very very clear that you don’t get to scream in my face that you will make me sorry. Cause uhhh… no. That’s not ok.

Kids have to try it. I get that. She apologized. I apologized. We talked about how we wish it had gone.

If that had failed, well I think I would have enforced time out for a very long time. I don’t think I would have escalated more.

I still absolutely refuse to hit my kids. But I will be rude and indicate that threatening me will result in problems. Sure. I’ll do that. 99% of the time I work hard to make sure that my children don’t see my intimidating facial expressions. Sometimes… I can look pretty scary. I don’t have to actually hurt you to seem like someone you don’t want to fuck with.

The original precipitating incident? She did something she shouldn’t have done and I giggled. So she screamed and threatened me.

Yeah. No. Not playing that game. Did I handle it correctly? No. Did it e