Have you ever done something so deplorable, so condemnable, to your child, that you felt as if you might feel guilty for your entire life? I’ve done some pretty stupid, and even awful things with both my sisters, whom I regularly cared for in our childhood, as well as my daughter, that I wish I could take back. While I didn’t inflict bodily harm, sometimes I wonder if the stupid things I’ve done might have even been worse.

Take, for example, the time I practically tortured my little sister by playing Metallica’s “Enter Sandman” until she cried. To this day, she hates the song—and I was about ten or eleven years old, which is definitely old enough to know better. I took both of my sisters to see Scary Movie when I was a teenager and despite the objectionable content, I sat in shock as we watched the film instead of doing the right thing, which was to take them out of that theater! These are some of my biggest regrets, though both of them assure me that “It’s not a big deal.” But what if it really is?

My biggest regret now is how I’ve yelled at my poor six-year-old. I don’t do it often, but I can count at least five times when I have yelled so meanly, so terrifyingly loudly, that it made her cry, and I feel as if I might as well have hit her—or perhaps that it was even worse than hitting her—for all of the impact it made on both of us.

A couple of weeks ago, for example, she spilled her lunch on the floor and put the dirty fork (along with its cat hair!) back into her bowl. I just about lost it, screaming, “You know better!” We don’t have a lot of groceries to just waste like that, and I often don’t have the time to re-make a meal, either. But there was no way in hell she deserved my yelling for a simple mistake. Would you yell at your mother or spouse for making such a mistake, after all?

Why do we subject children to such harshness and high expectations when we’d never expect it from our grown-up family and friends, who definitely know better far more than a child? It just boggles my mind.

And despite her quick forgiveness that there is no way I deserve as I apologize over and over again, as we both are crying, I find it very hard to forgive myself for such an instance. She seems to be over it within minutes, moving onto the next activity after we have a cry; but I am still reeling from the impact of my own monstrosity hours, even days, later. Perhaps that pure forgiveness, which is part of that pure unconditional love, is something else we need to re-learn from our own children.