We all lose our temper at times, even professionally certified family life educators. A reminder of that fact stares me in the face every time I look to the right after climbing the stairs to the second floor of our home. My teenage daughter’s bedroom door is there. The door itself is non-descript, except for the splintered break just above the door handle. It looks as though someone hit the door with something. That something was my fist. I don’t typically hit things. The last time I even came close to hitting another person was in grade school. But the evidence is there, and has been for months.

We were engaged in a verbal spar. She decided it was over and I was determined that it was not. Long story short, she slammed her door. I slammed my fist against, no through, the veneer of the door. I was embarrassed. My daughter was shocked. I apologized and retreated. She stayed behind her door.

Samuel Osherson, a practicing psychotherapist and a research psychologist at the Harvard University Health Services, has written, “Anger is often a father’s way of responding to the powerlessness of parenting.”

I remember that frustration of powerlessness when in the middle of the night my vulnerable, inconsolable infant child would not stop crying. I remember that frustration when I see the door at the top of the stairs. One of the first steps to preventing the misuse of power in parenting is to acknowledge the possibility of its abuse.

I’m proud to say that our family values and esteems dialogue, constructive conflict, forgiveness and grace. But I must confess that as much as I would like to say we have arrived, the reality is our life, and yours, is a journey of successes and failures. We all get angry and we don’t always express it appropriately. One of the keys to long-term success is to acknowledge our failures and take the appropriate steps to make right our wrongs – seek forgiveness and to seek out the relationships and resources to make lasting change.

My daughter and I should have taken a “time-out” from our argument before the door incident. We didn’t. I’m reminded of all this now because I finally got around to fixing the door. Fortunately we did the soul repair the same day of the incident. The door is almost as good as new. Almost . . . if you look real close you can discern a blemish. Two people can see it without looking close. But those same two people have made a commitment to express their anger appropriately so that the blemish remains on the door and not on their relationship.

Rich Batten is the father of four, the family and consumer science agent for CSU Cooperative Extension Office in Douglas County and author of the e-mail newsletter Fastbreak for Fathers from which this article is excerpted. For back issues and resources on anger management visit www.douglascountyextension.org. Click on the Family/Consumer tab.