Even though I figured he’d eventually speak those three words, when my five-year-old son finally told me: “I hate you,” I was not ready. Not on that sunny, crisp fall day, not on Sukkot. I swallowed hard.

Families in our suburban Jewish community had begun a tradition of visiting each other’s sukkot, the temporary dwellings we build in our backyards for the holiday. These huts commemorate the ones used by our ancestors for shelter during their desert wanderings. We had finished lunch at one family’s sukkah and were getting ready to visit another’s down the street for cake. My son had just watched his friends leave for our next destination, frowning because he wanted to walk with them. He fidgeted while I collected our things. “Mommy, you always take so long.” Then he screwed up his face and, working himself into a rage, said, “I hate you.”

I was too stunned to know what to feel. I knew better than to respond right away. Something awful might have popped out of my mouth, words that would have made him “wrong.”

From the perspective of a five-year-old, perhaps it is a tragedy to have your friends go ahead of you because you must wait for your mommy when there’s a street to cross. Anyway, after crossing the street, my son ran ahead.

I remembered my mother’s response when I had been my son’s age and said the three words to her. She retorted: “You have a mean streak.” Occasionally afterwards she would refer to my “mean streak.” The term indicated something yucky inside. Damaged goods.

When my son said “I hate you,” he meant it at that moment. But I knew that how I reacted might affect him for a long time. My mother would not have dreamed of hurting me. When she responded to my angry words, she was protecting herself from feelings that frightened her. As a child, she had lacked the good fortune to grow up in a family whose intimacy allowed the expression of negative feelings. Would I be able to break the cycle?

An hour after my son said the words, we walked home. On the way, I asked him, “Do you remember what you said to me when you were upset?”

“Yes,” he said, looking at me with his usual sweet expression. “But that was a long time ago.” Sometime soon I will tell my son that it is normal to feel all kinds of emotions, and that it’s better to tell me about the troubling ones than to bottle them up. And if he says the words again, I will be prepared to say: “That’s okay; children sometimes feel that way about their parents. I said the same thing to my mother when I was a little girl.” And I will tell him I love him.

I hope to feel calm enough to respond so positively, although these challenges often occur when we least expect them. As children grow and go through different stages, they discover new — sometimes hurtful — ways to express their anger. Our challenge is to find a way to reap a fruitful harvest from their seeds of discontent.

Of course, this may be difficult to do at the moment when we feel besieged. Instead of tuning in to our children’s hurt feelings, which they express as anger, we are tempted either to retreat or to defend ourselves. If at the moment of truth I have the latter inclination, I plan to count to ten silently. Then I will say: “We’ll talk about this later” — not as a threat, but with the calm assurance that our discussion will result in a mutually respectful solution.

So on that Sukkot, when my son intoned the dreaded three words, my confusion about how to respond led to a journey back to my own childhood. I had wandered in my desert and finally arrived at a promise — a promise I will keep for my son.

Marcia Fisch Berger, a social worker, lives in San Rafael CA