If this morning’s showing is any indication of how I’ll be as a disciplinarian, it’s clear that L is going to walk all over me—especially during her teenage years.

Let me explain. Every morning after L wakes up, I stagger into her room, take her out of her sleep sack and change her diaper (we call this the “pre-bottle routine”). This morning, however, when I plopped her on the changing table for a pit stop, the half-naked little wiggle-worm tried to launch herself off the pad and practice flying.

Three times.

The first time I managed to keep it together and playfully said, “No.” The second time, I was a bit more stern, raising my voice slightly but adding a gentle, “Silly girl,” to make clear I was still her friend.

Upon the child’s final attempt—the violent thrust that managed to get poop all over my hands and arms, not to mention the changing pad, the baby’s pajamas and parts of the changing table, too—I basically lost my marbles, raising my voice and uttering two words a new daddy never, ever wants to say and mean: “BAD GIRL!”

The baby snapped into compliance and stopped her behavior immediately (of course it helped that I gave her my watch to play with while I managed to clean up and get her diaper on). For the rest of the morning, though, I was a wreck; convincing myself that by yelling that loudly over something so silly, I had committed some form of emotional child abuse.

Questions ran rampant through my mind. Did I overreact? Do other parents yell at their 9-month-old kids? Will she remember that I yelled at her and hate me forever? Will her hatred for me kick off a lifelong hatred for men in general, prompting her to become a social misfit?

Thankfully, this torture ended relatively fast; after three hours with her nanny (I had to lead a Webinar), the baby was giggling at me and actually managed to give me a kiss (her new favorite thing to do, by the way).

Still, if my reaction to my reaction is any indication, this whole discipline thing is only going to get harder as L grows up, and I’m in for a world of pain.