Because a person who is shouted at gets to defend himself.

Anger gives the guilty something to push against; it lets them make the fight about your tone instead of their sin, retreat into their own hurt feelings, walk away muttering that you were hysterical and impossible and they’d tried their best.

Colton had spent three years dismissing his mother precisely by casting her as the difficult one, the dramatic one, the one who made scenes.

If she had made a scene now, she would have handed him the last excuse he needed.