How to handle Angry Children?1- The Incident
When we think of our child’s anger, we normally thing of specific incidents of high emotion and perhaps unruly behaviour. When we think of those incidents, something else we have to consider is our own emotions and responses.
2- The Incident is only part of anger:
- Genes
- Background
- Factors like tiredness and strees
- The trigger
- Skills and maturity
Some kids struggle with their anger a lot more just because of the way they are wired – their genes make them more hot-tempered. But like most things, it’s a mixture of ‘nature and nurture’, genes plus environment. A disrupted home life, or being exposed to examples of violence and anger, can have a big impact on how much anger they demonstrate.
There are more immediate factors, too: stress, tiredness, and maybe the effects of sugar, caffeine and medicines.
What triggered the incident? An offense? A sense of injustice, frustration or fear?
How anger manifests itself is very much related to the anger management skills a child has, and that is related to maturity. Two-year-olds have a lot of anger but not many skills. Adolescence sometimes brings more peppery behaviour as the hormones surge. Age should, but doesn’t always, increase a child’s range of anger management skills.
3- The problems:
- The problem is a problem
- The emotion is a problem
- What the emotion creates is a problem
- You have got to deal with it all
It helps to see an incident through different lenses, and separate the issues both for yourself and your child. Look at the problem that sparked it – are their real issues that need to be sorted? Then there are the emotions, which might have been extreme but understandable. Then consider the actions that your child took. Even though there might have been a real problem that triggered the anger (and you can help them with that), and the anger is natural and understandable (and you can sympathise with their upset), their actions might have been completely unacceptable and need correcting.
4- What' the story
- Hurt feeling?
- Frustration?
- Fear of feeling unsafe?
- Don’t neglect justice
When you look at an incident, your perspective of events may be completely different from your child’s story. Your perspective might be better, but your child will feel you are being unfair if you don’t listen to and try to understand their version. Sometimes underneath the story you will pick up on the three big causes of childhood anger: hurt feelings, frustration and fear.
5- Battle Plans
- Outburst scripts: Hit, yell, abuse, damage
- Passive aggressive scripts: apparent compliance but sabotage everything
- Icy anger scripts: plotting cruel vengeance
- Self-destructive scripts: the anger is directed inwards
- Scripts are learnt from examples: media, mates, culture, us
- Our children need betted scripts
During anger we seldom carefully plan our responses; instead we turn to pull out ‘scripts’, battle plans that are sitting on the shelf in our brain waiting to be used. Anger management is giving our children better scripts.
6- Better Scripts
- Pause – count to ten, and don’t just go with the first thing that pops into your head.
- Express anger positively– this is far more likely to get an out-come you want
- Solve problems
- Keep anger in one place – we all tend to blur our anger out onto everything and everyone rather than staying focused on the real problem
- Change the story – can a different explanation dilute or extinguish the anger?
- What will move things on?
7- Understand Emotions
- Powerful but not irresistible
- You can – you must – stay in cool
- A key message to give
- A key skill to learn
The message to repeat over and over is that they can (and must!) resist the urge from anger to do the wrong thing.
8- Tricky emotions
- Emotions don’t always tell us the truth
- Emotions can have the wrong labels
- Signals of other things going on
No matter how angry we feel, it doesn’t mean we have justice and right on our side.
Sometimes anger is the wrong label for the strong emotion we are feeling – we might actually be afraid or tired or unwell.
Is the anger a symptom of some other issue or distress?
9- Anger needs practice
- Sport
- Debate
- Rough and tumble
- Sitting still
Sport, play fights and a lot of social interaction provide opportunities for our children to learn, how to keep their emotions in check. Even the discipline of keeping still and quiet is training children to reign in their impulses. Not much fun, but potentially valuable!
10- Anger needs examples
- Our response – to them, to others, especially to our partner
- Anger versus anger doesn’t work
The way we, as their parents, handle anger is probably the most important influence on how they will eventually process their anger.
11- Anger need time
- Maturity is a huge factor
- Some kids may take until their late teens
- Be encouraged by the ladder
It’s a marathon not a sprint. Good anger management usually only comes with maturity
12- The Anger ladder
A- Pleasant:
- Seeking resolution
- Focusing anger on source
- Holding to primary compalint
- Thinking logically
B- Unpleasant:
- Loud
- Displacing the anger to other sources
- Verbal abuse
- Expressing unrelated complaints
- Emotionally destructive behaviour
- Swearing
- Throwing objects
- Destroying property
- Physical abuse
Children may not be doing well with controlling their anger, but if their behaviour is higher up the ladder than it was, then at least you can congratulate them (and yourself!) that they are improving and heading in the right direction.
13- Do you 'discipline' anger
- Punishment and shame don’t work well
- Separate the incident, the emotion, and their actions
a- Yes, you were wronged..
b- Yes, you can feel angry..
c- No, hitting is never right..
- Celebrate progress
- Welcome ‘good’ anger
Simply ‘disciplining’ angry behaviour doesn’t work well – it tends to push it underground and create passive aggressive anger and maybe self-destructive emotions. Remember the three problems in an incident: the trigger, the emotion and also the behaviour. Separating them means you can support a child’s emotions while still correcting their inappropriate behaviour.
14- Never let anger 'work' for them
- Don’t allow yourself to be cowed or bullied
- Defend sibling and their rights
If you give in to a child, or bribe them, or let them dominate their siblings with their anger and aggression, it will only make the anger worse. It will also really offend their siblings… and probably make them angry too! We have to be the ‘big people’ and use our authority for their good.
15- Vigorous physical activity
- Help the child learn to get rid of angry feeling through
a- Running
b- Digging
c- Pounding nails in a board
- But not destructive rehearsal of violence
Turn adrenaline into sweat! I don’t like pounding pillows or punching a punching bag – I think the child could be imagining actual violence, actually rehearsing aggression.
16- Soothing activities
- Playing in the sand
- Making mud pies or play dough
- Taking a bath
- Playing in a sink full of warm, sudsy water
- Finger painting
- Breathing
Hot emotions need time to cool.. but distracting them helps too.
17- A myth - you have got to express anger
Anger needs processing, but it doesn’t always need to be vented as rage – it can become a persistent immature habit that will cause a lot of problems and unhappiness.
18- Talk about it - at the right time
- Strike when the iron is cold
- Don’t argue with hormones
- Pick a time
When your child is wild with rage, they are quite irrational. Let the better parts of their brain switch back on before you try reasoning with them.
19- Repair and restore
- Setting things right
- Repairing damage
- Restoring relationships
- Apologies
- Letting them know that they are still loved
Feelings and relationships can be bruised in an angry incident, and can stay strained even after thing cool down. Apologies and restoration may be necessary.
20- Physical response
Never physically fight with your child. You may need to defend yourself or another child but it is nearly always better to get back out of their way. Only restrain them if they are a danger to themselves or others, but this very tricky and risky territory and indicative that the problem is severe and you need some intervention.
21- Catch the child being good
- Challenge their labels
- Children need praise every day
- They need to know that they are appreciated
- how you respond to appropriate behaviour is just as important as how you respond to inappropriate behaviour
Anger leaves a child sometimes very low, feeling like they are ‘bad’ and unlovable. Positive labelling a child and showing your appreciation lifts their self-esteem. A good, loving and affirming relationship makes angry outbursts less likely.
John Cowan (The Parenting Coach) and Childcare Centre Hamilton present a range of parenting conversations.
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