When was the last time you got angry? Was it because of poor service or a moronic driver who pulled right across your path? How did you react? We, as responsible adults know how to manage our anger and channel it into socially acceptable behaviour which does not kill or hurt anyone. But what happens when something snaps and we lose control and so we can wave our fists, shout, insult or take legal action!
Looking at child anger, the situation is pretty much the same except that the child has not yet learned how to channel his anger and so we get outbursts, violence, defiant behaviour and we, as parents, think we have completely failed.
Look at what is happening nationwide. There is an epidemic of child anger and it starts in the kindergarten. One child psychologist has remarked that he is shocked at the level of aggressiveness in children which was not the case before. Anger turning to rage in school shootings is all too common and frightening. Even among first graders, the number of kids involved in punch ups and cursing is increasing all the time.
So, we have a problem with child anger. We do not seem to realize that child anger is perfectly normal but we were brought up to suppress our angry emotions and above all in the Christian ethos to control it for obvious social and practical reasons. Jesus got angry too but I do not think he was a problem child!
What makes a kid mad ? We should try and find out and then we might start to understand what is going on. Usually anger is a result of frustration building up and is a reaction (perfectly normal in the child's view) to that. Maybe the child is embarrassed, lonely, hungry, or just in pain. They instinctively know that they cannot do anything about these things and their instinct tells them that anger is the only way they know of expressing all that frustration.
What's the solution? Experts tell us that family therapy is an essential tool in helping parents to deal with child anger and help their kids to manage it safely and effectively without things blowing up in their faces. Here are some solutions you can learn with dealing with anger and channeling it into more productive and safer outcomes. You can try talking about anger with the child, how he felt, why he felt like that and what he should do the next time. There are many ways of solving child anger and you can learn about some more of them in a behaviour modification course.
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Robert Locke is a Health enthusiast who specializes in Children's Health. He has written extensively on ADHD and Behavior Therapy.
