Family

How to Parent An Angry Child

by: Andrew Gibson, Ph.D.

We spend most of our time trying to control anger in children by giving them what they are giving us: Anger for anger. Does it work? Not often. And, not for long either. If your intention is to teach a child that anger is bad, you will never teach him or her with anger. Can’t be done.

The only thing you may teach is that you, his parent, shouldn’t be the target of a his anger. That’s different. He still understands that anger is basically okay. Getting the child to respect you and direct his anger elsewhere depends on how angry the child is. You may teach the occasionally angry child that he is best advised to direct angry any place but at you. It means he shouldn’t threaten authority and that you have some. But this can be a problem. His options are to direct his anger either side ways ( those his age) or downward ( those younger). Is this what you really want?

If you have a child who is angry all the time and as a result makes you angry all the time, then he is likely to spread his feelings all over the landscape: upwards, downwards and sideways. Now you’ve got problems because he doesn’t care who gets his anger. It is this child who needs a different parental anger strategy. The best one? No anger display from you. Period.

If someone comes at you snorting steam, will you take it with indifference? Probably not. If that person’s anger with you is intended to get you to change, it is a wasted gesture: all it does it make you angry. So now we have two angry people. Great. Where is all this going to end? It is no different with a kid. For the most part, adult anger, when directed to an annoying child, is an adult tantrum, no matter how justified the adult thinks it is. Adult tantrums do not produce the change adults want: respect. Respect is vital in child control. Self-control is how you get it.

Ever observe a dysfunctional family? Did you notice all the anger? Did you notice, too, that kids take anger out on other kids in the family? Older kids beat up younger kids cause they are easy prey. Younger sibs are weak and vulnerable. This is nothing more than the lion looking for the slowest wildebeest. Some parents assume that older kids will always be lions; that somehow it is all a part of a normal childhood to fight with younger siblings. Those parents are wrong. There is nothing natural about sibling fighting. It is learned.. Things that are learned can be unlearned. There shouldn’t be any of the oldest beating up the youngest in your house. It can all go away. You, the parent, are the key. But you can’t turn the key with anger.

The cure to an angry family lies first in a parent examining the dynamics of anger in their house. Question Number (1): is the anger displayed in your house normal or abnormal? This is hard to answer but if what you see is normal ( no matter of awful it may seem to an outsider) then you aren’t likely to budge. You may need to compare your self with other families. Go find several and observe: How do the Dads talk to the Moms and vice versa? How to either of them talk with their kids? How does your family stack up against what you’ve seen. Does the comparison make you wince?

Question Number (two) What is the purpose of your anger? Is it to give your self a soap box and show how badly you’ve been treated or is to create change in someone. You can’t have both.

Since all anger has to go somewhere, the alternative is to have none. That’s right. You have a choice in the matter. Skip the anger entirely.

Many assume anger is this biological thing that simply happens. That’s wrong. If someone gets upset with you, what do you do about it? Just accept it? Probably not. You bat it right back unless the person who gave it to you is bigger, stronger and/ or meaner than you are. All of these are decisions. You make a split second judgment about how and where you are to be angry based on the person in front of you. . In that case it is unlikely that the anger you got delivered to you just goes up in a puff of smoke, although it could. You do something within.

If you have a depression problem, you keep anger to yourself and you corrode from the inside out. If you don’t’ have a depression problem, you find someone to give anger to. Anger is the gift that keeps on giving. Could be your spouse. The clerk in the grocery store. The jerk cutting you off on the highway. Your victim could be someone completely unrelated to the situation.

Alternatively, you can make a decision that you don’t need to react. So you don’t. You channel your feelings with something else more productive, say, working in the garden or making a loaf of bread. You simply make up your mind that there’s nothing the kid (or anyone else, for that matter) can do to you to get you upset. Channeling your feelings into the weeds around a tomato plant is a lot easier than trying to channel your angry kids feelings. You always can control you. You rarely can control someone else.

What are you likely to learn by this exercise: that not only does your anger go away, so does your kids. Turns out he needs you more than either you or he thought. Turns out if you set the model he will follow. This isn’t something you talk about; this is something you do. You can talk later when everything settles down. You just think that because he gets upset at you all the time, says bad things, hits, swears and all the rest that he will always be upset and will always take his upset out on you and or the younger kids in the family. It isn’t true.

But the only way you will find this out if this is true, is to do it. Do you have the courage to drop anger for eight (8) weeks to find out? Eight weeks of the No Anger Display Diet will show you enough change in your child to convince yourself that this diet should be a way of life. The sooner you get started the better.

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