How to Help A Child Overcome Anger Problems
Written by Trevor Eaton, Posted on , in Section Related Boot Camps
Can Children Learn To Control Their Emotions?
It can be difficult sometimes for a child to understand how to control their emotions. They explore life day by day and try and figure out where they fit in the world. A major problem that kids face is how to channel those emotions, especially anger. For some they can have emotional outbursts that can leave someone’s feelings hurt, items broke, or worse, someone injured. What is the best way to help a child understand their feelings and take control of their emotions and channeling it for good.
Identify the problem
The first thing is to control your own anger. Children look up to their parents and other adults and mimic their behavior. If you can’t control yourself, then how to do you expect your child to do the same. When you are driving in the car, are you constantly yelling at other drivers for their stupidity? Do you fly off the handle when you injure yourself, like a hammer and a thumb? The old adage do as I say, not as I do, does not work here, you have to lead by example.
Next, avoid angry situations, there is no point in putting your child into a place where there is going to be an emotional outburst. If your child loves candy but you don’t plan on buying them any, don’t go down the candy aisle. If your child hates homework, don’t make them sit there for hours on end until they complete it all, break it up. There will be plenty of opportunities to deal with emotional outbursts, there’s no need to create more.
When the angry monster starts to make an appearance do you best to identify it so that they can be aware of it and quickly channel that energy into something productive. Here are some examples.
Fitness - Having a child go outside and blow off some steam shooting some hoops, or just running around the yard, can burn off any pent up energy and frustration. It can also help them to be healthier by engaging in physical activity.
Chores - You should never reward bad behavior, if a child is having an emotional anger outburst, have them clean something around the house. You should avoid using daily chores as punishment because you don’t want to send the signal that chores are a punishment. Maybe you have a closet that needs to be decluttered, or weeds that need to be pulled. This type of activity can help them direct angry energy into a positive activity, helping them to use this same method in their adult years.
Art - Is the ability to create something and express your feelings and that can come in all sorts of different ways. Some are more traditional like music, painting, photography, and writing, to other non traditional such as model building or woodworking. Giving them a method to channel their anger from just exploding emotionally, to expressing how they feel can help them to better understand themselves.
Location - Is the physical place the problem of the anger outbursts, if so it can sometimes be as easy to change the surroundings. Is their room dirty and creating a negative environment or have they been parked in front of the tv all day? Some of the things you can do is declutter their life, change up their environment and create a positive atmosphere. Be careful though, some children may actually become angry over unstability of their environment. Use caution with this and only you as a parent can decide what is best for your child.
Anger is an action that we all have. The best thing to do is not to fight anger with anger, just yelling at the problem will not make things better. Teach your child how to channel that energy and be more productive from it. Allowing them the ability to not just be reactive to situations, but to take control of their life can be beneficial as an adult and in future relationships.
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