7 Techniques to Teach Children to Manage Anger
Anger is that emotion that makes children feel
angry, irritable, resentful, or furious at a situation they don't like or that
causes them frustration. Anger has two forms of expression, a more internal one
in which heart rate, blood pressure, and adrenaline increase; and another more
external one in which the expression changes, the child raises his tone of
voice, and his muscles tense... In a moment of anger, children can shout, break
things, throw objects, hit, or insult.
What can we parents do if our children react with
anger?
Methods for children to learn to manage anger
Anger is not an easy emotion for children to
handle, the younger the worse. Not all children respond to the same situation
with anger, but if the child does, we must teach him to channel it.
1. Stay calm
Parents must show an example of an angry reaction
in the child and avoid shouting, slamming doors or shaking the child. For the
child to learn to manage anger, he has to see how we manage it, even at times
when it is easy to lose patience. In fact, when faced with an attack of anger
in the child, it is possible that if our response is aggressive, the child's
anger will increase even more.
2. Teach him to recognize anger
When the child is in the middle of a fit of
anger, it is difficult to negotiate or talk to him, but when the tantrum has
passed, it is time to talk about what happened. You can name what happened
yourself and ask him so that he can explain why he reacted that way and how he
feels afterward.
3. Teach the child to act without anger
Many times children respond with anger because they lack the skills to act
otherwise, they don't know how to solve a problem. To help them, we must train
them to learn to:
- Identify what caused your moment of anger .
- Help you provide solutions for upcoming
situations.
- Explain what will happen if the answer is angry
and what will happen when the answer is calmer.
- Reinforce the child if his response is not
angry.
- If it was, review with him what happened,
explain what went wrong, and how to act better on another occasion.
Other ideas to teach children to channel anger
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4. Help him express anger
The impulse felt by the child who doesn't know
how to handle his anger is to insult, hit, or break things. If your child
usually responds like this, let him do some activities that allow him to
explore those emotions, such as drawing, painting, or writing. He will learn to
understand what is happening to him, why, and how to avoid it.
5. Teach him to release tension
Sport is an excellent vehicle to channel anger
and stress, it releases endorphins and contributes to a sense of well-being.
Practicing sports on a regular basis can help the child manage anger, as well
as carry out activities that involve relaxation such as yoga or mindfulness.
6. Develop self-control strategies
Explain to him what self-control consists of, for
example: not reacting badly if television time is over, if he has to clean up
his room, or if a child takes a toy from him. A good self-control technique is
that of the traffic light. It is an exercise in which an answer is given to a
certain behavior.
To carry it out you need to explain to the child
how a traffic light works and also, you must have 3 cards with 3 different
colors on hand: red, yellow, and green. When you show him the red card, it means
that the child should stop because he is not controlling his anger and the
situation has gotten out of control, the yellow card indicates that he should
analyze what is happening and why he is behaving like that, and the green one
is for can express what he feels.
7. Promotes empathy
It is perhaps one of the most difficult tasks to
achieve in children. It implies that children understand the other and put
themselves in their place, something fundamental so that they can handle
anger. Empathy is a very important value that we must transmit to children from
an early age.
What children need when they feel angry and have
tantrums
Anger can be an unpleasant emotion, but we cannot
consider it to be a negative emotion, since we can learn a lot from it. It is
normal to feel angry or angry in certain situations, so we cannot invalidate
this emotion. And many times, with our behavior and our words, we can make
children feel worse. What do our children need when feeling this emotion?
- 'Stop crying', 'you're angry', ' you cry like a baby ', 'it's okay'... All these phrases convey to children that what they are feeling is invalid and, therefore, not have to express it.
- Not knowing how to channel or self-regulate the
emotion of anger, children explode in tantrums.
It is very common for children to have tantrums,
especially between the ages of 2 and 4. It is in this period when they develop
their own ideas and desires, but they still do not know how to express them in
words (and on many occasions, we cannot allow them to carry them out for their
safety). This makes them feel frustrated and angry.
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- When a child has a tantrum because he feels
anger or rage, he has a hard time. He feels uncomfortable because he doesn't
know how to deal with said emotion. Therefore, it is not fair that we think
that children have tantrums to make us feel bad or annoy us. Just like we
shouldn't feel bad parents if our children have a tantrum, since it is
something normal in the development process.
- It is possible that during a tantrum, your
child needs a hug. But for other children, physical contact will make them more
upset.
- Although it is not always possible, we must try
to avoid those situations that are going to cause a moment of family tension.
Habits and routines also help to avoid tantrums, since children feel more
secure knowing what we are going to do at all times (first we have dinner, then
we brush our teeth, we go to bed...).
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