What To Do With Angry Kids | Helping Kids Handle Emotions (Ep. 3)

AHHHHHH! Deep breath. That's right. We're talking about anger. Nothing like a foot-stomping, screaming, scowling stare-down encounter with your kid to get your day moving in the wrong direction. What feels like defiance and blatant disobedience from your child is probably something else altogether. Today, I want to help you understand your kid's anger and come up with a plan to respond to it. My name is Abby and I've worked with kids for the past 10 years. I have a Master's in Counseling with a focus on child and adolescent therapy and I also have two toddlers of my own. I'm passionate about kids and equipping parents to stay connected to their kids. It's usually easy to see what anger looks like and sounds like. We can determine our child is experiencing anger fairly quickly. We see things like hitting and punching and kicking and screaming name-calling, throwing things, slamming doors, crying, hair-pulling, hurting others or even hurting themselves. Any fellow parents of a

child who bangs their head on walls or on the floor when angry? No? Just me? Okay. Well anyways, while those reactions to anger aren't okay, anger itself is okay. It's a totally normal emotion that God knew we would experience because sometimes life is hard and painful. In fact, in Ephesians 4.26, we see we are told not to sin while angry. It doesn't say never get angry, it just says not to sin when angry. As parents, we get to help our kids learn how to feel the emotion of anger and respond in a healthy way, not in a sinful one. Our children feel emotions deeply and aren't as quick to recover from those feelings as we may think. Anger is a response to pain. It can clue us in that something else is going on. Beneath the anger, there might be another feeling like fear, worry, impatience, frustration, or even hurt. Kids don't always have the words or awareness to know what they're experiencing. So those feelings are

overwhelming and anger keeps them safe. It can be an empowering emotion to keep from feeling powerless and vulnerable. As adults, we may call these very large and loud reaction things like tantrums, overreactions, meltdowns, going from 0 to 100 in a split second. It can be hard to respond calmly or even have empathy and patience when we see such drastic and extreme reactions. To parents, it can sound and seem dramatic, inappropriate, ridiculous, uncalled for. Ever had one of those thoughts about the way your child's acting or reacting? I sure have! We can give our kids words for their feelings. We can teach them through modeling and coaching how to respond to the feeling of anger and how to uncover emotions that are underneath the anger. When a big reaction like a tantrum is happening, respond calmly, labeling the emotion. You are really angry. It's okay to feel angry. It's not okay to hurt

others when you're angry. I know just saying, you feel angry and it's not okay to hurt others is not going to cause most kids to stop dead in their tracks, cease the hitting and screaming, look at you and say, oh wow mommy, you're right. Thank you for helping me figure out why I'm acting like a crazy person. It's because I'm angry. You're the best mom ever. What should I do instead when I feel angry? If that's your child's reaction, just know that's not the norm. Because when we're angry, our brains are physically protecting us. Have you ever heard a fight or flight? When your child is angry, they can't logically or rationally think. They are in survival mode. Our job is to stay calm. Keep our child and anyone else around safe and then patiently wait. Stay near your child, repeating when necessary things like, you are angry, it's okay to be angry, it's not okay to hit your sister. You are safe. I see you.

I hear you. And I want to help you calm down when you are ready. When you stop screaming, I will help you. Statements like this set fast behavior expectations. They communicate what your child needs to stop doing and what you have to offer them once they comply. Once your child has calmed down and seems to be in a rational brain space, then it's time to introduce a new tool or tools to the toolbox for the next time they feel angry. Work with your child to pick two or three tools they can use when they experience the emotion of anger. These tools or strategies may be things like riding a bike, listening to music, coloring, or drawing. We will include a whole list of things for you to pick from. It can even be a good idea to practice and role play using the tools picked before you actually attempt to use them in a real scenario. Anger can be overwhelming and debilitating. It can take a while for the fight-or-flight part of the brain to transition to the rational I am safe part of the brain. Role-playing with your child and pretending to be angry and

then practicing using the tools you picked can help begin replacing old anger tactics and reactions with new healthy tools in your child's memory. Let's fast forward. Your child has returned to their new normal rational brain by using one or a few of the tools that are more appropriate than yelling or hitting. Now is when you can begin to investigate the trigger or what may have been under that emotion of anger. You may need to investigate or you might already have a pretty good idea. Maybe your child only responds with full-blown rage when they've tried over and over and over again to do a puzzle and by the sixth time of failing instead of asking for help the result is a meltdown of epic proportions. You don't need to investigate you just need to talk to help your child respond to that frustration and identify frustration before it builds all the way into a rageful fit. If you need to do some investigating to figure out what triggered your child's anger reaction then ask open-ended questions to help them label what they were feeling before the anger. Use your feelings chart. What was going on before you felt angry? Can you tell me about what made you feel angry? Can you point to which emotion you were feeling before anger? Talk to them about ways they can address what every emotion was beneath the anger before it boils over. In the puzzle example talk and practice asking for help before they fail the sixth time. Remember that as parents we get the incredible opportunity to coach our kids through really big emotions. The time we spent teaching them and building into them will benefit them in school, in friendships, in dating relationships, in marriage and even someday in their own parenting. This is worth your time and energy.