Articles

Calm Parenting: Top Tips To Manage Anger In Children

Anger is an emotion everyone goes through. It is a useful emotion in children as they can tell when things are not fair. But, when it starts reflecting in their behaviour and they start becoming aggressive because of anger. Therefore, it is important for you to deal with your child’s anger issues and address them and stop them at the right time. As in the long run it will help your child to cope with emotions and solve problems effectively.

Anger reactions in some children are quite frequent and troubling to parents and teachers who witness them. The child’ s intense anger may erupt quickly and intensely in reaction to limit setting by adults, to teasing or to seemingly minor criticism by peers or adults.

Example of anger outburst in your child would be something like this- A 6 year old gets so angry when he is told not to do something or to follow simple demands such as please go play for a few minutes so the adults can talk. He starts throwing things and he hits you and says very rude things and/or threatens to hit.

These outbursts in your child need to be addressed and here are some tips to help you do so :-

- Create Rules and Consequences of breaking those rules. Ex: if your child has an anger outburst and uses foul language to express it , then you may later on give a punishment as a consequence of them breaking the rule of not using foul language. But, if the child only goes to his room and screams out in anger to deal with a situation, then you may let that go. Everybody gets angry and needs to let the steam off. So give them their space.

-  Avoid yelling back at your child or challenging him/her when they are angry. Wait for things to calm down and then deal with them. Yelling back would only make things worse.

- Communicate - Learn how to communicate with your child regarding his outburst. Give the child some room and time to cool down. Then once your child has calmed down a bit, you may then encourage him to express his feelings in a non - confrontational way. You may ask him questions regarding what is the reason behind his frustration or anger.

- Physical Activity - Some children will respond well to karate or other types of martial arts. Others may respond well to yoga and relaxation classes. Any type of physical activity may be a health way for your child to let off all the anger inside and put it out in a constructive way.

- Avoid giving overly harsh punishments. This is simply going to aggravate the situation.

-Teach your child effective catch phrases which can help him understand that its normal to make mistakes and things don’t always turn out like they were supposed to. So something like “everyone makes mistake” can be one effect phrase to teach your child.

- Avoid getting Physical - If you deal with your child anger by getting physical, the you are just teaching them to solve their problems with aggression. If for some reason you do lose control and things go south then you need to learn to apologise to your child. This would not mean giving up on your authority but would teach your child to take responsibilities for their wrong actions.

- Consult a psychologist - If things have gone way out of your hands then A psychologist can help develop ways to change your child’s thinking and responses.

All children go through a phase in life when they may face issues with controlling their anger. But as a parent it is important for you to understand that it is only normal. You need to learn to deal with such situations effectively and try and find out the reason behind your child’s outburst and help him/her get through this tough time as this might just be sign from them for asking for help and attention. Lastly, Forgive your children as they need to be assured that their bad behaviour does not make them a bad person. Therefore making amends with your child will help them move from the feelings of guilt that comes from knowing they did something terrible but there is still hope to do and be better. 

Please note: The opinions expressed in this post are the personal views of the author. They do not necessarily reflect the views of mycity4kids. Any omissions or errors are the author's and mycity4kids does not assume any liability or responsibility for them.