This is part three of my anger in children series. In the first post, I talked about inappropriate ways my son has been expressing his anger. I believe it’s important for anyone, kids included, to have the right to feel anger. To feel it fully and be allowed to express it. This series isn’t about stopping your children from getting angry. Anger is a part of life, and is normal. This series also isn’t about raising perfect little robots who are seen and not heard.
Anger is healthy
I want my children to learn to let their anger out in constructive, healthy ways. I believe this is an unhurried process, which comes with life experience, practice and boundary-setting. Missy 10, for the most part (we’ll say 99% of the time) is great at expressing her anger appropriately. This isn’t because she’s in some way a ‘better’ child than Mr 4. She’s older and has maturity, life experience, practise and years of her parents’ teachings under her belt.
She certainly wasn’t always this way and went through all the same struggles our son is facing now. When things get difficult with my son, I console myself with this reminder! It’s interesting to note that when she was four, she was behaving much the same way, and I was the one who was sick, and ended up in hospital for surgery! So bizarre…
Get it all out
I have a list of ways we can redirect our children’s anger. They allow children to vent without doing harm to anyone.
- Bang a drum, or punch playdough.
- Hit their bed, pillow or something soft that won’t get damaged or hurt the child.
- Talk to someone about their feelings, be it a friend, sibling, parent, pet or counsellor. Whoever the child is comfortable with.
- Sing.
- Ride a bike.
- Jump on a trampoline.
- Throw/hit/kick a ball around.
- Dance.
- Hug it out.
- Have a cry.
- Draw or paint.
- Imaginary play, particularly role-playing games.
- Write (for older children)
- Have a bath, swim or general water play. Water is very soothing to children.
- Any physical play that gets their energy out.
- Pillow fights!
Work with your child’s personality
It’s good to experiment with these ideas until you find what works for your child. My son benefits the most from pillow fights or anything physical. (Since the blow-up he had two days ago, he has been telling me when he feels he needs a pillow fight and I set the timer for 10 minutes. Once we’ve thrashed it out, and the timer goes off, we stop. I had to bring the timer in, otherwise he’d want to keep going all day long!) Other times, depending on the extent of his anger, he will cry, talk or hug.
Although he loves to draw, it’d never work for him during the peak of his anger. However, it does help him to draw when he’s calm, as he sometimes will reflect on his past feelings, talk about them and make sense of them. I’m sure there are many more wonderful ideas, so if you have any to share, I’d love to hear them.
Other reading:
Dealing with anger in children
Finding the source of your child’s anger
Hmmm. I think my 4 yo (girl) cries. When she feels unfairly done by she’ll run to her bed and sob or cry very loudly! My 6yo (girl) agrues and then cries. And my 2 yo – well she’s 2. She hits or runs to mummy. My biggest issue is hitting between the 2 and 4 yo. They often push, shove and smack each other. Love the way your getting me to think about all of these things.
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Caz, it always amazes me how unique each of our kids are. Like you, I have a 4 and 2 year old, and they’re pretty much the same. I think when they’re close in age, they see that reaction from each other as the ‘norm’, and it becomes a vicious cycle, doesn’t it?
I’m glad you’re enjoying the series, can’t wait to write the rest of it:)
Loving this. Like Caz, I am finding this is making me think differently about anger and my children. Just a question – how do you redirect to one of the activities? My two year old can be redirected and encouraged to deal with her anger differently, but my three year old meltsdown in a matter of seconds and can scream, stomp and tantrum for an hour or more and nothing seems to help.
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Becky, I’m glad you like the series, too:)
With these ideas of expression above, I vary the approach according to the child. So, with your two year old, you know you can redirect at the time, but with your three year old, it won’t work that way, so I personally wouldn’t bother using it as redirection to begin with.
Initially, my son flat out refused redirection at first as well. So instead, I would put him somewhere safe (not just for him, but for the rest of us!), let him thrash it out until he calms down; sometimes with me, but if he was hurting me, then alone.
What I found helpful was giving the above activities to him before he began raging, as a way to release those emotions and that energy. Sort of as a preventative measure.
I also would talk to him after he’d settled down and explain that those above activities are things I would allow him to do instead of hurting others or being disrespectful, etc. I also offered to let him do them after our chat, and he was pleasantly surprised at how good it felt to do that.
He now knows he can ask to do one of these things, and sometimes I can redirect him. Of course, now my partner is no longer going to hospital, he has little to no anger at all, and when he does, he can handle it more appropriately (touch wood!)
If a child is resistant to being redirected, that can become a learned thing for them over a period of time.