How To Manage An Angry Child

Category: Family & Parenting

Role-play emotional regulation.

If modeling alone doesn’t seem to be effective in toning down your child’s emotional responses, you may need to role play some example situations. This can be done easily in classroom settings as there are many games that you can play whereby each child gets to act out what it looks and feels like when things go wrong. You can have kids act out various different responses and then discuss which would work best in real life. You can also do this at home with just yourself and your child or with siblings or friends. The point is to set up situations that might be difficult in real life and play out the different responses. This gives kids a chance to think it out before it happens to them and allows them to see that they have a choice in how they respond. There are some great examples of games and activities for this type of role play in books like “Anger Management Games for Kids” by Deborah Plummer or in “What to Do When Your Temper Flares” by Dr. Dawn Huebner.

Teach the difference between having feelings and acting on them.

People often think that they are their thoughts, taken completely literally. Of course, just because we have thoughts doesn’t mean that every single one of those thoughts is true. It also doesn’t mean that we have to buy into or act on every single thought that we have.  In fact sometimes our thoughts are completely unhelpful and sometimes our mind tells us to do things that just don’t work. For example, even though I’m a grown-up, I sometimes feel like throwing myself on the floor and flailing my hands and fists about in rage when things don’t go my way. Do I do this? Of course not! I know that this type of behavior doesn’t bring me places that I want to go to and it doesn’t solve my problem. This behavior simply doesn’t work for me the same way it may have worked for me (on some level) when I was a toddler. There are lots of different therapeutic techniques for defusing us from difficult or unhelpful thoughts so that we don’t get into the trap of believing all of our thoughts or of feeling that we have to act on every single thought.
In Dr. Steve Hayes’ book called “Get Out of Your Mind and Into Your Life; The New Acceptance and Commitment Therapy”, he describes a multitude of defusion strategies in an easy to read self-help format that can be used with kids too. One exercise is to imagine that you are watching leaves going down a quickly moving stream. For each thought that you have, imagine that it is written on one of the leaves and then watch that thought roll away down the stream. You can do this also by imagining that each thought is attached to one of the cars on a freight train that you are watching go through a railway station too. The point is that you notice that you are having the thought and you watch the thought. You don’t have to act on it; you just notice that you are having it. This act of imagining the thought outside of yourself has the very powerful effect of separating us from our thoughts. In other words, we can have the thoughts and not be them. We can choose not to act on them.  We can train our brains merely to notice the thoughts and notice that they are just that — thoughts.

 Do not respond with anger.

You know the old saying, “Fight fire with fire”? It doesn’t apply here — you are the adult in this situation. Even though this young person might be pushing every last button and you might be exhausted and tempted to shout and slam some doors yourself, remember that a child will mirror your behavior. If you are throwing tantrums yourself, you can be certain that this will increase the likelihood of an escalation in your child’s angry outbursts. In the 1960s, Albert Bandura and his team demonstrated many times that children who witnessed aggressive behavior were more likely to act aggressively than were their peers who had witnessed more pro-social actions. If you want your child to respond with calm, you need to remain calm yourself, even though your own physiology might be telling a different story, you need to practice self restraint and show them how it is done.

Coaching.

Sometimes, parents and teachers might be doing a great job of empowering kids to act in a pro-social way. They might also be modeling appropriate behavior at every opportunity. They might do some excellent role plays and they might also do some stellar work defusing kids from difficult thoughts and feelings. Even still, angry outbursts will occur. When this happens, we need to meet the child where they are at, right then and there. Try to coach them through the same way you would teach them any other skill. Encourage them to act in manner that works for them and one that is consistent with class or house rules.

Do not respond with anger.

You know the old saying, “Fight fire with fire”? It doesn’t apply here — you are the adult in this situation. Even though this young person might be pushing every last button and you might be exhausted and tempted to shout and slam some doors yourself, remember that a child will mirror your behavior. If you are throwing tantrums yourself, you can be certain that this will increase the likelihood of an escalation in your child’s angry outbursts. In the 1960s, Albert Bandura and his team demonstrated many times that children who witnessed aggressive behavior were more likely to act aggressively than were their peers who had witnessed more pro-social actions. If you want your child to respond with calm, you need to remain calm yourself, even though your own physiology might be telling a different story, you need to practice self restraint and show them how it is done.