Anger Management for Children
Many parents complain that their children are angry and disruptive. This is a serious source of worry and anxiety to them, so it is just as important to help children manage and heal anger as it is for adults. The sooner the anger is dealt with in a person’s life the better, because it prevents much distress in adulthood, both on a personal and relationship level. There are some books that might help you as a parent or teacher to deal with such anger. Elaine Whitehouse and Warwick Pudney have written a small worthwhile book, A Volcano in my Tummy. Helping Children to handle Anger, which contains 25 lessons on anger that can be built into the school curriculum. My only concern is that the book deals with children from six to fifteen years of age. Because of brain changes over that span, it is more difficult to eradicate toxic anger from a fifteen year old than the anger of a six year old. With kinder parenting and understanding teachers, the harm done to a younger child can be undone, but the neural wiring that takes place during life stages six and seven (13 to 19 years of age – the life stages will be looked at in the final chapter) is much harder to change. Bearing that in mind, Whitehouse and Pudney’s book sets about creating a framework for helping your children to become aware of the initial feeling of anger and then of making choices about what to do with it. In that way they learn about the differences between the angry feeling and the angry behaviour. When you show your children how to process their anger, you have to be aware of how you as a parents vent yours. Small children learn all the time, and they learn how their parents and others, such as their teachers, express their anger. They need to know that angry feelings are acceptable, but violence towards others is not. As a parent you must allow your children to feel anger. It is very damaging to make them suppress it, and if that happens there is every possibility that they may experience many psychological difficulties, including depression, when they grow into adulthood.
Extract from Understanding and Healing the Hurts of Childhood. Publication 2018
THERAPISTS IN TIPPERARY
PSYCHOTHERAPISTS IN TIPPERARY
COUNSELLING TIPPERARY
DEATH OF A CHILD
ABUSE AND DOMESTIC VIOLENCE
FEAR
ANGER
JEALOUSY
CHILDHOOD DISTRESS