When Our Kids Get Angry

As a parent, caregiver, neighbor, aunt, uncle, grandparent, etc. if you have any children ANYWHERE in your life, you have seem get angry. And boy can they get angry!

Children express emotions, including anger, in multiple different ways. With our oldest, we never really know when she’s angry, she is 12 and I honestly don’t know if I have seen her angry. Although she did come home from basketball with her dad and said “hey dad sorry I got mad at you at basketball practice” and funny, but not, he was like “ah i never even knew you were mad at me” This is our anxious one, who is a people pleaser, and is very HARD to read emotionally. LOL, but this is NOT true of her sister, our middle child. Man this girl will tell you like it is and if she is mad, she WILL let you know. If she doesn’t express it through her words, you can see her tears, hear her stomping, or screaming “ughhhhhh” and her brother (our youngest) is very similar! But with him being 5, he is not great about thinking before he acts when he is angry yet, so this can involve hitting, a work in progress with him.

In reading this article ” How to Stop Your Child’s Angry Cycle” by Tricia Goyer , I learned some things that you don’t often think about when trying to help your angry child, here are a few points that stuck with me:

We often try to lecture our children or teach them a lesson in the midst of their angry cycle — right when they cannot think rationally. Our best efforts at correction will likely not get through when our child is in this highly emotional state; harsh discipline often make things worse
We can teach children to recognize and stop their own angry cycles using the three R’s
1. Recognize: Identify the thought that came before the emotion.
2. Reflect: Think about how accurate and useful the thought is.
3. Redirect: Change the thought to a more accurate or helpful one
The author ends this article with the different age groups and what to keep in mind with each age.