How to help a child control his anger?

Tantrums, tantrums, whining and screaming. These are some of the ways in which the smallest of the house show us how angry they are and, Sometimes, siblings, parents, grandparents and other adults, no matter how old we are, we feel overwhelmed by the situation.

It is surprising to see how these little people, when they get angry, do it in a way that is not at all “small”. There are children who show their anger by shutting up and simply ignoring us, but this is rarely the case. The normal thing is that they scream, cry very hard and make it clear that they do not feel comfortable.

In situations like this, it is not surprising that many people wonder how to help a child control his anger And, luckily for you, today we are going to discover a few techniques to achieve it.

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How to help a child control his anger?

Everyone, even the calmest ones, gets angry at times, and this also applies to the smallest of the house: children get angry, and not in proportion to their height. The reasons behind their tantrum can be very varied, such as that they have not bought an ice cream, they are forced to go to school one day they do not want, they do not let them watch TV a little more ...

Child anger can manifest itself in multiple ways, all of them combining anger, irritability and resentment, as it happens in adulthood. There are children who show their anger by shutting up, making us empty or ignoring us, but others, the vast majority, are more “Expressive”: they yell, throw objects, break them or even hit and insult their parents, classmates and teachers. Anger is an emotion that, if not properly managed or controlled, can become very socially disruptive.

Per se, anger is like any emotion. We should not think that, despite being unpleasant, it is a bad thing. Naturally we prefer to be happy and happy rather than angry or sad, but all our wide emotional repertoire does not it is no longer an evolutionary resource, a way that human beings have to adapt to our environment, both natural and Social.

Anger is an evolutionary resource that allows us to survive, to put ourselves in a fighting situation in the face of a situation that we consider unfair. It is adaptive, as long as our response is proportional to the threat we face.

The wrath It is something normal in child development, which reflects the efforts of the child in their search for autonomy, understanding and attention. This emotion manifests itself most strongly in various stages of development, especially between the ages of 2 and 4, preadolescence and adolescence. As in adulthood, childhood anger occurs when the child has the subjective feeling of being threatened or threatened. faced with the fear of a future threat, not necessarily dangerous for her life but for her physical, emotional and Social.

Children feel threatened by more things than adults, in the sense that they perceive more elements as factors that put their personal well-being at risk. A fairly simple example to understand is when we don't buy them an ice cream.

A child will see this situation as a true violation of her rights, while an adult, at best, will feel slightly annoyed. Fortunately, as they grow, they will learn to distinguish between seriously unfair situations from those that are not so much, in addition to better managing their emotions.

Anger is not an easy emotion to handle in childhood, and the smaller it is, the worse it is. Naturally, not all children are equally irascible and do not have to behave in the same way when they feel angry. but the methods that we can use for all of them are the same, although some may also be better for children than others.

1. Keep calm

It is very difficult for our child to learn to control his anger if we, adults, are not able to control ourselves. We must set an example, especially when the child gets angry. We must not yell at him, slam doors and, much less, shake the child. For the child to learn to manage his anger, he must see how we adults have managed it and that, therefore, it is something that can be learned.

If our response to the child's anger is aggressive, her anger will increase even more. If we yell, our child will imitate us and scream louder. It is difficult to control ourselves in these situations, but equally as parents we must make the effort to have good results.

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2. Teach him to recognize this emotion

The younger the child, the more difficult it is to calm him down in a fit of anger. Being so angry it is difficult to make him see reason. Sooner or later the tantrum will pass, and it will be time to talk about what happened. Maybe the child, especially if he is very young, have difficulty recognizing your emotionsFor this reason, adults must tell her that the emotion she has felt is called anger, asking her why she has reacted like this and what she feels once she has calmed down.

We must help him identify the cause of her anger. It is common for children to not know on many occasions what has been the reason for their anger, while that in others it may be that a colleague has insulted or hit them or because something serious has happened in their environment. This is why, far from punishing or reprimanding him for what he has done, we must find out why he has felt this way and see to what extent it is in our hands to solve the problematic situation. As parents we must always support him.

3. Teach the child to act without anger

It is common for children to behave in an irascible way because they lack the skills to solve what has frustrated them more peacefully. Us, As adults, we may see what has made them feel like an easy fix., but that is because we have extensive experience and knowledge of the world, whereas a child of, say, only three years old, does not.

For this reason, once we know what it is that has made you feel this way, we must offer guidelines to solve the problem in question. As part of their growth and learning, we must train them to learn to identify those factors that usually motivate their outbursts of anger. Once we have seen what causes her frustration, we must help her find solutions for future situations.

The reason why the child is frustrated can be very varied and, as parents, we will hear all kinds of problems. Once they have told us, we can give them the most appropriate answers for each situation and have him compare how he felt after his anger attack and how he feels after applying the advice we have given him. It will be a matter of time before you incorporate the peaceful responses that we have offered you into your behavioral repertoire.

4. Express emotions

Many ways children express anger are often socially disruptive, especially breaking things, name calling, and hitting. At their ages, these behaviors, although neither desirable nor acceptable, are less serious than when an adult does it, of course, but it is still better if they do not manifest themselves.

If there is no way to make the child apply calmer solutions to episodes of frustration or when things do not go well, it may be that he has a lot of contained anger within him. In this case we must never leave aside go to a child psychologist, who will try to find out what is the cause of so much contained rage. Likewise, we can make the child vent at home with truly effective techniques, at least in the short term and as long as there is no psychopathology behind it.

If the child tends to behave in a very destructive way in the middle of an attack of anger, it can be suggested that he do some activities that will allow him to explore those emotions, in addition to express them in a more artistic and relaxing way. Among these activities we have drawing, writing, painting and listening to music, with which you can represent your emotionality, whatever the age of the child.

5. Release tensions

While painting, writing and drawing are techniques that we could consider "passive", ideal for making the child become aware of what he feels in a more artistic way, there are also more intense ways to release all tension and calm the child.

Sport as a way to calm down is a classic. Anyone is valid: swimming, cycling, athletics, contact sports, soccer, basketball... any activity It is good for releasing pent-up anger, as well as providing psychological well-being thanks to the release of endorphins.

As surprising as it may seem, meditation techniques such as yoga or mindfulness are not at all advisable at these ages. Children, especially the youngest ones, have not developed enough self-control to endure a whole session of these techniques calmly. Before the class is over, the most likely thing that has happened is that the child has become distracted and impatient, becoming more nervous than he was before.

6. Develop self-control

Developing self-control is not an easy task, especially the younger they are. His prefrontal cortex of the brain is still very immature, so his executive abilities are not fully developed.. The idea of ​​self-control is still a very abstract notion in early childhood, although this does not mean that we cannot gradually incorporate it. As your brain matures it will be better able to understand this idea and, if we have taught it before, it will assimilate it as soon as possible.

We can explain to you what self-control consists of, giving you how many more examples the better, such as not reacting bad if there are no more ice creams or if the time to watch television is up, or if you have to go to pick up your bedroom.

A practical way for you to learn the idea of ​​self-control is incorporate the famous traffic light technique into the home. Basically, it consists of explaining to the child how he works using three cards of three different colors: red, yellow and green. When we show him the red card it will mean that the child must stop because he is losing control, the yellow one will indicate that he must analyze what is happening and why he is behaving like this and the green will indicate that he must express what he feels.

What should we not do

A fundamental idea that should be clear with anger is that it is a necessary emotion.

Being angry at an injustice is something adaptive, inherent in our social evolution, and penalizing this feeling When it appears in situations that must be shown, it implies repressing the person, making it more difficult for them to manage this emotion. Anger appears for a reason, more or less fair; it is a sign that something is wrong. We must solve what causes it, both in the child and in ourselves.

Unfortunately, many parents do not understand this. It is normal to feel angry in certain situations and, although children get angry over less serious things, we should not judge negatively the reason that made them feel this way. If that it is true that sometimes they themselves do not know why they are angry, but the point is that there has been something that has made them be like that.

Many times, with our behavior and our words we can make children feel worse, getting even more angry because they see that their parents, who should support them, reproach them for feeling So.

Phrases like "stop crying", "you are very angry", "you cry like a baby", "it is not so bad, so you you behave now ”and things like that is the last thing we should say to a child in full attack of anger. It is not going to help you calm down and, furthermore, you are going to learn that feeling upset is not valid. Sometimes what has angered him is serious enough for him to be this way, and as parents we must pay attention and try to help him solve it, not hide it and pretend it has not happened any.

A tantrum should not be seen as a fit of self-centeredness and a demand for free care. Children when they have tantrums are having a hard time. You are not comfortable because you do not know how to functionally manage a problem situation.

This is why adults, be they parents, siblings or grandparents, we must teach them to give peaceful and constructive responses when they are faced with something they do not like. It is also possible that, during the tantrum, the child needs an arm, something that we must give to calm him or her. Sometimes simple human contact is what calms the hottest rage.

Bibliographic references:

• Berk, L.E. (2015). Infants and children: Prenatal through middle childhood (7 ed.). London: Pearson. Cromdal, J. (2009). Childhood and social interaction in everyday life: Introduction to the special issue. Journal of Pragmatics. 41 (8): pp. 1473 - 1476. Grotewell, P.; Burton, Y. (2008). Early Childhood Education: Issues and Developments. New York: Nova Sciences Publishers, Inc. Taylor, L.C.; Clayton, J.D.; Rowley, S.J. (2004). Academic Socialization: Understanding Parental Influences on Children's School-Related Development in the Early Years. Review of General Psychology. 8 (3): pp. 163 - 178.