Anger Management is something we all struggle with. Controlling our anger is a learned skill, and something our children battle as much as anyone.
When will Children first begin to struggle with anger management?
Childish expressions of anger first begin to challenge a parent at the age when our adorable but annoyed baby boy can sit up, and manages to hit his brother with a toy truck; or our sweet but fussy baby girl throws her head back suddenly and smacks mom on the nose while sitting in her lap. Every parent encounters the challenges of childhood anger–and teaching the child how to control it. Expressing anger appears to come naturally to everyone. Governing and releasing anger appropriately is a behavior of maturity that requires a significant amount of practice.
Anger has been a topic of research, speculation and experimentation among those who study developmental stages, or the enhancement of relationships. Some of the findings seem intuitive; they just make sense. Others are surprising, and contradict traditions that have been in place for decades…or even generations.
In viewing the expression of anger management, a curious double standard seems to exist in our brains. When we ourselves resort to anger we do it with a belief that we are being more forceful, more powerful, more convincing or motivating. But when others explode in an angry tirade, we tend to shake our heads and view them as out of control, untrustworthy, or immature. Somehow our own anger is “reasonable.” No one else’s is.
How do children respond when we get angry?
Children do not perceive or accept this justification. They simply imitate. They do not buy into any complex or exclusive set of rules that suggest “My parent is the one in authority and they have fourteen reasons to be frustrated today so their anger is appropriate, and mine is not.” Typically, any angry word, expression or action demonstrated by a parent will be repeated by a child with amazing (and embarrassing) accuracy. That is the nature of a child’s brain. It is hard-wired to learn by imitation and does so at great speed.
Research on parenting strategies demonstrates that anger is remarkably ineffective as a parenting tool. Anger does not increase the likelihood that the child will “get the message” that a parent is trying to convey. In fact, studies show that anger confuses the message. A misbehaving child who is confronted with anger does not usually come away with the impression that “what I did was really bad, I should never do it again.” Instead they come away with the impression that “dad (or mom) was really worked up…out of control….not really rational…I don’t have to pay attention to the message.” At a deeper level, however, the more potent messages learned is “this is how I should act when something annoys or frustrates me.” And…”this is how I should parent.”
Why do parents struggle with anger management?
For most of us, working towards a commitment that we will be good parents, and raise responsible, confident children, our biggest challenge is the imprinted learning of our early childhood. We instinctively, without thought, react as our parents reacted. We experience the emotions that our parents demonstrated. Our early childhood brains are very accurate with this kind of memory. In early infancy we learned and remembered what our parents modeled about how to smile, how to walk, how to speak, and how to react to stress. Now as adults our emotional responses–including the anger responses, seem “normal” and “reasonable” because of the way they were programmed into our childhood brains. Our reactions flow from us as automatically as the speech of our native language.
As a result our anger responses seem intense, and driven by the “triggers” we experience, instead of by conscious thought. This is the very core challenge of anger management and progressive parenting–can we learn to take conscious control of our instinctive responses early enough that we won’t pass them on to yet another generation.
Learn more about a variety of anger management skills and approaches that really do work in teaching children anger management. Learn more about motivational and discipline strategies that can be used instead of anger, and learn the techniques that are most effective in helping us to release and resolve our own anger responses.
