Dealing with an Angry Child: Diffuse Problems with Understanding and Positivity

My family has recently been exposed to an angry kid. We home school our children, and I did not realize prior to meeting this kid how sheltered my kids were. They are in plenty of activities, with both home-school kids and public-school kids, but we had never encountered a problem child - especially an angry child. It occurred to me that the children that were in the activities with my children were well-rounded, totally supported by their parents and family and wanted to be there.

After investigating the topic, I was surprised by what I found. I knew, of course, that the influence of the parent is the biggest problem with an angry child. What I did not know and found interesting was that it is okay to be angry: Anger is an emotion that we all have but most of us know how far to push the boundaries and how to handle our anger. Anger needs to be addressed but not focused on. A child actually needs to be taught how to be angry so that they do not loose control.

Angry children do not know how to use their minds to solve problems. Getting mad is an immediate response and impulse control is a learned behavior. A child who lashes out quickly probably has very little self-esteem and does not have a positive outlook. Whether by feeding off a parent who is overwhelmed or by just not being talked to in a happy positive way a child needs to know how to manage his anger.

Understanding where the anger comes from is the biggest part of teaching a child how to manage it. Only through quiet, calm communication can we determine why a child is angry and how to help them fix the issues at hand. Children need to be taught anger management like any other behavior that we have taught them. It is very important to address a problem immediately; waiting until later in the day or sometime after an event will do nothing but confuse the situation even further. Children can barely remember the events when they had fun; to expect them to remember correctly an event where they acted out or misbehaved is asking a bit much. On the spot communication is most important and crucial when dealing with any issue with a child.

A couple ways to diffuse a situation quickly is to point out the positive in the activity. It might take some creative thinking to come up with positive aspects but it is important to focus on the positive and redirect the anger. If there is nothing that can be focused on, having the child do something physical at that moment to calm the situation might help. Having the child run around the outside of the house several times to enable them to calm might help. After they are done, give them a hug and open up the communication to find out what made them angry or how they can fix the problem.

Anger might not always involve another child. A kid might get angry over a game that he is playing alone or may get frustrated over a school problem they can't solve. When dealing with anger issues during alone play it is easier to move them away from the situation and talk to them about why they are getting angry. When the anger involves other children or group activities it is much harder to help them control and re-join the activity. Either in alone play or group activities, giving a child the tools to handle the situation is the most important thing, this is done by communicating calmly and directly.

Like anything else, open communication and understanding the problem is the best way to help a child. Understanding that anger and aggression are two totally different things and need to be handled differently is very important. Not being in denial that there is a problem is a parent's first step to helping a child overcome acting out. No parent wants to know anything negative about their own child but sometimes we need to take a step back and look over a situation to see it more clearly. Asking ourselves, "If this was someone else's child, what would I want to see happen" might be the push forward that you need to address any issue in your own child.