Teach Your Child Ways To Cope With Anger
Teaching your child ways to understand the feelings associated with anger and express these emotions in a construtive not destructive manner is the best way to deal with their anger outbursts. Here’s a collection of the some things you can with your child do to achieve this:
- Introduce hard and fast rules such as not breaking things or hitting people.
- Act as a role model. Try to never lose your temper in front of them.
- Create rules and consequences of a minimum level of accepted behaviour.
- Ensure they know is their anger problem is one that the family tackles together.
- Take time to read self-help books with your child at times when they are relaxed.
- Teach them to walk away from a situation before they do something they will regret.
- Explain the difference between aggression and anger.
- Allow your child to express their anger in appropriate ways, not repress the emotion.
- Every week practice a coping skill that your child can use the next time they get angry.
- Explain that other emotions and shouldn’t be masked by anger.
- Let your child know that anger is natural and should be expressed appropriately.
- If you get angry in front of your child, apologise & explain anger can be healthy.
- Teach your child different ways of calming and soothing techniques.
- Behaviour rewards should center around behaving respectfully toward others.
- Give anger a name so they can verbalise their feelings.
- Support your child by explaining to them that they are not the problem, the anger is.
- Help your child identify the situtations that trigger their anger so they can be avoided.
- Explore coping mechanisms that your child could adopt to avoid an unhealthy outburst.
- Teach practical problem-solving skills to avoid frustration turning into anger.
- Encourage open and honest communication in the home.
- Teach them to move away from anger filled situations to compose their thoughts.
- Make clear rules about what is acceptable and unaacceptable behaviour.
- Use drawing as a way to explore what anger feels like.
- Take time to be mindful to treat your child and their feelings with respect.