Donna, from Blendermom.me, wanted to share a story on how she is teaching her son how to handle anger in a constructive manner. From time to time we all get angry and it is important that we model the behaviors that we want our children to do. I hope that you enjoy her story. Thank you Donna for sharing!
My youngest son whom I affectionately call buddy, now nine, is a very sensitive emotional compassionate boy. He is the one I wrote about in my previous post about him being teased. He also has had some anger issues especially around 2nd and 3rd grades. Whenever I have had to correct his behavior, even in a small way, such as making him come back and clean up after himself before he goes and plays, I have been met with brooding looks, exasperated sighs, and extra heavy walking (aka stomping lol) at every turn.
As he has gotten older and more articulate I started noticing something else emerging and that is if I corrected him on anything and sent him to his room he would go and stomp or kick the wall and say “Stupid, stupid, I’m just stupid!” He would also display this behavior if he got upset while playing with friends and would storm into his room. I continued to think this was anger issues and began a mission to come up with ways for him to deal with his anger. I had him draw pictures, like the above picture that was actually drawn by my daughter, or write stories about his frustrations as well as teaching him the escalator technique which has really worked very well for him.
This is how I explained the escalator technique. “Ok buddy, you know how you love to ride the escalator so much at the mall? Well whenever you get angry and feel like it might get out of control, I want you to immediately picture getting on the escalator. Take deep breaths as you slowly ride the escalator up. Then when you get to the top, I want you to picture yourself turning and riding the escalator slowly back down, while still taking deep slow breaths. When you get to the bottom I want you to pray that God will help you see the situation more clearly and how to deal with it. It’s ok to be angry, even Jesus got angry (such as in Matthew 21:12) but it’s what you do with that anger that makes the difference and is what matters. Proverbs 14:29 says ‘People with understanding control their anger; a hot temper shows great foolishness.’ That means buddy when your anger is out of control you start to act all crazy.” I immediately jumped off his bed and jumped around, flailing my arms, turning around in circles making silly noises and then I calmly stopped and said, “and nobody wants to see you acting all crazy.” That was met with smiles and giggles. I grabbed him up for a hug. “I love you and I just want you to do your best and you can’t do your best when you are upset and angry!”
We also made a chart and I bought star stickers. Each day before bed I wouldn’t just put a star there based on what his teacher said. I would ask him how HE felt he did that day. This was really great as well because it gave him a chance to express himself and his feelings as well his own behavior and then visually see his anger and his control over it. It also really helped him to learn self control in dealing with his issues at school.
This helped with his anger issues until recently when we discovered that a lot of the issues he expressed as anger had actually all this time been fear and anxiety. We have been working on that lately and I am letting the Lord guide me in helping him now tackle these new issues brought to light and will be sharing that in the next Godly Home post.
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How do you help your child deal with their anger issues?
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