Helpful Article about anger issues and how to parent with them.

Holding on to anger is like grasping a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else; you are the one who gets burned.

5 Ways to Handle Your Child's Anger

Children can feel and express anger at a very young age. As they grow older, their understanding towards people and things around them starts to advance. Therefore, their way of expressing anger will also change, eventually.

As they grow up, situations that will cause them to become angry will increase. By now, they tend to understand more about their surroundings and had been in a lot of situations that would probably make them angry. All these are part of their development process.

The family plays a very important role in the emotional growth of the children, which has a direct influence on how they feel and the way they express their anger. Research shows that most children tend to imitate the behavior of their parents, whether directly or indirectly. So please, do not do things that you would not want your children to follow, in front of them. The surrounding at home is also very important as it plays a key role in the emotional development of the children.

I will share with you 5 very simple, yet proven to be effective ways that you can handle your children when they are in anger. They are also found at Child Anger Management - Helping Young Children with Anger, Effectively.

1. As a responsible parent, try to change the environment at home to prevent experiences or situations that will lead to unnecessary stress, anger or frustration between you and your children.

2. Do not take their anger personally. This will have direct influence on them. The angrier you are, the more anger they might have inside them too. Take a break before everything goes out of hand.

3. Try to direct their attention away from the current situation. Try to distract them from the situation, and get a break to cool things off before it gets worse.

4. It is very important that we as parents do not give in when our children is having their tantrums. If we do, they will think that by acting in that way, they can get what they want from us.

5. Do not lecture or hit your children when they are in anger, or for no particular reasons. It will only make things worse. Keep it for another day. Try to have a slow conversation with them to cool them down.

I hope these few tips help.

Dealing With Aggressive Children

Although aggressive behavior such as hitting, screaming, and even biting is not seen as all that unusual from a child of one or two years of age, the same conduct in children merely a year or two older is often seen as cruel and problematic. Controlling feelings and emotions is, however, a learned skill and can be very difficult to master (even for some adults!).

Staying calm and collected not only requires a fair amount of self-control and discipline, but also a basic understanding of appropriate social behavior and morality. Most children under the age of five or six have a minimal comprehension of what exactly is socially acceptable, at least beyond pleasing Mom or Dad. Even then, some children may find it difficult to control their temper and yet there is often a difference between a child who is deceptively �acting out' (which is rare, and often due to an unstable or unsafe home environment) and one who is simply trying to be assertive.

The majority of children do not recognize their own strength or even the full consequences of their actions; and in a world where they are often being told what to do, where to go and how to behave, it does not seem all that unreasonable that they may sometimes need to speak out and be heard. Those school-aged children who continue to act obnoxiously or aggressively may have never experienced the opportunity of being truly listened to in a loving environment. Listening, on the part of parents involves not only hearing your children's jokes and laughter, but perhaps more importantly hearing about those hurt, angered and unhappy emotions as well. So often, children are not allowed to speak negatively, complain, or offer a difference of opinion and thus their feelings continue to build up until one day they may unintentionally vent or lash out. It is important to remember, however, that hearing your children out does not mean submitting to their every whim or desire.

Aside from releasing pent up emotions, children who behave aggressively may also do so because they have been rewarded for the conduct. Parents may have hoped to raise a child who is strong and able to stand up for him- or herself in rough situations. More commonly, parents may have inadvertently reinforced the aggressive behavior through attention. Indeed, even nagging or punishing children for acting aggressively can make it more likely that they will act that way in the future. Imagine, if you will, a child quietly piecing a puzzle together or even playing a video game. He/She has almost completed the puzzle/game but cannot get the final pieces/play to come together. Throughout this quiet half an hour the parent has been around but has said absolutely nothing. Nothing, that is until the child becomes obviously frustrated and throws the puzzle/game across the room and begins screaming or swearing loudly. At this point the parent intervenes by reprimanding the child and sending him/her to their room. It would appear that the parent has done everything appropriate in this situation, except for the fact that the only attention this child received during the time period was negative. If this is commonly the case, the child may begin to feel that any attention is better than no attention and as a result may continue to act out disruptively in daily activities. When dealing with aggressive children, it is worth the effort to praise even the smallest attempt at proper behavior, while paying very little if any attention to negative conduct. Praise can be a very strong motivator.

It is also important to remember that behavior can be very difficult to change and that it takes a lot of patience. Turning an aggressive child into a nonaggressive child will not happen overnight, and the odd outburst may even occur once the behavior has seemed to restore itself.

Child Anger Management - The "Positive" Way

Angry outbursts, uncontrolled tempers that are physically acted out, and the inability to explain what caused the behavior/anger could possibly be signs that the child has or at one time had psycho motor seizures.

If that is the case, while he may have outgrown the seizures, the behaviors initialized by them could and would become a behavior pattern if they went unchecked.

The interesting thing about psycho motor seizures is that they often go undiagnosed, though in the last ten years or so they have grown to be more readily recognized within the medical community.

First of all, let me say that if this child's parents are unwilling or unable to deal with the child's anger/behavior, the child is very lucky to have someone interested enough to look into how to work with him. Whether you feel you achieve any success or not, that child will know that someone saw the good in him... and someday, somehow, it will make a difference for him.

Different things work for different kids. Watch the child and see if you can pick out things that are 'positive' in him. Look for things he likes, simple things such as a certain classroom activity he likes, maybe erasing the blackboard, or taking notes to the office for you. You can use these things as tools with him.

Start easy.

Making his achievements too hard will only frustrate him and make him feel that he cannot accomplish what you are asking. Say he likes taking notes, etc. to the office, for example. Make a chart up for him for one week periods. On the chart, make goals for each day for him to achieve. (ie. finishing work, listening when instruction is being given, working quietly at his desk, staying on task, and thinking about what he is doing or saying.

In school, these goals can be set for each subject) Set the same goals for each day of the week and tally them up at the end of the week. What do you do with the checkmarks of successes?

That is where you use the 'tools'.

The things you know he likes. At first, make it easy. If he isn't able to accomplish enough to get the 'reward' then he most likely will quit trying. (it could be the BIG X for the day, and if he gets three out of five days with the BIG X, he gets to take the notes to the office the next week, or do the board erasing, or get the bag of M&M's, or whatever).

It is important that you make it so that he does have to try, and also that it is possible for him, that is where your knowledge of him will have to guide you. You want him to be pleased that he can succeed. When he behaves improperly, explain to him that the behavior was inappropriate.

Go over exactly what he did or said, and guide him through how he could have behaved appropriately. After a time (week, two weeks) when you feel he comprehends, you will go over a poor behavior and then ask him to tell you how he might have behaved more appropriately.

The truth of the matter is, he really doesn't know why he is doing these things. He hasn't had the instruction to know what it is that he should do, so how can we expect him to know how to explain himself.

He may know his behavior is wrong, but he may not know what his options are when it comes to his actions/behavior. What we can do is teach him new options, and set goals for him to help him achieve success.

When he has a week in which he does not get three out of five days with the "BIG X", he needs to be able to look at that week and physically see where he missed getting his checkmarks for the days.

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