The Angry Child

Anger has a place

Anger is an emotion that we all experience to some degree, probably on a daily basis. It is normal and natural to experience this emotion, however, how we act it out and respond to it can look very different from person to person. Some people may seem like they never get angry, while others seem constantly angry. Finding the right balance between acknowledging our emotions and expressing our emotions can be quite a tricky process that can sometimes leave us a little red in the face.

The biology of anger

It is well documented that anger and aggression have some roots in our genetic make up. Bearing this i

n mind, we may be able to look back at our families over the generations and notice certain trends that may relate to anger, aggression, short tempers and low self control. If you notice any of this in your past, it is likely that there may be genetic predispositions within your family towards higher levels of anger and aggression. Now, it is important to understand that just because one may have a genetic predisposition towards something, there is no guarantee that they will ‘become’ or display those tendencies. For example, just because there may be some familial indication of a predisposition towards anger or aggression, this does not mean that your child will be an angry or aggressive child. At the end of the day, our environments and life experiences will ultimately determine whether we ‘become’ that or not. If a child who may have a tendency towards being short tempered and aggressive learns good self awareness and self regulation techniques as well as appropriate ways to display their emotions, they may never be seen as angry or aggressive. Our environments ultimately shape us.

Family Environment

The family environment is probably the most important context in which a child exists. It is the context in which a child begins to develop relationships, coping skills and problem-solving abilities. It is the context that provides safety and security, love, care and affection. The extend to which a child receives all of this will vary drastically from individual to individual, however, this remains a fundamental factor in our development. As we consider the significance of this environment, we need to bear in mind the following element which contribute to the family context: ​

• Parental dynamics

• Sibling dynamics

• Boundaries & Discipline structures

• Power Dynamic

• Conflict Management

• Communication.

Child’s Context

Within the whole exists the various parts, one of which is your child. Irrespective of what challenges you may be facing with your child, you need to put them into context before anything else. For this, one needs to seriously consider the following are significant and dynamic factors that impact a child’s

development, relationships and communication:

• Age - take into context where your child is developmentally as this impacts what they can or cant do, how they view the world and how they think or feel about things.

• Gender - this has developmental consequences which may impact your child, as well as social-developmental considerations such as how we socialise boys vs girls for example.

• Birth Order - there is much research which indicates the significance order of birth and various personality traits or characteristics. Consider this seriously within the context of your family.

• Personal Experience - what has your child actually experienced on a day or over time which may have contributed to a specific mood or outburst.

Parent’s Context

Very similar to above, we need to consider our own context as a parent and where we have come from. We need to bear in mind:

• Developmental phase - Our own developmental period will impact how we engage with the world significantly.

• Age and Gender - these will significantly impact how we have engaged with the world and as such how we have learned to be.

• Own family and siblings - what were our upbringings like within our own families and with our own siblings.

• Personality - how do we handle life and all the good and bad that comes along with it.

• Relationship status - the type and quality of our relationships will impact us as well as be a model relationship for our children.

• Personal Experiences - what you have been through contributes to who you are today.

• My Contribution - how have I contributed to my child’s situation. Have I been too pushy, or over involved for example.

• My Reaction - how have I reacted to my child’s behaviour.

• My Modelling - what do I model to my child every day.

Anger Management

Dealing with an angry child can be extremely challenging and exhausting, especially if you are trying something new or dealing with a new developmental period. Here are some critical considerations to bear in mind when faced with an unruly child:

• Manage own emotions - first and foremost you need to be able to manage and control your own emotions. If you are not able to self-regulate or are not even aware of your own emotional levels, then you may as well be dealing with two children. Managing your own emotions takes patience, practice and self-awareness. You will need to be able to identify your own triggers, insecurities and strengths and weaknesses so that you can remain relativity in control as opposed to just ‘reacting’ to life.

• Assess the situation - Take a moment to assess the situation at hand, the age and context of your child, family dynamics, school dynamics, what’s contributed and how you have or are adding to the situation. Once you have more awareness about a situation, it becomes that much easier to manage.

• Lesson to be learned - asking yourself what you want your child to learn from a situation should be a standard question that every parent constantly asks themselves. If you consider that every interaction with your child is a learning opportunity, we start to view things slightly differently. Each engagement is an opportunity to informally teach your child how to proactively, positively and responsibly handle situations and problems.

• Practice and Consistency - Teaching yourself and your child how to manage their emotions and how to handle the challenges life throws take practice and consistency. You have to keep on doing the same, positive lesson over and over. Without a consistent message, we may as well stop as children will find ways around the inconsistent structures and interactions, thus making the ‘lessons’ null and void.

• Be in control - the relationship between a parent and a child is a constant power battle. Losing our temper, shouting and screaming and just plain ‘losing it’ are the easiest way to hand the power to your child. Remain cool, calm and collected (at least in front of your child) so that you maintain power in the relationship and so your child learns who is in charge and where the boundaries are.

• Time - once again, be patient. This takes time, and unfortunately, as you feel you have got a good handle on things your child will move into another developmental phase and things start all over again. Know this is coming, expect this so it becomes a little easier to manage when the time comes. ​

Anxiety vs Stress

Very often the terms “stress” and “anxiety” are used interchangeably and we generally understand them to have the same meanings in our everyday language. However the truth of the matter is that Stress and Anxiety are in fact not the same and we need to understand the differences before we attempt to deal with them.

Stress

Stress is a normal reaction to a situation that is perceived to be challenging or poses a threat or even opportunities. The important factor here is that stress is our own personal reaction to an event rather than the event itself which causes the stress.

Good and Bad Stress

Stress is not always a bad thing in our lives. Good stress (known as Eustress) occurs when our level of stress is high enough to motivate us in order to engage with a challenge and to achieve our goals. Essentially this stress helps us rise to the challenge and to perform at our best. When this eustress becomes too great though, we start to enter into the bad stress known as Distress. This negative stress occurs when our levels of stress are either too high, or too low and our mind and body begin to respond negatively to the stressors. These reactions could include demotivation, feeling overwhelmed, getting sick, reaching “burn-out” etc.

Anxiety

Anxiety on the other hand is a feeling of fear, unease or worry, often related to situations that are perceived to be uncontrollable or unavoidable. Anxiety is a future-oriented mood in which a person anticipates an attempt (normally viewed as being unsuccessful) to cope or manage the upcoming negative event. Anxiety is therefore prolonged stress that continues after the stressor is gone and becomes future-orientated towards another upcoming event. In comparison, stress is caused by an immediate, existing stress causing factor.

Normal, abnormal and “normal”

Stress is a normal part of our every day life, we cannot avoid it and it plays an important role in motivating us to achieve goals and in general getting through each day safely. Normal stress is related to our survival as we experience some degree of stress whenever our body perceives a threat. This could be from another person or event outside of ourselves which we find threatening (robbery, fights, getting in trouble), or even simply being hungry or thirsty. The normal stress that we experience can cause us to enter into out fight/flight/freeze response to a situation, which may stem from a physical, emotional or environmental threat.

Abnormal stress begins to rear it’s head when our normal stress comes prolonged. When this stress continues after the immediate threat or cause has been dealt with we enter into the realm of anxiety as we become worried or fearful of future events. These fears can further develop into even greater irrational fears which then become our phobias and become less and less controllable. As this anxiety continues it will likely begin to interfere in our daily lives or activities, and as this continues it is possibly and quite likely that we can adopt a negative outlook on life or situations. A “doomsday’ outlook can be the beginnings of the commonly associated depression.

We often perceive our stress or anxiety to be “normal” because we have experienced it that way for so ​

​long. Our familiarity with worries, fears and anxiety does not make it normal. It only makes it regular and common for ourselves. It is important to remember that expressions such as “it’s just the way I am” or “it’s the way it always is” or even “this is just how I work” are not good enough justifications to try and normalise your anxiety levels. Furthermore, as we “normalise” our anxiety we begin to normalise it for our immediate support group (family) too and thus all members will begin to accept these levels of stress, worry and anxiety as “normal”.

Where anxiety comes from

There is generally much debate around the role of nature vs nurture in our development. The important aspect to keep in mind is that both nature and nurture play crucial roles in our development and the individuals that we will or have developed into. ​

Nature refers to our biological or genetic components. This aspect is out of our control and is predetermined before the foetus is even formed yet. The reason for this is due to the fact that our genes and DNA are set and dependent on the pairing of an egg and a sperm cell which contain the DNA components that will form our own unique DNA. Just like our sex, this is determined long before we even start looking human.

Nurture on the other hand refers to our environment, which includes the various individuals who contribute to our lives. The challenging aspect of this Nurture component is that it is comprised of many variables, (people and other factors) however, compared to the Nature component discussed previously the environment is far more controllable. Our environments can be changed and be altered to best suit us which make this aspect the greatest variable in terms of our development. It similarly suggests that our environment is the most significant factor in determining whether we cross the threshold into the clinical diagnoses of behaviour such as anxiety.

​​Cause and Effect

This graph shows some examples of the role that Nature and Nurture play in our lives. This highlights the fact that we have a lot more control over our lives than what we often perceive. Furthermore, this emphasises the role that a parent plays in a child’s life as we consider the cause and effect relationship between parent and child and the environment which is created between them.

Some Cause and Effect considerations are:

Avoidance - if we avoid facing our fears, or dealing with our stress effectively, we will be breeding anxiety. In order to avoid developing chronic stress and anxious tendencies we first need to be effective at dealing with our own stress. This positive behaviour will then naturally be modelled for your children as they adopt your behaviour, habits and tendencies as their own. Be a role model for them, and be very cautious not to place your own stress and anxiety onto your own children. ​

Overprotective - Being over protective, rushing in to help your child , stepping in on their behalf is often done because it is easier to deal with situations that way. We are able to reduce a child’s immediate or short term distress by stepping in, however the long-term effects of this are that your children will develop a reliance or dependance on your intervention and will not learn how to deal with challenges on their own. We need to bear in mind that if we start “protecting’ our children from a very young age, it becomes mo

re and more difficult for us as parents to firstly realise the long-term impact we are having on them, and secondly for us to actually step back. We develop overprotective habits which then become part of our daily lives. Your children will also find it more and more difficult to cope with challenges, the longer they have you stepping in to take control. Children need to learn from their own success and failures, if we adopt their failures as your own they will never learn.

It’s in our family - Anxiety runs in families. Firstly there may be a genetic component (Nature), but more

importantly, we learn by watching our parents. Your children will adopt your behaviour as your own.

Verbal transmission - Be aware of how you handle situation and your general day-to-day language and vocabulary that you use. Your tone of voice, telephone conversations, face to face conversations and discussions with a spouse or partner will all subtly inform your children how to handle life. Just hearing of a threat indirectly can lead to a child developing certain fears.

How to deal with anxiety

• Anxiety is very real for the person experiencing it, even if you don't perceive the fear or threat to be real or significant. Anxiety is very often irrational and it is crucial that you are sensitive to this.

• As a parent take responsibility to acknowledge and accept the role that you are playing in your ​​child’s stress levels and anxiety. Be cautious to blame environments, people or problems outside of home as a child will most often “practice” what they learn at home in these other environments, school included.

• Take the necessary action to help address the anxiety where you can, therefore start with yourself as an individual before trying to address it in your child. Make the necessary changes and adjustments in yourself and your home in general before focusing on your child as an isolated individual.

• Medication - This is often a default reaction to a problem these days. The problem with medication is that is can often mask the causes of stress and anxiety in our lives. It can also have other negative side effects including changes in appetite, attitude, personality etc. Be cautious when turning to medication, and if this is a necessary option, ensure that this occurs in conjunction with other interventions. Medication should (most often) be used to help an individual move into a more positive frame of mind where they can then make the necessary cognitive and behavioural changes necessary. Medication can assist in opening the door for change, but should not be the only intervention and should be viewed as a short term intervention where possible.

• Therapy - Therapeutic interventions can be very effective in helping children, parents and families make the necessary changes to help deal with stress and anxiety 9n addition to many other challenges). There are many therapeutic option available and it is crucial that you find the best fit for the individual and the challenge they face. When it comes to treating anxiety it is suggested that a more practical therapeutic approach is taken rather then the more traditional “talk therapy”. The reason for this is because an individual will need to change their habits and behaviour and just talking about it will not be sufficient, there needs to be a significant practice component that will allow for some trial and error and in order to begin making changes with the necessary guidance and support.

• Stress reduction techniques - There are many other techniques that can be effective in helping to reduce stress and anxiety levels. These include visualisations, meditation, various breathing techniques, practicing “letting go” and focusing on others, as well as various coping skills such as time management, prioritising and gaol setting.

• Home adjustment - Making changes at home can have the greatest impact on a child’s stress levels. Taking time to assess relationships and dynamics at home, the discipline structures and general outlooks and interactions should be the starting point of any intervention.

• Expectation adjustments - Our expectations of our children and ourselves can very often be a primary contributor to our stress levels. Take some time to assess your expectations of your children and adjust them accordingly. Remember that your children are not you and they are not each other. Each of us is a unique individual and our expectations of others should be in line with their abilities and interests.

• Team effort - Taking the responsibility to implement the necessary changes at home, and as an individual can be a daunting process, however you do not have to do it alone. Working with the school and your support network will make the whole process easier and more effective. Share your interventions at home with the school so that your child’s teachers can assist in reinforcing the changes (be careful not to place this responsibility on the teacher or the school). Similarity with friends and family, let them know what you are doing and what you need them to do to aid the process. ​

​Your control is limited

You can only do so much as a parent and as an individual. Be aware of where your control ends and where a problem becomes another persons (your child’s) responsibility. Be accountable for what you can and teach your children to take responsibility for the rest. Remember that there is no quick fix and the interventions that you implement are a process and it may take time for you to notice the difference, but stick it out, it will be worth it.