Anger
is an issue with some children that can upset their
daily lives as well as long term lives.
Anger
can even morph to persistently violent behavior among
children in their advanced childhood and adolescence,
which often tends to remain for the rest of the life.
Such an issue cried
for an immediate educated attention. Fortunately,
with the right understanding, you can deal with it
to a great extent.
Anger is often your
child's outlet of frustration and disappointment.
Eradicating the roots of such frustration and disappointment
would get rid of anger caused by frustrations and
disappointments in your child.
Another reason that
makes a kid become angry and violent in the longer
term is his/her sense of obtaining short-cut measures
to gain power and obtain favorable solutions.
For example, if a
small child is frustrated at home hearing a "no",
s/he may give the parent a punch. Typically, as a
parent, one would back out and that would give the
child a sense of power and victory. This would lead
to further symptoms of displaying anger and even violence.
If the kid is gaining
power and undesirable favors by showing anger and
being violent, then it is an immediate requirement
to avoid the sense of achievement in the kid rooted
deep inside these undesired characteristics. The best
way to do this is to stop tolerating the display anger
and violence immediately. The kid would thus lose
the short-cut to power s/he had gained, and the loss
of incentive to retain the angry demeanor would help.
The child needs to be guided to find alternative ways
to power - the "right ways" to obtain real and healthy
power gained through honest work and proper values.
Kids are often in the
wrong side of thinking and that causes frustration
in them. As said earlier, frustration is one of the
biggest reasons that cause long-lasting anger symptoms
in the kids. Implementing the right kind of thought
process in the kids would enable them to think positively,
start assuming and taking responsibility and have
good results.
Their achievements
would give them the sense of fulfilling of their targets
and thus remove frustration. This would lead to minimization
and removal of anger. Hence, frustration management
is a great way to manage anger among children.
An example could be
a school kid who does not want to go to school. S/he
gets up late, and grumbles, "Why do I have to go to
school again? This is unfair." Then you, the parent,
have to convince him/her and even hurry him/her to
the school. In addition, s/he may shout, "But my teacher
does not like me and anyway s/he is a complete fool.
S/he does not understand a single thing." While you
try to make him/her ready for school, s/he would just
yell to be left alone, and half the times end up missing
the school bus. Then s/he would start requesting you
for a ride on your car, to which you reluctantly have
to agree to. In school, s/he doesn't pay attention
to the teacher and also gets ticked off for not having
the done homework. S/he chats back to the teacher,
and is all sulky. Back at home latter in the day,
s/he is in a worse mood as you try to convince him/her
to do the homework and s/he is after his/her video
games or TV shows. "Mom, leave me alone, why do you
have to be bad to me always?" - This would be his/her
reaction to your approach. By the end of the day,
you are exhausted and your kid is not. S/he is going
to stay up for more hours while you doze off to the
bed, and s/he would invariably get up late tomorrow
and again be late for school. S/he would again act
angry. This is a chain.
If you think deeper,
you shall realize that your kid is in a phase of chained
thinking errors. These errors are eating deep into
the kid's emotions and twisting the behavior. Anger
is merely a manifestation of such thinking error,
but not the root cause. Unless you provide the kid
with help and guidance in the right way, this error
is going to remain for the rest of the life and is
even going to get worse. In the worst case, the child
statistically stands a much higher chance of starting
to face social issues and even join the wrong tracks
of the society. You need to take preventive actions
immediately.
As a parent, you have
to take a few necessary steps to remove and avoid
anger symptoms in children.
- Inject the
sense of responsibility in your kids. Make sure
from early childhood that the kid understands that
s/he is responsible for the actions taken by him/her.
- Make the kid
understand the notion of accountability. The
kid must be mentally prepared and willing to be
accountable for the outcome of his/her activities
and accept the reality assertively.
- Set a limit
of tolerance. This also includes zero-tolerance
towards anger and violence.
- Reward the
achievements of the kid. If the kid is producing
good results in his/her objectives then praise that.
If it is the other way round, make sure that the
kid understands and tries to improve.
- Set standards
for the kid. Do not expect your kid to do something
unless s/he thinks it is something good to do. As
a parent, you are the role model of the kid. The
kid learns from you the good, the bad and the ugly.
Make the best use of that.
- Monitor the
kid's exposure to media. Let the kid be exposed
to only what you deem fit for a kid. You don't expect
your kid to behave well if your kid is watching
and loving the most obscene shows up on the TV or
many of the ugly websites on the Internet.
Thus, with the right
steps from your side, your kid will get rid of repeated
incidents of undesired anger and violence. As a parent,
ensure that you take the responsibility of keeping
the life of your kid on the right rails.
Visitors
who read this article also read these:
-
Aggressive
Child Behavior
-
Out
of Control Children
-
Child
Bad behavior
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