Getting Over Getting Mad: Positive Ways to Manage Anger in Your Most Important Relationships (17 page)

Destructive behavior and violence is a definite no-no. Tell them, “If you punch your brother, it hurts your brother and that is not allowed,” or “It's OK to tell me that you're mad, but it is not OK to smash your toys.”

Imposing hundreds of rules governing every little move your child makes creates a home life filled with tension. Rather than adding to the confusion, keep the rules simple. When you're mad you can't hurt things or people. You can talk with me about it, you can talk to your sister, but I won't allow you to hurt each other.

New frustrations come with every new developmental stage. A child at two may pull his playmate's hair, but if you tell him, “No,” he'll learn that pulling hair is hurtful and won't be tolerated. Say “Yes” to talking, say “No” to punching, pinching, and hurting. If he learns that when he's young, he'll remember it as he grows.

Now here comes the really hard part. If you don't allow destructive, hurtful behavior, do you expose your children to it in your behavior? Do you hurt them? Do you tell them not to hit, and then turn around and hit them? Do you tell them not to slap each other, but do you sometimes slap them? Do you spank your children?

Six-year-old Molly played with the dollhouse and miniature dolls in my office. The mommy and daddy doll spanked the child doll; the child doll spanked the baby. “Does the baby spank?” I asked. “The baby is too little to spank,” Molly answered. Molly was spanked by both her parents. They told me that since they were both spanked as children, that's what they did with Molly. Molly was a sensitive little girl; since she was pulling out her hair and biting her nails until they bled, her parents were beginning to wonder whether spanking was an effective discipline.

What you do and what you say need to match. If hitting is not allowed in your family, don't hit children. If you do hit your children, they will prob-ably
at some time or another hit another child or strike out in the way they learned from you.

Any chronic destructive behavior your child displays, such as biting, talking back, hitting, or an obstinate disposition, indicates that your child is going through a difficult adjustment—a new baby brother, a move, learning a new skill. It's a signal that he is in grave need of extra attention and guidance from you.

You child learns about his own anger by watching how you manage anger. Ways of handling anger are to suppress it, talk about it, throw fits, get violent, and get physical exercise. Which ways do you want your child to learn?

From a two-year-old who has a temper tantrum because he didn't want to sit in the car seat to the defiant child who actively disobeys you and deliberately picks on his schoolmates, children display a wide spectrum of anger. Children get angry for all the reasons that adults get angry— fear, loneliness, disappointment, stress, and hurt. Girls and boys in our society learn to express their dissatisfactions and frustrations differently. Girls are told that “nice” girls don't get mad, so instead of expressing anger they say, “You hurt my feelings,” or they might cry. Girls in general are more indirect; they communicate hostility toward peers by manipulation. Cliques of teenage girls are known for handling their upsets by spreading rumors.

Boys learn that it's not okay to cry, so instead of shedding tears when they're hurt, they might punch the wall or start a fight. Boys confront each other directly and use verbal assaults.

Like adults, both boys and girls have trouble identifying anger when they feel it and difficulty releasing it appropriately once it's felt.

Three-year-old Riley is tired from a full day at the amusement park, and when she comes home she throws herself on the floor and wails, “I want my teddy.” Eight-year-old Melanie is disappointed that her best friend got sick and can't spend the night. She's cranky and slams the door; she lies on her bed and won't eat dinner. Ten-year-old Zach lost his favorite baseball mitt; when his seven-year-old brother walks by he throws a book at him. When his mom comes to see what all the commotion is about, he yells at her to “get out of my room!” After her parents separated, fifteen-year-old Sarah began missing classes because she couldn't get up in the morning. Her grades plummeted and she complained, “I don't have any friends.” Sixteen-year-old Mitch is surly to every adult he comes in contact with and has decided he no longer has to abide by curfew.

When I talk with children and parents about anger, I divide anger into three categories. By understanding the different degrees of anger, parents can have clearer ideas of what interventions might be needed.

1. Little Anger: Little anger is momentary and specific. For example, five-year-old Jake didn't get a second ice cream cone so he's pouting; ten-year-old Adam swore when he struck out in the baseball game. Little angers are easily solved and vanish with understand-ing.
   Make a clear statement of your standards: “You're disappointed because you struck out, but no swearing allowed on the field.”
   
2. Big Anger: Big anger is intense and covers up low self-esteem and self-doubt. It's often disguised as depression and is a symptom of an underlying problem that needs attention. Big anger is often related to trauma, grief, or loss. Eleven-year-old Amy refuses to join any after-school activities because “the kids at my school are stupid.” By the fourth grade, Max was fighting on the school grounds and was known as the neighborhood bully. A child with a big anger is unhappy and needs intervention and guidance to heal the wound that is causing the problem.
   
3. Huge Anger: Huge anger is rage, a profound and uncontrollable feeling in the body, almost on the cellular level, of wanting to hurt yourself or someone else. Rage results from emotional abandonment, abuse by parents, or repeated alienation from peers. As an infant Justin was physically abused by his mother and abandoned by his alcoholic father. At fourteen years old, he's defiant, skipping school, and drinking. Rage can also arise from repeated rejection by peers. By the eighth grade, Allison had gone to four different schools. She was bashful, and each new school felt like one more rejection to her. It was hard to make friends, so she put on a tough exterior and acted as if she didn't care.
   

Huge anger causes many problems for the child and for those around him. A child with such a deep wound is living in a state of emergency. He needs immediate and daily assistance to overcome his hurt and rage. He needs strong limits on his destructive behavior and skill- building for competent behaviors.

Chalking anger up to a stage that your child is going through is not a good approach. While it's true that two-years-olds grow out of grabbing toys from their playmates, they still need your guidance to figure out what to do in social situations. Even though you know that this is not the last boyfriend your teenage daughter will have, when she's crying because he broke up with her and calling herself names for liking him in the first place, she still needs you to understand the agony she's feeling. She needs your support as she finds ways to get through her heartache rather than letting the rejection define her. A teenager will probably outgrow his tendency to shrug you off when you ask about his day, but in the meantime
he needs you to stay connected. If you ignore him altogether he wonders why you don't seem to care anymore, and although he may never tell you, he definitely feels abandoned.

There is a difference between angry feelings and angry acts, and they need to be handled differently. Angry feelings need to be identified and expressed. Angry acts need to be restricted and redirected.

Teaching good anger management to children usually involves both parts—allowing the expression of angry feelings while limiting angry behavior. Sometimes it's sufficient simply to identify a child's feeling, but when the child is acting in destructive ways, appropriate limits need to be set. When seven-year-old Alexis slammed the door, her mother said, “Come tell me what you're mad about.” But when Alexis kicked the cat, her mother stepped in and said, “I know you're upset that you can't play outside in the rain, but you can't take it out on the cat. Go get a book and we can read a story.” She acknowledged the feeling, limited the behavior, and redirected the energy toward something positive.

Good anger management is educational in nature. It preserves the child's self-respect by acknowledging his feelings and inner conflicts, and then channels inappropriate behaviors into creative, constructive activities.

Anger comes in degrees: Little Anger is momentary and specific; Big Anger is intense and covers up feelings of depression and low self-esteem; Huge Anger is rage and covers up deep emotional wounds.

A family behaves like a unit. If one person is angry, you can bet the others feel it. When one member of your family is sad or afraid, there's a ripple affect, like dropping a peddle into a pond. All the family members are touched. If the parents are angry at each other, the children feel that. If the siblings are fighting and mad at each other, the parents are affected. An anger problem in the family means everyone is suffering.

A child with a huge anger needs help, and so does the family. You can't expect things to get better if you treat only the child. Family members are like the tires on a car: without one tire, the car doesn't operate. Just as the four tires work in unison, each member has an important part in the operation of the family. If you're child is angry, obstinate, full of rage and anger, you're affected, and everyone will need new strategies. You can't just drop the child off at a counselor's office and expect things to get better. You're needed there too.

A family is a joint system. If the parents are unhappy in their marriage, the child will sense that and be affected by it. If the parents disagree yet try to present a united front, the child will know it and may get mixed messages. A child is seriously affected when one parent disparages the other. Parents sometimes put the child in the middle of marital arguments; instead of dealing with the hostility, hurt, and disappointment that's between them they unknowingly direct it through the child. Then the child acts out. What really is going on is that the child's behavior reflects unclear messages and parents' unresolved issues.

For the sake of your family, if there is an anger problem with any member, gather everybody up and go for counseling. The whole family thrives when one angry member is loved and supported by the others. Making the time to love the child who is hurt, fearful, or angry by getting him the help that he needs is worth it, because all the family members benefit.

When one member of your family is angry, sad, afraid, mad, hurt, or in pain, all the family members feel it.

Shame causes all of us—children and adults alike—to hide. We feel as though we've been stupid or done something revolting—failed in some unfathomable way. What you considered private was publicly ridiculed. And the memory of how we were exposed still haunts us, still makes us squirm. You liked someone and when that was discovered, you were ridiculed for it. You made a mistake and everybody laughed.

When you understand how shame shrinks and shrivels you, you will never use shame to get your child to behave. You will understand that shame breeds the most violent of thoughts and deeds. Shame causes a child to feel blemished, defective in the most grotesque way. Children who suffer from shame say terrible things to themselves: I'm worthless, I'm awful, I can't do anything right, I don't deserve to be alive.