Angry kids can be super cure, but only sometimes! Parents like us face a tough time controlling growing kids, as they demand quite a lot of energy and attention everyday. While managing kids in itself can be a humongous and daunting task, handling kids with anger issues becomes all the more difficult. Given the pandemic and lockdown situation out and about, times are getting tougher all the more.
Your child must be locked up indoors all day for some weeks or maybe months at a stretch now. He or she has very little social interaction and is getting crankier day by day. That complicates the whole temperamental issue a tad bit more, especially for an impatient or hyperactive child. If you are sailing in this boat, you have landed on the right article.
Here, we have collated some simple and highly effective anger management activities for kids. These anger management tips will surely help a growing kid manage his or her temper, especially if they are angry by nature!
- Relaxation methods: Some exercises done regularly, can help a child relax. These include basic breathing exercises like pranayam and yoga.
- Breathing exercise 1: Ask the child to pretend that they are smelling a flower or blowing a candle. Ask them to do it 5 times on day 1, 10 times on day 2 and so on.
- Deep breathing while Mummy counts to 10 is also a great way to teach patience and calm down.
- Blowing bubbles with soap water is also a great exercise for the little ones.
- Problem-solving abilities: The trick to managing a child’s anger well is to give them a problem and ask them to solve it which is the goal. The kid’s response to angry feelings instantly gets directed at solving the problem. For instance, folding the laundry or cleaning the room or sorting a stack of books or toys! When practiced daily, the child knows that when they are angry, they need to direct it towards a productive task.
- Ways to divert attention from anger triggers or situations: As discussed above, an angry kid’s attention has to be diverted towards a productive goal or task. For instance, show them a bird outside or ask them to eat something or engage them in a chore instantly, so that they lose focus on the object of anger and focus elsewhere.
- Self-regulation: Teach your child to count to 10 when they are very angry by breathing in and out, 10 times. If they are very angry, ask them to do this 20 to 30 times. Or simply teach them to excuse themselves, walk slowly out of the room and instead of shouting or yelling, just sit quietly somewhere until they cool down. As adults, we also need to practice what we preach around the kids, for best results.
- Emotion recognition: Kids should be taught to read and understand the facial expressions of people around them. When they are expressing anger to someone, the other person is generally angry or scared or shocked! The child has to understand that the key to manage anger is to understand the fact that being angry is not a solution. Rather it destroys friendships and relationships, by hurting someone they love.
- Anger management strategies adapted to specific situations: Draw or print out posters and paste the, on a wall of your kid’s room. Reading out famous sayings like “Words once spoken cannot be retrieved” or “Angry people are not always wise” can actually make a difference.
As they rightfully say, raising an emotionally intelligent being is not a simple destination. It calls for a long journey for both the parent/guardian and the child. One day you might notice some progress and on the next, you might see their emotions flying out the window! This is all completely normal and acceptable. We only need to take little steps and make space for our child’s anger so that they calm down and learn to handle big emotions well in the future. Anger is afterall, just an emotion and not bad at all!
Happy parenting!