Anger Management For Children -

Something happened yesterday that brought back a bunch of old memories.

I was working with a six year old whose parents had recently gone through a divorce. There is also a baby in the family and the divorce had been traumatic on both the kids. The mom had come in a while ago but since the divorce her six year old has been angry. So angry that almost every morning at school she goes to the nurse’s office with an upset tummy. She never gets sick but she’s just miserable. It’s so bad that sometimes she even goes in the afternoon as well. The mom knows that it’s anger and stress, not illness and doesn’t know what to do about it. The sad truth is that many families are in similar situations. One of the parents will leave the home and then doesn’t see the child on a regular basis. Because of this the child feels more and more rejected and feels like no one cares about them. They become lost in their heart.

That’s the way this little six year old feels. When she came in recently instead of working on any of the Family Coaching exercises I just let her talk. All she needed was someone to talk to. I asked her if she could look at me while we talked. She said no, that she wanted to draw. I asked her if she knew how to count to ten, which she did, so on top of her drawing she wrote out the numbers one through ten. (We had a little trouble remembering which way the flag on the five pointed, but everyone gets confused sometimes.)

When she was finished, I drew a line under the numbers and asked her if ten is the most and one is the least, what number describes how much sadness she was feeling? She pointed to the number nine.

I drew an arrow pointing to the nine and asked her which of the numbers describes how mad she is. She asked me was I talking about how mad she was right this minute? I told her yes, how mad was she feeling right now? She pointed to the number two. I commented that two isn’t a very big number; she must not be that mad right now. She told me no, she wasn’t very mad today. She said she gets the angriest when her dad says he’s coming to see her and then doesn’t show up. She gets all dressed up and waits for him and is so disappointed when he doesn’t come. Hearing a child talk about it is heart breaking. You can see how much she hurts. I asked her what happens to her anger when we talk about her dad not showing up.

She then asked me, “Is there a number more than ten?” I told her yes, there is. And she said to me, “That’s how mad I get; the number more than ten.”

I asked her what she wanted to do about all this mad inside of her and that if she didn’t know what to do I could give her some anger management tips.

I told her about the time when my ex-husband and I were divorcing. My youngest son was six and my oldest son was ten. They were mad and hurt. The divorce caused them a lot of pain. This got me thinking about anger management techniques we had used in the past and anger management for children.

We had to come up with ideas to get rid of some of that pain and I could tell her one of the things we loved to do that made us laugh, but also helped to get rid of the mad. She said, “I’ll do it!” She didn’t even wait to hear what it was before agreeing. I told her how my boys and I would take a kitchen timer, set it for five minutes, and then find some pillows. Once the timer began we would have the best pillow fights ever!! We would have so much fun; we would be laughing from start to finish.( It really was one of my favorite anger management games for children ) She got so excited and asked her mom if they could please have a pillow fight? Her mom said of course they could. After a few minutes of her fretting about their lack of a kitchen timer and how using the microwave wouldn’t be the same thing, this little girl and her mother agreed to go get an egg-timer. Once that was established she began to grin from ear to ear. When I told her that I had another suggestion, a sit-down activity, she immediately asked what it was and could they do it tomorrow?

I told her that she and her mom could make home-made play-doh. They could squish it and play with it, even pound on it if she felt like it. This precocious little six year old looked at me and said, “Well, have you given my mom the recipe yet?!” I assured her I would and then I asked her a question for the second time. I asked her how mad was she feeling right now? She thought about it for a moment and said, “Zero means nothing, right? Then right at this very minute it’s at zero. I know I can’t do anything to change my daddy but I can have a pillow fight with my mom and I think that will really help me to feel better.”

After that I was thinking about how much anger many of us carry around. There are so many things you can do to help work out your anger. I told this mother how I used to take a baseball bat and an empty appliance cardboard box out in the backyard. I would let my son take the bat and beat that big box until it was torn into pieces. Then once we felt better we would clean up the yard and throw the trash into the dumpster. This mama knew how much these ideas were going to help her kids. As they left for the day this little girl and I made a contract with each other. She would call me everyday that she didn’t go to the nurse’s office. At the time there were seven days left of school before summer. She assured me that she could go all seven days without going to see the nurse as long as she could call me everyday and have a pillow fight every night.

As I walked them out to their car my little friend asked me, “Are you too old to know how to text?” I laughed and told her that even though I may be older I know how to text and would she prefer to text me instead of call? She replied that one day she would text and the next day she would call.

It was an amazing thing to see her anger completely disappear for a while. She felt like she had some control over her life. I think that’s why we must deal with anger sometimes. To help us move forward, change our circumstances and get on with living big and happy. Remember a pillow fight isn’t just good anger management for children but is great for adults as well.