Teaching Kids Anger Management: Lesson 1

At risk children may be anger prone. It is important for parents of at risk children to actively teach them how to deal with anger and frustration. Here are the four truths of anger management.

1) We are in charge of our own feelings.

• Although we can’t always stop ourselves from being provoked, we own our own feelings.
• We feel our own feelings.
• We must label our own feelings.
• We must calmly communicate our own feelings.
• Since feeling anger is part of being human, we have to learn healthy ways to deal with anger.
• We can find ways to let anger go.

2) We are in charge of our own thoughts.

• Some thoughts keep us angry. Some thoughts calm us down.
• We can choose to have calming thoughts.
• We can practice using calming thoughts to cool off.

3) We are in charge of our own behavior.

• We own the hurtful actions that we inflict on others.
• We can stop hurting people with actions.
• We can learn to control what we do with anger.
• We can express angry feelings in ways that are fair to others and ourselves.

4) We are in charge of our own words.

• We own the hurtful words we speak when angry
• We can stop hurting people with words.
• We can use the firm and fair words: "I feel ____ when you _____."
• We can talk about feelings and try to work things out.

Learn these truths for yourself and teach them to your child verbally and by modeling the behavior. Recently my four year old son said, “I feel mad at you!” I then said, “If you are mad,take a deep breath and walk away.” He said, “Like the monkey in the video?” He was referring to this site: http://www.angriesout.com/index.htm#kids

We visited the site once, one month before he said this, He remembered it better than I did. He therefore highly recommends this site! The monkey exercise is gone but there are other videos to watch together.