LDA of Iowa's Parenting Guide:
Part One, Section 6
Topic 4: Can You Control Your Behavior When Angry?
Based on what you have learned, ask yourself “Am I satisfied with how I am controlling my behavior at the present time?”
If your answer is YES, consider how lucky you are and you may decide to skip the rest of what is in this sub-topic. But if your answer is No, or I want to learn more, please consider doing the following.
Do not spend any time thinking you are a bad parent just because you have some limitations in your anger management. In fact, most parents rarely take the time to learn more about controlling their behavior when angry.
Because of this, we decided to include this topic as one of the skills that parents need to learn more about. We found ideas that we think will be a positive for parents to know and to consider using if they have a need for more options for controlling their behavior. We hope you will find this information helpful.
INTRODUCTION: When we performed our search for this topic, we found that learning about anger was more complicated than we thought; consequently, we have used sub-topics to discuss various related issues. Please remember as you work your way through all of this information on intentional parenting, the focus is “trying to add more meaning to the things you are doing at the present time.”
Yes we, like most parents, did not spend much time learning how to control our own behaviors when we were angry with our children when they did what we perceived to be negative behaviors like disobeying rules, being spiteful to others, constantly belittling others, always blaming others and doing things that are harmful and/or dangerous. Our perceptions triggered our emotions and we forgot all about reacting in a positive manner. Most parents experience these same challenging situations and most find this to be a negative experience.
Perhaps, we failed to grow our skills for this behavior because there were limited number of resources that discussed this topic. But it is likely that we just took for granted what we were doing was OK behavior. But when we did our searching, we were shocked to learn how much information is now available for parents who are interested in growing their parenting skills related to anger. And like we frequently did when we learned new information, we found ourselves saying once again “I wish I had known this when I was raising my children.“
We probably can agree that parenting is a challenge and the toughest challenge may be how we learn to control our interactions when we are angry with our children. The good news is that the amount of credible information that is available for parents to learn more about anger or how they manage their anger during these troubling events impacts a child is a positive. We are sharing our findings for you to read and consider if you have an interest in growing your skills by learning more about parenting anger. We found the following information to be important to better understand anger and how it impacts on all parents as they work with their children. Our findings indicated that:
Parents need to be aware that Anger is a natural emotion.
Sometimes anger can be a good thing. For example, anger might give you energy to Feeling angry and managing anger in healthy ways can also give you the chance to set a good example for your child. For example, when you take a few deep breaths or walk away rather than exploding, you are showing your child how to behave. But if you feel angry and don’t give yourself time to calm down, you might say or do unhelpful or hurtful things. This can make problems worse and lead to more conflict. Also, being around a lot of conflict and yelling isn’t good for children. They need to feel safe and secure to grow and develop.
Resources:
Managing Anger Ideas for parents– Raisingchildren.net.au – July 2022
Here is more information that we found when we read the following document “How to handle your anger at your child” by Laura Markham -May 11, 2016.
“In our more peaceful moments, if we’re honest, we know that we could handle any parenting challenge much better from a state of calm. But in the storm of our anger, we feel righteously entitled to our fury. How can this kid be so irresponsible, inconsiderate, ungrateful or even mean?”
“WHY Do We Get So Angry at Our Kids?
Parents and kids have the ability to trigger each other as no one else can. Even as adults we are often irrational in relation to our own parents. (Who has greater power to annoy you and make you act childish than your own mother or father).
Our kids push our buttons precisely because they are our children. Psychologists call this phenomenon “ghosts in the nursery,” by which they mean that our children stimulate the intense feelings of our own childhoods, and we often respond by unconsciously re-enacting the past that’s etched like forgotten hieroglyphics deep in our psyches. The fears and rage of childhood are powerful and can overwhelm us even as adults. It can be enormously challenging to lay these ghosts to rest.
It helps to know all this because it gives us incentive to control ourselves when we’re struggling to cope with anger. Just as importantly, we need to know that parental anger can be harmful to young children.
What Happens to Your Child When You Scream or Hit? Imagine your husband or wife losing their temper and screaming at you. Now imagine them three times as big as you, towering over you. Imagine that you depend on that person completely for your food, shelter, safety, and protection. Imagine they are your primary source of love and self-confidence and information about the world, that you have nowhere else to turn. Now take whatever feelings you have summoned up and magnify them by a factor of 1000. That is something like what happens inside your child when you get angry at him.
Of course, all of us get angry at our children, even, sometimes, enraged. The challenge is to call on our maturity so that we control the expression of that anger, and therefore minimize its negative impact.
Since you’re human, you’ll sometimes find yourself in “fight or flight” mode, and your child will start to look like the enemy. When we’re swept with anger, we’re physically ready to fight. Hormones and neurotransmitters are flooding our bodies. They cause your muscles to tense, your pulse to race, your breathing to quicken. It’s impossible to stay calm at those points, but we all know that clobbering our kids — while it might bring instant relief — isn’t really what we want to do.
The most important thing to remember about anger is NOT to act while you’re angry. You’ll feel an urgent need to act, to teach your child a lesson. But that’s your anger talking. It thinks this is an emergency. It almost never is, though. You can teach your child later, and it will be the lesson you actually want to teach. Your child isn’t going anywhere. You know where she lives. So, commit now to No hitting, No swearing, No calling your child names, No meting out any punishment while angry.
What about screaming? Never at your children, that’s a tantrum. If you really need to scream, go into your car with the windows rolled up and scream where no one can hear, and don’t use words, because those make you angrier. Just scream.
Will you teach your child that might makes right? That parents have tantrums. too? That screaming is how adults handle conflict? If so, they’ll adopt these behaviors as a badge of how grown-up they are. Or will you model for your child that anger is part of being human, and that learning to manage anger responsibly is part of becoming mature?
In this same article, Laura Markham listed 15 behaviors that parents can use to model for their child that shows that anger is part of being human. We think you will find this list and the information provided for each of the 15 behaviors to be of value if you are interested in learning more about how to control yourself when you are involved with your child over her/his behavior and you are very angry.
Here are five of the ideas that are in this list. For each of the behaviors listed, the writer has provided additional information relating to each.
- Set limits BEFORE you get angry.
- Calm yourself down BEFORE you take action.
- Take Five-give yourself a break and come back when you are calm.
- Listen to your anger, rather than acting on it.
- Make and post a list of acceptable ways to handle anger.
After reading what was stated above, do you want to continue to grow your parenting skills? If so, we encourage you to take the first step and complete the self-evaluation chart that follows to learn more about your parenting skills when being angry is involved.
Parent Responses to Your Child’s Behavior
Which column best describes the way you respond to your child’s behavior?
| Child's Behavior | Parent Response Needs Improvement if You are... | How to Improve |
|---|---|---|
|
Disobeys a Rule |
Yelling, screaming or using physical punishment. |
Calmly explain the consequences, enforce the rule consistently. |
|
Misbehaves |
Losing your temper, insulting them, or making threats. |
Redirect their attention, offer alternative activities or set clear, boundaries. |
|
Acts out |
Ignoring their feelings, dismissing their concerns, or blaming them. |
Validate their feelings, offer support, and help them find healthy ways to express their emotions. |
|
Is upset or frustrated |
Dismissing their feelings, scolding them or expecting them to “just get over it.” |
Empathize with their feelings, offer comfort and help them find coping strategies. |
|
Is challenging or defiant |
Engaging in power struggles, using sarcasm, or resorting to punishment. |
Remain calm, set clear expectations and offer positive reinforcement for following rules. |
As noted previously, we found several excellent articles dealing with parents controlling their behavior but one that stood out and was very informative was from the Center for Effective Parenting titled Parent/Child Communication.
All parents who want to grow their parenting skills should take the time to review this article because it provides positive information for each of the following:
- Ways to communicate with your children.
- Communicating during conflict.
- How to avoid negative communication.
- Examples of negative communication parents should avoid.
- Communication Builders.
For instance, under the Communicating During Conflict section, parents are reminded to:
- Solve one problem at a time.
- Look for creative ways to solve problems.
- Be polite.
- Use “I” messages.
- Be willing to forgive.
And avoid:
- Nagging or lecturing
- Interrupting
- Criticizing or threats.
- Lying
- Dwelling on the past
We believe all parents need to take the time to know more about the impact of corporal punishment and the negative impact it has on children.
Like most parents, we did not know much about this topic. In fact, we were not aware of how much data was available until we read the following article. So, we grew our own parenting knowledge when we found and studied the information in this National Library of Medicine article titled- More Harm Than Good: A Summary of Scientific Research on the Intended and Unintended Effects of Corporal Punishment on Children.
We are assuming that almost all of the parents who are reading this do not use physical punishment consistently, but we think it is important for parents to be aware of and understand the effects of physical punishment. We will highlight the consistent findings from this article because they are important for all parents to study and to consider as they grow their parenting skills. If you are interested, please read the entire article here.
The first thing that we learned was that “the term corporal punishment signifies non-injurious, openhanded hitting with the intention of modifying child behavior. The terms corporal punishment and physical punishment are synonymous: “physical punishment” is more commonly used among parents in the United States; “corporal punishment” is commonly used internationally and is used in the United States by teachers, principals, and policymakers. Parents tend to use a number of euphemisms to refer to punishment that involves striking their child, including “spank,” “smack,” “slap,” “pop,” “beat,” “paddle,” “punch,” “whup” or “whip,” and “hit.”18 “Spanking” is the term used most commonly in the United States and typically refers to hitting a child on his or her buttocks with an open hand, although some parents may include hitting with objects in their definition of spanking.
The next thing we found was that trauma is a common psychological defense our mind uses to act out the hurt we’ve experienced at the hands of others by perpetrating it on other people later, even with those we love. This occurs when we haven’t become aware of our painful feelings or fully examined them.
Trauma experts explain why this happens. Children depend on the adults around them for survival. This dependency takes the form of attachment…
When children experience pain from the person who’s supposed to keep them safe, it’s one of the worst kinds of harm they can experience. Their nervous system, designed to keep them safe, begins to get sculpted around the constant threat, creating brain circuitries that are vigilant, reactive, and dysregulated. At the same time, their attachment system needs to keep them in the relationship, so it devises all kinds of excuses: “It’s not that bad;” “I deserved it;” “It made me a better person,” etc. In other words, children dissociate from their feelings of pain and fear.” ….
Hitting children, even for “discipline,” is a form of trauma. Some adults cling to the excuse that a single swat on the bottom, or one slap on the head, can’t be that bad, and is necessary to “teach them a lesson.”
“Is there any kind of hitting that works to change behavior?” Researcher Dr. Elizabeth Gershoff responded there’s no situation where physical punishment is useful or necessary, “It doesn’t teach children to behave well. It’s not effective for reducing aggression, or teaching self-control or prosocial behavior, or any of the things ‘parents hope to teach children. It’s not effective in either the short-or the long-term.”
”Physical punishment is one of the most intensely studied aspects of parenting. Hundreds of studies over five decades have concluded that it’s harmful to children in just about every measurable way. Children’s behavior, emotions, intellectual functioning, and physical health all suffer.”
In 2016 research, analyzing 75 studies involving 161,000 children, three important conclusions were drawn:
First, consistent with earlier research, the analysis found no evidence that physical punishment changed the original behavior.
Second, there were 13 significant harmful effects of the practice that all increased:
- Poorer moral reasoning & childhood aggression
- Increased antisocial behavior & externalizing behavior problems (disruptive or harmful behavior directed at other people or things).
- Internalizing behavior problems (symptoms of anxiety or depression) and child mental health problems
- Impaired parent-child relationship & impaired cognitive ability and impaired academic achievement
- Lower self-esteem and more likely to be a victim of physical abuse
- Antisocial behavior in adulthood and mental health problems in adulthood and alcohol or substance abuse problems in adulthood
Third, these outcomes were similar to the effects of childhood trauma. A landmark set of studies in the 1990s documented that exposure to certain kinds of childhood experiences—including physical and emotional abuse or neglect, sexual abuse, domestic violence, family mental illness, incarceration, and substance abuse—causes great harm lasting into adulthood. And the more adverse experiences a child has, the greater the impact. The effects include increased risk for serious physical diseases like cancer, diabetes, heart disease and COPD as well as early death, mental illness, suicidality, lower educational and professional attainment, and even reduced income. …
“Brain imaging studies also show a link between physical punishment and trauma. In a 2021 study, researchers showed 147 12-year-olds pictures of fearful and neutral faces while their brain activity was imaged in a functional MRI (fMRI) machine. Compared to children who were never physically punished, children who were physically punished had greater activity throughout the brain when viewing fearful faces. They also had more activity in regions of the brain related to threat appraisal, emotion regulation, and evaluating the mental state of others. Importantly, the pattern of their brain activity was the same as children who had been physically abused. When children have harmful interpersonal experiences, they become hypervigilant to the emotional expressions of others, because fearful or angry adult faces can be a cue that something bad is likely to follow. This study suggests that children who are physically punished are running the same brain circuitry as children who have been abused.
Research like this may help parents understand that when they’re hitting their children, they’re causing fundamental damage to the child’s brain—not because they’re hitting them in the head. They’re hitting them in other places on their body, and it’s causing a massive stress reaction every time. And it gets worse every time it happens. That stress ramps up and ramps up and causes physical and mental health problems.”
Key Points:
Make a plan to use improved behaviors in all of your anger interactions with your child in the next week. Self-awareness and continual improvement are the keys to better communication. Effective communication requires patience, understanding, and a willingness to work together. Keep practicing, celebrate successes, and focus on building a strong, connected relationship with your child.
If you want to learn more, google topics like these:
Videos: How parents can learn about controlling their anger when they are anger with their child’s behavior.
Articles: How parents can learn about controlling their anger when they are anger with their child’s behavior.
CLOSING COMMENTS: Here are the main documents that you might consider reading to add to what we have shared in this topic.
Managing Anger Ideas for parents– Raisingchildren.net.au – July 2022
Psychology Today: How to handle your anger at your Child Laura Markham- May 11, 2016
Center for Effective Parenting, Parent/Child Communication by Kristin Zolten & Nicholas Long, 2006
Why Parents Really Get Angry at Their Kids. Steven Stosny, Ph.D. in Psychology Today August 7, 2015.
Hitting Children Leads to Trauma, Not Better Behavior, by Diana Divecha, Ph.D, in DEVELOPMENTAL SCIENCE, February 10, 2022.