What helped you as a child to learn to manage your anger?
January 27, 2025 9:03 AM   Subscribe

My five year old daughter is easy going most of the time, but explodes in anger and frustration in certain situations. I am reading the parenting books and lurking on the parenting forums, but what I want to know is, if YOU were temperamentally disposed to anger as child, what helped you overcome it, or what help do you wish you had?

For context, fwiw, her anger is seen at home as well as in school, and these outbursts happen about once every week or two, usually when things don’t go the way she expects. Her household environment is relatively calm and we never show anger in front of her. She’s an only child for now. She is academically very bright but socially challenged in that she does have friends and isn’t particularly awkward, but social skills don’t come to her easily.
posted by redlines to Human Relations (14 answers total) 19 users marked this as a favorite
 


Is it a derail if I tell you what helped my kid? I wish we had stuck with it. I bought the audio book/CD Sitting Still Like a Frog: Mindfulness Exercises for Kids and my kiddo and I listened together. The exercises were just a few minutes at a time, but he was into it, and we would carve out a quiet spot in the house with a couple of pillows on the floor.

My kid told me the very next week that he started to get mad about something at school and remembered the exercises we had done.

I'm sure there are mindfulness apps aimed at kids that would work, but I would encourage you to do this with your kid. It's super healthy for all and models reflectiveness, thoughtfulness, and self-regulation.

Also, you said her home environment is calm and we never show anger. Do you all model how to talk about and express emotions? I suspect you mean you all don't have big blow ups at home, but not showing anger can also be avoidance and suppression, which can lead to those big outbursts. She needs language of emotions and to know how to name her feelings, including frustration, anger, sadness, etc.
posted by bluedaisy at 9:40 AM on January 27 [26 favorites]


Physical activity helped me and still helps me the most. Following HALT (Hungry, angry, lonely, tired.) For my kids a morning walk or morning shovelling/dance/family soccer game (5 minutes, not at whole game) would help all day long.

With my kids, we also have a "smell the flower, blow out the candle" approach (that's a deep breath - smell is inhale, blow out is that big exhable). If you're getting angry, do three candles and then a quick 3x3 (3 things you are seeing, 3 things you are feeling (sensations on your skin count as well as emotions), 3 things you are thinking.) Both of those require adult intervention as early in the cycle as possible, especially for a 5 year old, which is really still pretty young.

We also had a lot of little rules like you can be angry and yell "I'm angry" but you can't yell things like instructions (like "give me the candy!!") because that's yelling AT someone.

The help I wish I'd had would really have been not having so much to be angry about but I guess that's not helpful. But in my case, in elementary school I was a loner (in the 1970s sense) and being bullied. So I guess the big adult assignment is to wonder is she having these outbursts based on something around her.
posted by warriorqueen at 10:07 AM on January 27 [14 favorites]


Something I wish I had been taught when I was younger is what flooding anger feels like in the body: to recognize when it is coming on so that there's at least a chance to get out of the situation/keep my mouth shut/take fingers off keyboard/etc. It is a real and distinctive physical sensation. I can't recommend a specific book on this (figured it out the hard way, finally, well into adulthood), but to the extent any resource you're looking at covers this, it's a good idea.
posted by praemunire at 10:57 AM on January 27 [10 favorites]


My tantrums were very rare, but very awful - usually triggered by some frustration about my own limitations, and directed against inanimate objects; still pretty unpleasant to witness, and always very embarrassing to me. Something that helped me was hearing a story about how my grandfather also used to have a bit of temper when he was younger, but he decided he did not want to be that way and made a great effort to learn how to check himself and he succeeded. I knew my grandfather as a very calm, thoughtful, even-keeled person. (The temper returned when he got dementia in his last years, but that's not how I remember him). So I guess, the answer, as usual: provide good role models.
posted by sohalt at 11:39 AM on January 27 [3 favorites]


Paying for it for hours and hours afterwards by feeling sick and scared about the consequences. It's so easy for one little burst of rage to get you in trouble - the teacher who likes you sees you glaring and hears you raise your voice, and after that you are now a bad child, not one of their favourites. They are still your teacher for the rest of the school year.

Or you hurt someone's feelings and for days they avoid you. You hurts someone's feelings and for days, weeks afterwards they are hostile towards you.

It wasn't just seeing my own anger have lasting hurtful consequences, but seeing the same thing happen to other people.

The very worst was seeing people who turned their anger inward. To hear their self talk when it escaped from them, the vile things they said to themselves, and knowing that they lived with that amount of self loathing was so very, very painful.

I don't think anyone ever intentionally punished me for showing anger. They were just all so vulnerable, and so sensitive.

And then when I saw people who used anger to try to manipulate or control other people all I could feel was disgust and pity. It's very hard to walk backwards from that so that I respect them again. The idea that I might equally be inviting contempt - no.

But also, keep in mind the difference between anger, and an over-stimulation melt down. The difference is that anger is focused on someone else, not the situation. It's not the toxic anger when a child comes home and can't get a snow boot off, and ends up screaming and kicking it across the hall. It's anger when they turn on someone there and demand that they have to help take the boot off, or that it's the other person's fault that the boot got stuck.

If you kid is having over-simulation melt downs, the trick is for them to learn they are getting over stimulated and over loaded and heading for a melt down. I found that putting myself on time out worked well for that. The trick is for the kid to learn what they can control and to be given the tools to use the control they have to stave off the meltdown. I don't mean 'self control' as a type of tool, but things like taking a time out, or sitting still and closing their eyes, asking for help, changing their own plans, and techniques like that.
posted by Jane the Brown at 11:42 AM on January 27 [7 favorites]


I love Ross Greene's "The Explosive Child" and his collaborative problem-solving approach. I wish someone had known about that and used it with me as a child. I would get very angry because I had a rigid plan in my head of how things were SUPPOSED to happen and I couldn't handle it when real life diverged from the map I had in my head. I didn't know how to explain that at 4 years old, but that was 100% what was going on.

One thing I talk with my young clients about (I'm now a mental health therapist for children/teens) is Rock Brain vs Flex Brain. Rock Brain is great at facts, information, things that never ever change. Rock Brain is bad at feelings, games, new things, because Rock Brain can't move and change. Flex Brain (which I illustrate using putty or Play-Doh vs. a literal rock for Rock Brain) is great at feelings, games, changes, because Flex Brain can change and adapt. When a child is feeling angry because something turned out differently than planned, I emphasize using a coping skill and then using Flex Brain to say, "Hey, this is DIFFERENT! Is this good or bad? Do I like this? Do I not like this?" and allowing questions about how the change feels. I try to teach the child to lean into curiosity rather than anger.
posted by epj at 12:33 PM on January 27 [12 favorites]


I legit had to take anger management courses in 4th grade because I hit a boy with lunch box (old school metal) and the teachers recognized that I had let months and months of frustrations escalate to something major. I learned about breathing techniques and counting to 10 and removing yourself from a situation where you felt overwhelmed. This was the 80s so the techniques weren't great, but they did teach me that I'm the only person responsible for my anger, it took another few decades to realize that was the case for my other feelings as well.

Additionally, my dad who had a vicious temper but would go silent instead of yelling, told me something very important. He said that you can't take back the things you say or do when you are mad. He said that nobody knows what's in your heart or your head until you act on it. And once you do, that is all they will remember. Especially when it comes to the people you care about. He reminded me that the people we love, we know pretty well, and know how to hurt them. If you do that when you are mad, you'll do it when you're annoyed, then you'll do it when you're tired, then you'll just hurt them without thinking and that's a horrible way to live, just hurting people because you can't be bothered to control your rage. I have held that with me for decades and still to this day have a hard time accepting it when someone tries to use the "I was just mad" as excuse for saying hurtful things.

I also took away a very dangerous thing from all this and that is that good girls don't get mad. So I would be careful to frame things with your daughter to emphasize that being angry and mad are perfectly okay and she may have a very good reason for feeling that way but it's important to handle those feelings in a way that doesn't hurt her or anyone else. I'm 50 and just now getting more comfortable with my anger again. I can be mad and not hurt people or myself and it's not wrong to get mad. The world's a hard place and if you can't get mad from time to time, you'll go insane.
posted by teleri025 at 12:51 PM on January 27 [26 favorites]


I really hate to be that person, but what eventually helped me most was being diagnosed with and treated for ADHD. I did grow out of the explosive stage with age and some children's therapy but the underlying emotional dysregulation didn't get meaningfully better until much later with that diagnosis. I am not pushing for any specific diagnosis here but I do think getting trained professional help to talk to your child isn't a bad idea.
posted by ch1x0r at 1:41 PM on January 27 [5 favorites]


I had terrible tantrums for a long time.

I would recommend getting an assessment for ADHD and autism. Exploring some type of therapy (it can be music therapy or play based therapy) would probably be helpful.
posted by kinddieserzeit at 5:12 PM on January 27 [3 favorites]


I was a similar kid to your daughter it sounds like. Great most of the time but I would explode when overstimulated in the wrong ways.

Not what you asked for. But here’s my retrospective wishlist for my own childhood:

Have good role models for de-escalating big emotions.

Family to openly discuss and understand my brain is just wired this way and all there is to do is just work with it (not wish it away or label it bad)

Have a specific label / shorthand / routine for it at home. So it’s not constantly reinventing the wheel when it happens. A routine for “after care” so to speak

Hear directly from the important adults in my life a solutions oriented breakdown of how specifically things could go differently next time. Like really talk about it, in the weeds of the logistics, in a calm state. Maybe even have them demonstrate clearly what they do when they feel those big things.

Be in some sort of group with other kids who experience similar things in a non-judgy way.

Any other formalized, routine based occupational or speech therapy with a non-parent adult who can provide a lot of safe structure.

Note: As an adult, for various reasons it became crucial for me to get specific diagnoses (ADHD and autism) that have been immensely helpful to my “user manual” and explosion management. That said, I really can’t say whether those two alphabet soups would have actually helped me personally much as a kid really? In the absence of the list I made above, I’m not sure they would have done much good for me. It may have been helpful to my parents though. Regardless of diagnosis, I would start with the above as it can’t hurt either way.
posted by seemoorglass at 9:14 PM on January 27 [2 favorites]


I realised at 40+ that my anger is actually a load of other emotions I don't really know the words for, but I sure know the one for 'absolutely fuming'. Anger is really proactive, it feels like you're doing something about 'it'. I am beginning to realise, I think, that I probably didn't get validated or whatever in my sadness and my fear and my frustration and so forth, but people sure acknowledged that I was mad as hell about something. They acknowledged it in ways that were immensely damaging to me, and I learned to turn that anger inwards, but that is neither here nor there. ADHD+ fwiw and recognise myself in your kids description re school and friends.
posted by Iteki at 11:43 PM on January 27 [2 favorites]


I wasn’t an angry child (that wasn’t allowed) but what has been most helpful in adulthood has been stress balls/fidget toys. I’m serious. This gives me an in-the-moment outlet for frustrated/anxious feelings and helps me keep my composure and remain engaged in the situation.

Honestly I recommend a trip to Walmart, Five Below, or a toy store to pick out some stress balls. Needoh is a popular brand and makes a gum drop stress ball with a decent amount of resistance. The website Trainer’s Warehouse has a fantastic selection including a small gel ball (with glitter!) that fits in my pocket and would be the perfect size for 5 year old hands.
posted by ticketmaster10 at 7:16 AM on January 28 [1 favorite]


nthing the ADHD screener (the internal experience of your brain working against you when you just need to Do The Thing can be enraging at any age).

Also, while it may look like an "every two weeks over something small seemingly at ramdom", is it possible that it is instead/also the accumulation of a collection of smaller hurt feelings that she doesn't express at the time until they boil over? Building some skills in ways to let out frustration before it builds up to a tantrum might be helpful.

Disclaimer: IAmNotAParent.
posted by softlord at 4:14 PM on January 28 [1 favorite]


« Older Make it make sense   |   Meal delivery service in Oakland, CA Newer »

You are not logged in, either login or create an account to post comments