Monday, January 11, 2010

anger

alright....talk to me Moms
I am working on family rules....family must dos
We have reached a point where I think this is necessary
Chloe is growing up fast and the attitude and the mouth are growing right along with her
What are some of your rules....the good ones...not do your chores....be kind...yea yea yea....I know all of that...what CREATIVE rules do you have ?
and ANGER
how do you urge your kids to handle Anger Chloe has started having ourbursts.....yelling...name-calling...saying things she shouldn't say
I don't want her to keep it in...but I want her to let it out correctly...if there is a correctly.
So especially tell me....how do you handle anger.
I know modeling has a lot to do with it....and Yep...Chloe has seen more than one outburst from me and the hubs...but that's water under the bridge.....what to do now?

alright.....ready ..... set....GO !!
Talk.

have a happy day
Pin It!

8 comments:

Heidi said...

I'm thinking you have just one kid right? I'm not sure what to do with one kid but I tell my boys that if they have time to fight then they have time to clean. You wouldn't believe how fast they stop fighting! This also worked well when a kid says "I'm bored". I remember my mother using this when I was young. It was her pet peeve to have a kid say this in her prescence. Good luck!

Unknown said...

We had this problem with our oldest right before the holidays.
First I had her sit with me and we made the rule sheet together and nothing pretty, this in itself seemed to bother her.

Second we made "The System" in which to hand out the time outs or getting something taken away. Currently our go to item is her DS game system.
If Megs screams out we discuss what is going on, just acknowledging that she is upset and why has been a big plus. If she can't let it go, all I say is "Warning", meaning you are about to go to time out. Then it’s her decision to continue and if she does she knows the consequences. If time out is given and it still is happening, then off to her room for half an hour. If the screaming continues during that half hour she loses a toy and has to go to bed after dinner, 7pm for us. They are usually tired by that time anyway from all the screaming.

So after dinner and getting ready for bed, we sit her down, make her go over the rule list and discuss which ones she broke. Best of luck with your Anger management! : )

Megan said...

Oh, man... we are in the same boat. I have no answers... we, too, are experimenting & reading lots (Strong Willed Child, Love & Logic).

I'm excited to see what others write.

Margaret said...

I hope you share the answers. Our oldest is 5, and he has started to have an attitude. I know a lot of the things he says are things he hears at school. He goes to a really small school, so he spends P.E. and recess with the older kids. We are working hard to teach him that he can't act like that.

One of the things we are doing for him is taking part of his allowance away when he talks back or has an attitude. I put popcycle sticks in a cup, and each one equals so much of his allowance. Then when Friday comes he gets his allowance and has to pay us back for any of the sticks he lost for the week. It seems to be helping some.

Jennifer said...

We went and spoke w/ a counselor for this exact thing, one thing she suggested was to give our son a place to release his anger. Now we have an "angry pillow" which is just a fleece pillow that we already had. Anyway, he can hit it, scream into it, squeeze it really hard, cry into it...whatever he wants. As long as he releases his anger appropriately, he will not get in trouble. This really hasn't worked that great, but he has gotten a kick out of us encouraging him to scream as loud as he can into the pillow or truly hit it as hard as he can, which usually gets him back into a better frame of mind and then we can at least talk.

The counselor did make a good point that we try to talk to our kids when they are all worked up, that is when we try to deal with them and work with them. But she said we need to first get them into a good frame of mind first. That even though it might feel so wrong to give your kid the biggest snuggle time ever when they've just been majorly awful (b/c it feels like you're rewarding them for that behavior), it's getting them to a point where you can then address the actual behavior.

Another thing that has worked lately is a cash incentive. :o) My 6 yr old gets $1/wk allowance but there is an additional nickel a day if he does all of his chores (bed making, practice piano, clothes away, etc). However one of the criteria is a good attitude. I allow him one warning, but that nickel might as well be made out of gold, it's been a good incentive to change his attitude.

If my son's anger is brought on by something he doesn't want to do, my acting very nonchalance about it, in a Love & Logic way works well. "You can join us for dinner when your laundry is put away." Just calm repetition. It works. Sometimes it takes forever, b/c he's stubborn like his mother, but if you stick to your guns (& I certainly don't reheat his dinner either! It was warm when I served it!), it works. Love & Logic has been magic for us. It hasn't worked as clean and pretty as the examples in the book, but it's been a huge help.

Hang in there! We're all just doing our best!

Raggedy Ann said...

I just wanted to pop in and say hi! I love your blog! C:

joyfullness said...

Hey, my favorite vintage-y gal...
Okay..i am No expert... but with kid management, i feel like i am in a better state of mind when i say calmly to my boys... "I Love You"..."
"Do we.....fill in the blank...??"
push..yell...put our feet on the table...etc... First off..."I LOVE YOU" gets their attention..and reminds them and me that MY ANGER is in check! Second, the question makes THEM think about it...and not just feel like i am screaming at them telling them all the things they CANNOT do... Being told you CANNOT always seems more intriguing and tempting..but being reminded that it is something that we don't do as a family (rules)..makes it less of a battle..and then suddenly, it starts to work.. hang in there girly!!
Get back in there!
Kill'er with kindness!
Joyfully!

BlackCatMima said...

Not a mom - - - can I still comment? :)

I taught preschool/preK for several years and dealt with dozens of angry children. Hey, it happens. They're human - they get mad sometimes.

I always allowed them to just BE mad, but with one big rule-

No hurting anyone or anything. No hitting, kicking or destroying stuff was ever allowed. And no bad or hurtful words - i.e. swearing or name-calling.

Using regular words was allowed, and we (I had an assistant and an aide on my team) would teach them to express their anger constructively -

"Hey, that made me mad, I had the toy first - please give it back!" when someone grabbed what they were playing with.

"Please stop pushing me, I don't like that!" if someone shoved them out of the way.

Etc.

Modeling this type of behavior was huge, and my team and I would even set up little scenarios to demonstrate for them - they LOVED that and we usually got many giggles when they recognized their own behavior in what we were doing!


Teaching for Head Start, I had several kids over the years from very dysfunctional homes, kids who had every right to be mad at the world. Kids who needed to get that built up anger OUT. (My special needs kids often needed this same sort of outlet.)

One of us would take the angry child into another empty classroom and let them be a little more physical. We had one of those inflatable punching bags they could bop around, we had bean bags they could throw, we had a small workbench where they could pound and hammer away.

This kind of crossed over into the realm of play therapy, which is what I did my undergrad practicum in. I'd also done a couple grad school semesters in an art therapy program, so sometimes I'd have the child draw a picture of their feelings. They could scribble away as hard as they wanted, they could rip and tear the paper, the point was to get the aggression out and it really helped them.

We would always talk about what they were mad about once they worked off some of the hostility, too.

At home, you could have your little girl punch her pillow and yell it out. Give her a ball to kick around the backyard. Let her jump on a trampoline and yell her head off.

Once she gets the pent up energy out, then sit down and talk about what made her mad and what can be done to help fix it. Brainstorm and work through it with her. It's normal to be mad, you just need to show her how to be mad in appropriate ways.

Hope that helps!