Modern Parents, Vintage Values, Revised and Updated by Sissy Goff & Melissa Trevathan

Author:Sissy Goff & Melissa Trevathan
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Religion/Christian Living/Family & Relationships
Publisher: B&H Publishing Group
Published: 2020-06-09T00:00:00+00:00

Uncontrollable Anger

Anger Defined

Anger is the emotion we’d rather not talk about. It’s much harder to feel compassion for an angry child. We get angry back. We take it personally and get hurt. We come up against it too much and get overwhelmed. Or all of the above. I (Melissa) recently spoke with a young mom with an angry son. He acts out constantly. He yells, throws things, and generally makes their home life pretty miserable. When she came to my office, she was just about at the end of her rope. “Some days when he goes to school, I literally think, I’d be fine if he never came back. My life would be easier if he was killed in a car accident and went home to be with the Lord. I hate myself for thinking that. I feel like a failure as a mom and as a Christian. I just have no idea what to do, and I’m so tired.”

If you have a child who battles with anger, or more likely, battles with you because he’s angry, you know some semblance of how she feels. You are exhausted. You’re exhausted from her anger and exhausted with yourself for the way you feel in response.

Define anger? Not sure we need to. You know what it looks like. It looks like a six-year-old boy who kicks and throws punches every time he hears the word no. It looks like a ten-year-old girl teachers describe as a “delight” but who rages at you every night at bedtime. It looks like a fourteen-year-old girl who stomps rather than walks, screams, and slams her door with every opportunity. It looks like a seventeen-year-old boy who thinks everyone and everything is “stupid” and lives life in a constant state of disdain. Anger can be subtle or explosive. It can emerge in calculated cruelty or exaggerated outbursts.

A Potential Problem

The problem with anger does not lie so much in the feeling as it does the expression of that feeling. One of the most important things we can do for any child, not just an angry one, is to teach him healthy, appropriate ways to handle anger. He will feel anger. She will feel angry as part of those oceans of emotions. But the problem comes in what she does with it. We’ll come back to that idea a little later.

The problem with anger is that it is not an isolated emotion. In fact, anger feeds off the emotions of others. When your child is angry, he wants to express it. He wants an emotional if not physical release from the tension that anger creates. But that release often comes at the expense of others. It may be you or her siblings. It may be his teacher or best friend. But often with kids, because they have not yet learned how to express their anger constructively, it becomes destructive.

If you suspect that your child may be struggling with anger, watch for the following:

Isolation from other kids at school.

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