Making Sense of Your Child’s Anger Issues

Not every kid has an easy-going, go-with-the-flow personality. In fact, some kids have a short fuse and sometimes even lash out toward friends and family.

If your child is struggling with anger, you might be thinking:

“My kid has big-time anger issues.”
“My child is hitting and yelling, biting family members and classmates and I don’t understand it.”
“I’m worried my child is going to get kicked out of school.”

This is big, hard stuff to figure out as a parent.

To get started, anger is a human emotion that all people feel. Anger is experienced as an unpleasant feeling when we feel opposed, mistreated, or face an obstacle around something important.

Here is an important piece of information to keep in mind as a parent: Some people feel anger more quickly, intensely, or frequently. And, it’s not uncommon for kids and adults with ADHD, Autism, or sensory processing disorder to also struggle with anger and physical behaviors. (We’ll cover how safety and unmet needs contribute to this later in this blog.)

We are firm believers that anger itself isn’t “bad” and/but left unchecked, it can lead to health challenges, strained relationships, and can escalate to negative physical behaviors like hitting or biting.

If you’re a parent who is looking for more tools to parent your short-fuse child, keep reading. We’re going to explore anger and aggression in kids and what you can do to provide support as a parent.

It’s Not The Goal to Eliminate Anger

Here’s our philosophy after working with many, many kids and 🤓 nerding out on the most current research in the field. As a normal human emotion, your child’s anger isn’t something to make disappear. Instead, your goal is to help your child learn how to process big emotions like anger in a healthy way.

Bummer right? Most parents don’t like that answer.

Difficult emotions like anger can make us adults — uncomfortable. Like REALLY uncomfortable. It is easier to be around warm, fun, fuzzy kids with feel-good emotions like joy, creativity, and patience. And we’re with you — if we had a magic solution to extinguish all angry outbursts in our kids, we would be tempted to use it every single time.

In contrast, it’s hard to sit with your child when they are upset and angry. It’s hard to see them unhappy. Not to mention, when your kid is acting out in anger, you’re likely to feel tough emotions like anger, exasperation, or embarrassment yourself.

And obviously, you don’t want your child to act out with physical aggression like hitting, biting, or pushing.

However, as hard or counter-intuitive as it may seem, facing difficult emotions (instead of squashing them or pretending they don’t exist) is how you teach your child to cope with big emotions.

Childhood Anger Comes From a Place of Fear or Discomfort

At Bearfoot, we think about anger differently. And we invite you to join us in this new understanding.

We believe kids often express anger and physicality as a way to communicate their feelings or discomfort or unmet needs.

As Centervention teaches in their iceberg analogy, anger is the tip of the iceberg with deeper causes below the surface.

When kids feel unsafe or unheard, they tend to try to protect themselves or work harder to draw attention to their needs. This is when you’ll see them use physical behaviors as a way to gain control and get back to feeling safe again.

These could be related to:

Sensory overload
Unmet sensory need for more or less physical movement
Limited understanding of someone or something
Low frustration tolerance
Feeling tired or hungry

At Bearfoot, we’re careful about the words we choose. We intentionally use words like “physical behavior” instead of labeling a child as “aggressive.”

When the word “aggressive” gets thrown around about a kid it represents them in a negative light, paints the wrong picture and it can STICK and lead to a child being mislabeled and judged by adults and peers for a really long time.

It’s not that kids are choosing to be “bad.” Rather, they are kids who need to learn some new skills or have their needs met.

Ultimately, kids do better when they can!

This doesn’t make hitting, biting, or yelling “ok,” but it does help to understand the root cause.

When you understand anger as a cry for help or a manifestation of a freaked-out nervous system, it helps you bring more empathy to the situation. This puts you in a place to start problem-solving around steps to address what’s happening in those angry moments or physical outbursts.

This could be:

Teaching problem-solving and conflict resolution
Learning to express hard emotions
Find better physical outlets
Use strategies like nature walks when feeling angry
Taking steps to remove self from triggering situations
Helping co-regulate your kiddo during tough times

Kids Don’t “Decide” to be Angry.

Anger is a feeling, it’s not a choice. Many adults parent from the idea that anger is a decision and kids can decide to “snap out of it” or “make a different choice.”

For instance, if your kid is hitting you might think they should just be able to snap out of it and you’d likely communicate that by telling them, “Stop hitting right now!” Inherently, this type of wording suggests that the anger and hitting are under their control, right?

But what if you look at it from the viewpoint that your kid is hitting because they're freaked out, scared, or have a need?

With this new empathy, you might say something like, “You are really scared right now.”

Or, “I can see that you are really, really angry. And that's okay.”

At this point, you might be thinking — “HOLD UP! You’re asking me to just let my kid hit me?!”

The answer is “no” — you’re not going to let your child hurt you or others. So let’s talk about some ideas about what to do when your child gets angry and how to keep everyone safe.

Keeping People Safe During Your Child’s Angry Moments

In instances where anger is turning into physical behaviors, you’re going to have to balance the freedom to feel big emotions with the need to keep everyone safe. There may be times where you need to firmly hold your child or move them somewhere safe but this should be a last resort.

You might even say in a calm voice, “It’s ok to be angry but I can’t let you hurt me. And I can’t let you hurt yourself.”

Here are some tips for when your child is angry:

Keep yourself safe: If you feel yourself getting angry or in danger of being injured, consider removing yourself from the proximity of getting injured until you and your child calm down.

Keep your child safe: If possible, give your child a place that’s safe to physically let out their anger. Maybe that’s a mattress, a pile of pillows, or a room where no injuries will happen.

Minimize talking: When your child is angry, they aren’t rational or logical or available for discussion. Offer simple words of encouragement/empathy and even a calm, silent presence.

Be present: Keeping a child safe is different than putting them in time out alone. To move through anger, a child needs to feel safe and loved. Your presence helps with this.

As we said at the beginning, helping your child through anger is a tough job. That’s why parents seek support and tools to parent a child with difficult emotions like anger and physical behavior towards self or others.

How Kids with Anger Issues Benefit from Occupational Therapy with Bearfoot OT

First off, we’re not the same thing as a parent coach. And we’re not psychiatrists or counselors.

If you think those services will help you or your child, certainly check out all your options to find out the combination of services to best meet your child’s needs.

Yet, there are many benefits of the Bearfoot OT program for kids who have big emotions — including anger.

One main benefit is how we’re able to help you — the parent! That’s because our program provides support between sessions. This looks like educational resources, answering questions throughout the week, and providing tools to empower you as a parent. You are not just left to figure it out alone. In addition, your child will benefit from OT sessions that include:

Physical activity — Getting the body moving to meet those underlying physical and sensory needs to reduce anger and physical behaviors.

Sessions in nature — Activities in nature are related to decreased anger and physical behaviors in kids.

Supported practice — Hone your child’s skills around emotional regulation, frustration tolerance, and problem-solving

Bearfoot OT supports Bay Area kids with outdoor sessions and parent support. If you have a child who struggles with big emotions like anger — set up a free call to learn more about our program.

Check out the research that helps inform our work!

References

Concepts from this blog were learned from professional education and resources from Powerfully You.

J. Thompson Coon, K. Boddy, K. Stein, R. Whear, J. Barton, and M. H. Depledge (2011). Does Participating in Physical Activity in Outdoor Natural Environments Have a Greater Effect on Physical and Mental Wellbeing than Physical Activity Indoors? A Systematic Review. Environmental Science & Technology. 45 (5), 1761-1772

Susan M. Cahill, Brad E. Egan, Joanna Seber; Activity- and Occupation-Based Interventions to Support Mental Health, Positive Behavior, and Social Participation for Children and Youth: A Systematic Review. Am J Occup Ther March/April 2020, Vol. 74(2), 7402180020p1–7402180020p28. doi: https://doi.org/10.5014/ajot.2020.038687

How to Raise Kids Who Are Good at Getting Angry: New York Times

Hodgetts, S., Nicholas, D., & Zwaigenbaum, L. (2013). Home Sweet Home? Families’ Experiences With Aggression in Children With Autism Spectrum Disorders. Focus on Autism and Other Developmental Disabilities, 28(3), 166–174. https://doi.org/10.1177/1088357612472932