Anger Management For Children - Learn to Calm Down by Picking Your Battles

Some famous person once said "a man who defends everything, defends nothing." These are power words when you take a moment to think about their impact. Parents who are raising children today need to realize that fighting every battle that a child confronts them with is a losing battle that will only bring strife to the relationship. Arguing with your child every time they spill milk on the carpet, or yelling at them every time they pick up candy at the store will desensitize them to the yelling. They will start to think that yelling is how communication should be done. Your scrams will become, shall I say, normal. I think parents forget that children are immature. They will break rules, but this isn't a time that should be spent yelling about rules being broken. On contrary, it is a time when rules should be discussed openly. Children need to know that playing in the cat liter will make them sick, so be creative and color a sickly child in the hospital for digesting cat litter. Show a child what his actions could bring. The key here is to focus on the feelings that all humans feel. A child can recognize a drawing of a little girl with a stomach ache. A child will be less likely to run into the street if his parent shows him the pain associated with getting hit by a car. I recall seeing a show on TLC once. A group of unruly teens were taken to a local jail house to talk to inmates who explained the rules of begin in jail. The teens faces wee etched in shock, as hardened inmates told the horror stories of being robbed and beat. I remember one teen who literately cried about being locked in a cell with an inmate for 30 minutes while the inmate stirred at him in a not so friendly way. Out of the 10 teens that visited, only 2 ended up in jail themselves. 7 went to college, and 1 is working on his GED. To make a long story short, it was not the yelling from their parents that got the teens to respond. It was the realness of being in jail, they could smell the dried urine while they stood in a cold concrete cell stirring at men in orange jump suits. As you see, all the talking and screaming in the world will not get your child to budge. All it takes is plug into their emotions. Does this mean that parents should not ever raise their voice for something they disapprove of? Of course not, some battles are worth fighting, but those battles should be infrequently wagged. Every child is different, so there isn't a one size fits all solution for every child. Parents who are looking for ways to get their child to respond will have to think of different ways to push their child's buttons. If your child is not behaving, it is something flawed about your parenting acumen. How do you reverse negative habits. Easy, you replace those habits with a clear set of good habits. I take that back, it is easy on paper, but it is hard mentally. It will take a commitment to change. But change is possible if you have desire.