If a person can’t control his/her anger, then the anger controls him/her. Bear in mind that anger is difficult to master. So it’s never too early to teach your child to manage his/her anger. If a child easily gets irritated, he/she needs more practice than other children. Joshua D. Sparrow posted 5 strategies of managing anger over at lifestyle.msn that even a small child can follow and get significant results:

1. Stop. If your child is feeling out of control, she should be separated from the person she feels like hurting. She should leave the room. As often happens with children, Sophie and Henry needed a parent to get them to stop.

2. Calm down. Teach your child to use some calming strategies when she feels the physical symptoms of anger. She can try taking deep breaths, drinking a glass of water, distracting herself with a song or a story, or playing alone.

For the second one “calm down”, it is an important step. Without this step, anything else can’t be done. I always remind my students to count from 1 to 10 (at least) before saying or doing anything when they feel angry. It works for many of them.

Manage Anger [lifestyle.msn.com]

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 6th, 2006 at 12:12 am and is filed under 03-05 yrs: Preschooler, Behavior, How-to Tips. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.