Parenting in the Digital Age

Anger is a perfectly normal emotion, and learning to manage it appropriately is one key to emotional health and well-being. If your child is having frequent angry outbursts, it’s important to get to the root of the issue and teach them calming strategies that work. Before we get into those calming strategies, let’s look beneath the yelling, hitting, and aggressive behavior and into the emotional world of a child.



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The emotional life of toddlers and preschoolers is much more complex, the paper says. Notably, the authors say, “The emotional health of young children is closely tied to the emotional and social characteristics of the environments in which they live.” While differences in temperament are part of their biological makeup, their experiences are coded in their brain circuitry, and what we both model and teach regarding emotions affects how their brain circuits get “wired.” The early childhood years are critical for learning positive ways to deal with one’s emotional world as the emotional center of the brain and the prefrontal cortex (where empathy, reasoning, and self-control lie) are rapidly developing.

This brings us to our main point: How do we help an angry child calm down?

1. Help your child name the emotion.

2. Meet anger with empathy.

3. Try time-in instead of time-out.

4. Teach your child breathing techniques.

5. Teach mindfulness.

6. Give him play dough. For many kids, tactile sensory activities can be soothing.

7. Allow enough time for kids to de-stress through free and creative play.

8. Put her in the bath.

9. If your child needs space to calm down, that’s fine.

10. Teach them how to do a body scan.



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Source: creativechild.com