Tag Archive for: Aggressive Kids

7 Ways to Help an Angry Child

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It’s tough to know how to help an angry child. But some children—despite their small size—seem to have an endless supply of anger buried inside them.

They grow frustrated easily. They yell. They might even become aggressive. But, they usually blow up over seemingly minor events.

If you’re raising a child whose angry outbursts have become a problem, it’s important to teach him the skills he needs to deal with his feelings in a healthy way. Here are seven ways to help with anger:

1. Teach Your Child About Feelings

Kids are more likely to lash out when they don’t understand their feelings or they’re not able to verbalize them. A child who can’t say, “I’m mad,” may try to show you he’s angry by lashing out. Or a child who isn’t able to explain that he’s sad may misbehave to get your attention.

Help your child learn to identify and label feelings.

Begin teaching your child basic feeling words such as mad, sad, happy, and scared. Label your child’s feelings for him by saying, “It looks like you feel really angry right now.” Over time, he’ll learn to label his emotions himself.

As your child develops a better understanding of his emotions and how to describe them, teach him more sophisticated words such as frustrated, disappointed, worried, and lonely.

2. Create an Anger Thermometer

Anger thermometers are tools that help kids recognize the warning signs that their anger is rising. Draw a large thermometer on a piece of paper. Start at the bottom with a 0 and fill in the numbers up until 10, which should land at the top of the thermometer.

Explain that zero means “no anger at all.” A 5 means “a medium amount of anger,” and 10 means “the most anger ever.”

Talk about what happens to your child’s body at each number on the thermometer. Your child might say he’s smiling when he’s at a level 0 but has a mad face when he reaches level 5 and by the time his anger gets to a level 10, he may describe himself as an angry monster.

Talk about how his body feels when he grows angry. He might feel his face get hot when he’s a level two and he might make fists with his hands when he’s a level seven.

When kids learn to recognize their warning signs, it will help them understand the need to take a break, before their anger explodes at a level 10. Hang the anger thermometer in a prominent location and refer to it by asking, “What level is your anger today?”

3. Develop a Plan to Help Your Child Calm Down

Teach children what to do when they begin to feel angry. Rather than throw blocks when they’re frustrated or hit their sister when they’re annoyed, teach them healthier strategies that help with anger.

Encourage children to put themselves in a time-out when they’re upset. Show them that they don’t need to wait until they make a mistake to go to time-out.

Instead, they can go to their room for a few minutes to calm down when they begin to feel angry.

Encourage them to color, read a book, or engage in another calming activity until they’re calm enough to resume their activity.

You might even create a calm down kit. A kit could include your child’s favorite coloring books and some crayons, a fun book to read, stickers, a favorite toy, or lotion that smells good.

When they’re upset, you can say, “Go get your calm down kit,” and encourage them to take responsibility for calming themselves down.

4. Teach Specific Anger Management Techniques

One of the best ways to help an angry child is to teach specific anger management techniques. Taking deep breaths, for example, can calm your child’s mind and his body when he’s upset. Going for a quick walk, counting to 10, or repeating a helpful phrase might also help.

Teach a variety of other skills, such as impulse control skills and self-discipline. Angry kids need a fair amount of coaching to help them practice those skills when they’re upset.

5. Make Sure Angry Outbursts Aren’t Effective

Sometimes kids exhibit angry outbursts because it’s an effective way to get their needs met. If a child throws a temper tantrum and his parents give him a toy to keep him quiet, he’ll learn that temper tantrums are effective.

Don’t give in to your child to avoid a meltdown. Although that may be easier in the short-term, in the long run giving in will only make behavior problems and aggression worse.

6. Follow Through With Consequences When Necessary

Consistent discipline is necessary to help your child learn that aggression or disrespectful behavior isn’t acceptable. If your child breaks the rules, follow through with a consequence each time.

Time-out or taking away privileges can be effective discipline strategies. If your child breaks something when he’s angry, make him help repair it or make him do chores to help raise money for repairs. Don’t allow him to have his privileges back until he’s repaired the damage.

7. Avoid Violent Media

If your child struggles with aggressive behavior, exposing him to violent TV shows or video games isn’t going to be helpful. Prevent him from witnessing violence and instead, focus on exposing him to books, games, and shows that model healthy conflict resolution skills.

SOURCE

Do Violent Video Games Make Kids More Violent?

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from Psychology Today

If you know a tween, teenager or avid gamer, you have probably heard about the latest video game phenomenon: Fortnite. In the game’s Battle Royale mode, up to 100 players parachute into a small island, scavenge for armor and weapons, and then kill or hide from other players in an attempt to be the lone survivor. The game’s cartoonish violence and quirky features–including costumes and custom dance moves–have attracted more than 125 million players across all the globe since its release last September.

While not overly gory, the premise for Fortnite is inherently violent; the primary goal is to kill other players. The popularity of these types of games, and this one in particular, raises clear questions about the effects of violent gaming. Specifically, do violent video games lead to real-life violence?

The research on this question is mixed. For decades, researchers have conducted studies to find out whether violent video games lead to problems such as aggression, lack of empathy and poor performance in school. Many studies have found that people who play violent video games are more likely to engage in aggressive behavior. In fact, there was enough researchleading to this conclusion that the American Psychiatric Association (APA) published a policy statement in 2015 concluding that playing violent video games leads to more aggressive moods and behaviors and detracts from the players’ feeling of empathy and sensitivity to aggression.

But a large contingent of researchers focused on pediatric and adolescencehealth disagree. In fact, a group of 230 scholars from universities across the globe published an open letter in 2013 calling the APA’s stance of violent video games “misleading and alarmist.” And many of those same scholars spoke out after the 2015 policy statement.

Last summer, a division within the APA focused on the media published their own statement advising government officials and the news media to avoid attributing acts of violence to video games or other violent media. Here’s why:

  • Large analyses of violent crime and video violent game use find no evidence that increased sales of violent video games leads to a spike in violent crimes. Researchers make the case that if violent games directly led to violent behavior, the data would show increases in violent crime on a large-scale as more people played violent games. In fact, there is some evidence that as more youth play video games, rates of youth violence have decreased.
  • A recent analysis finds that research on video games is prone to false positives and false negatives, which leads to faulty conclusions.
  • Another review finds that much of the research on violence and video games is affected by publication bias; essentially, studies that concluded that video games lead to aggression and violence are more likely to be published than studies that find violent video games don’t have an effect on violence. As a result, large reviews of the data conclude violent video games lead to aggression without considering research to the contrary.
  • There is emerging research that finds no link between violent games and negative outcomes, such as reduced empathy, aggression and depression.

That’s a lot of conflicting perspectives, so what’s the take-home message here?  First, there is not solid, irrefutable evidence that violent video games lead to aggressive behavior. That does not mean that every game is for every child. Certainly, many violent video games are scary and inappropriate for some kids. Understanding each child’s needs and creating a plan that sets out rules for media use and monitors kids’ activities on screens is a sensible way to approach video games.

Please visit Cornell University’s Bronfenbrenner Center for Translational Research’s website for more information on our work solving human problems.

 

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/evidence-based-living/201807/do-violent-video-games-make-kids-more-violent