Teaching Emotional Control To Our Aggressive Children
For those parents who have multiple children, you know that each individual child is born with their own personality.
Not all children are the same.
Some children come out just ready to fight their way through life and conquer the world.
That is my daughter.
She has been a fighter from the get-go.
I knew this when she was barely one month old, and she was already holding her head up.
She rolled over early.
She crawled and moved early.
She has been quick to develop and is typically months ahead on most "milestones" than other children her age.
Though she be tiny (still rockin' that 1 percentile going on 2.5 years now!)
She be F-I-E-R-C-E!!!!
An aggressive personality comes with many positive and negative aspects.
One of the negative aspects of having an aggressive personality, is a raging temper...
Have you heard about beast?
I know that this is true for both children and adults alike....
My oldest sister likens it to Hades from the Disney film Hercules with flames that burst from one's head and body in an instant.
Can anyone relate? haha.
So. What to do about "beast"/the raging temper?
This is how I handle my daughter's temper tantrums:
1. Speak in a calm and quiet tone of voice.
2. I say her name, and I ask her to look at me.
3. I repeat her name and continue to ask her to look at me until we have eye contact.
(at this point she has likely already screamed or exhibited physical aggression)
4. Then I will say something like "Do you want to do your deep breathing with me, or do you want to go to time out first?"
(She will almost always agree to doing the deep breathing... in the event that she just will not focus, I will send her to time out until she is ready to do her deep breathing exercises with me.)
5. I then have her take 5 slow, deep breaths, and we count them together.
After she has completed her deep breathing exercises, she is 99% of the time calm and ready to talk.
So then we enter phase two:
1. I ask her what she is upset about.
At this point, she is calm enough to be able to tell me.
2. I express empathy and validate her feelings.
3. I ask her to hug me and say sorry for yelling or throwing or hitting.
Then we both move on.
That simple.
The hardest part is getting her to focus in her state of big emotions.
Those five deep breaths work like magic though!
I know that this is true for both children and adults alike....
My oldest sister likens it to Hades from the Disney film Hercules with flames that burst from one's head and body in an instant.
Can anyone relate? haha.
So. What to do about "beast"/the raging temper?
This is how I handle my daughter's temper tantrums:
1. Speak in a calm and quiet tone of voice.
2. I say her name, and I ask her to look at me.
3. I repeat her name and continue to ask her to look at me until we have eye contact.
(at this point she has likely already screamed or exhibited physical aggression)
4. Then I will say something like "Do you want to do your deep breathing with me, or do you want to go to time out first?"
(She will almost always agree to doing the deep breathing... in the event that she just will not focus, I will send her to time out until she is ready to do her deep breathing exercises with me.)
5. I then have her take 5 slow, deep breaths, and we count them together.
After she has completed her deep breathing exercises, she is 99% of the time calm and ready to talk.
So then we enter phase two:
1. I ask her what she is upset about.
At this point, she is calm enough to be able to tell me.
2. I express empathy and validate her feelings.
3. I ask her to hug me and say sorry for yelling or throwing or hitting.
Then we both move on.
That simple.
The hardest part is getting her to focus in her state of big emotions.
Those five deep breaths work like magic though!
I am perfectly fine and content with my daughter's aggressive nature.
In fact, I want her to foster that aggression in the best way possible.
Aggressive personalities are the one's that run our corporate businesses, lead our communities, and never settle for anything less than exactly what they want in life.
Aggression is a gift and it is a blessing.
Our job as parent's is not to strip our little one's of this gift, but to help them direct it appropriately.
I want my daughter to be successful.
I want her to know how to control her aggression, and not have her aggression control her.
Simple breathing exercises, if practiced daily, can help her learn better emotional control and decision making/logic.
What have you done that has helped you teach your children emotional control?
