Martial Arts can help develop anger management skills that are extremely important to the happiness and success of children and teenagers.
Here are some ideas and a glimpse into how the process works. Hopefully, this information will help you whether you use a Martial Arts School or not to help with your child's anger management issues.
Helping Young Children Deal with Anger
Children's anger presents challenges to teachers committed to constructive, ethical, and effective child guidance. This Digest explores what we know about the components of children's anger, factors contributing to understanding and managing anger, and the ways teachers can guide children's expressions of anger.
Three Components of Anger
Anger is believed to have three components (Lewis & Michalson, 1983):
1. The Emotional State of Anger.
The first component is the emotion itself, defined as an affective or arousal state, or a feeling experienced when a goal is blocked or needs are frustrated. Fabes and Eisenberg (1992) describe several types of stress-producing anger provocations that young children face daily in classroom interactions:
* Conflict over possessions, which involves someone taking children's property or invading their space.
* Physical assault, which involves one child doing something to another child, such as pushing or hitting.
* Verbal conflict, for example, a tease or a taunt.
* Rejection, which involves a child being ignored or not allowed to play with peers.
* Issues of compliance, which often involve asking or insisting that children do something that they do not want to do-for instance, wash their hands.
2. Expression of Anger.
The second component of anger is its expression. Some children vent or express anger through facial expressions, crying, sulking, or talking, but do little to try to solve a problem or confront the provocateur. Others actively resist by physically or verbally defending their positions, self-esteem, or possessions in non aggressive ways. Still other children express anger with aggressive revenge by physically or verbally retaliating against the provocateur. Some children express dislike by telling the offender that he or she cannot play or is not liked. Other children express anger through avoidance or attempts to escape from or evade the provocateur. Yet other children use adult seeking, looking for comfort or solutions from a teacher, or telling the teacher about an incident.
Teachers can use child guidance strategies to help children express angry feelings in socially constructive ways. Children develop ideas about how to express emotions (Michalson & Lewis, 1985; Russel, 1989) primarily through social interaction in their families and later by watching television or movies, playing video games, and reading books (Honig & Wittmer, 1992). Some children have learned a negative, aggressive approach to expressing anger (Cummings, 1987; Hennessy et al., 1994) and, when confronted with everyday anger conflicts, resort to using aggression in the classroom (Huesmann, 1988). A major challenge for early childhood teachers is to encourage children to acknowledge angry feelings and to help them learn to express anger in positive and effective ways.
3. An Understanding of Anger.
The third component of the anger experience is understanding-interpreting and evaluating-the emotion. Because the ability to regulate the expression of anger is linked to an understanding of the emotion (Zeman & Shipman, 1996), and because children's ability to reflect on their anger is somewhat limited, children need guidance from teachers and parents in understanding and managing their feelings of anger.
Understanding and Managing Anger
The development of basic cognitive processes undergirds children's gradual development of the understanding of anger (Lewis & Saarni, 1985).
Memory.
Memory improves substantially during early childhood (Perlmutter, 1986), enabling young children to better remember aspects of anger-arousing interactions. Children who have developed unhelpful ideas of how to express anger (Miller & Sperry, 1987) may retrieve the early unhelpful strategy even after teachers help them gain a more helpful perspective. This finding implies that teachers may have to remind some children, sometimes more than once or twice, about the less aggressive ways of expressing anger.
Language.
Talking about emotions helps young children understand their feelings (Brown & Dunn, 1996). The understanding of emotion in preschool children is predicted by overall language ability (Denham, Zoller, & Couchoud, 1994). Teachers can expect individual differences in the ability to identify and label angry feelings because children's families model a variety of approaches in talking about emotions.
Self-Referential and Self-Regulatory Behaviors.
Self-referential behaviors include viewing the self as separate from others and as an active, independent, causal agent. Self-regulation refers to controlling impulses, tolerating frustration, and postponing immediate gratification. Initial self-regulation in young children provides a base for early childhood teachers who can develop strategies to nurture children's emerging ability to regulate the expression of anger.
Guiding Children's Expressions of Anger
Teachers can help children deal with anger by guiding their understanding and management of this emotion. The practices described here can help children understand and manage angry feelings in a direct and non aggressive way.
Create a Safe Emotional Climate.
A healthy early childhood setting permits children to acknowledge all feelings, pleasant and unpleasant, and does not shame anger. Healthy classroom systems have clear, firm, and flexible boundaries.
Model Responsible Anger Management.
Today’s lives are demanding and we tend to juggle with too many things at a time. Frustrations and anger arising out of failing expectations and tight schedules have become a daily affair these days. Anger management books are a great way to maintain your calm and check your behaviors before situations are blown out of proportion. Anger management books offer useful tips and techniques to channelize your anger constructively. To be aware of benefits of anger management, you must go through some good anger management books. Below are some of the ways in which controlling anger can be advantageous:
Our capability of making judgments gets impaired when we are angry. Anger management books help us to realize the situation and make sound reasoning. Since there is no point in losing temper, it is always better to channelize it constructively, so that you can take stock of a situation.
Misunderstandings and lack of proper communication are the main reasons for anger. Anger management books stresses on the need of bridging gaps between two individuals. This keep dialogues open and chances of misunderstandings reduce to a considerable extent. This also helps you to look for someone, with whom you can share your feelings and communicate your discomforts.
Anger management books train you in anger management that helps you to develop empathy for the other party. Chances of conflicts or disputes reduce this way. With an empathetic approach, you can consider others point of view. This helps you to calm yourself down and keep yourself in control.
Differences of opinion fuel up rage and anger. Anger management books offer you necessary tips to express yourself constructively, rather than aggressively. Differences of opinion are very common and you can avoid silly fights by understanding standpoints of others.
Those who have no control over their anger believe in staying away from their loved ones out of the fear of hurting them. Friends and family members, who are the closest, become victims of our irritations and rage. Anger management books will help you to retain close bindings with your near and dear ones. Controlling and channelizing anger will make you capable of leading a healthy and happy life.
Anger management books make you aware of possible symptoms that you need to manage anger.
Passive expressions like lack of passion and frustrating others around, giving them cold shoulders, responding with anger, overeating, or blatantly ignoring others are some symptoms.
Secretive behavior is another symptom that you need to manage anger. This kind of behavior is expressed through muttering under breath, silent treatment, avoiding eye contacts, making anonymous but hurtful complaints.
A person suffering from uncontrolled anger may exhibit destructive tendencies as well. Actions such as harming animals, people, destroying objects, or harming one’s own self are some of the behaviors found among such people.
If you manifest these kinds of symptoms, it is time for you to look for good anger management books and bring your life back on track.
