 How can we help children to express their anger in a healthy way? That's what we're going to explore in this week's episode of Pookie Ponders. Let's dive straight. So first of all, we're going to just try and understand anger just a little bit before we dive into the healthy ways of managing it. So first off, anger is a perfectly normal and healthy emotion. We need to be a little bit careful when we're thinking about different feelings and different emotions, not to kind of label them as good and bad when we're working with our children and young people or indeed when we're thinking about our own thoughts and feelings. There aren't good and bad feelings, emotions, ways of being in our head. It's about kind of what we do with them that really matters. It's okay to have the difficult thoughts, difficult feelings, the sadness, the anger and so on. So we need to make sure that children understand anger is normal and it's healthy and it's okay. But it's what we do with it that kind of really matters and learning to manage it and stopping it from derailing us. We need to help our children to navigate their anger constructively, whilst helping them recognize that anger is a perfectly natural response to various different situations. We need to let our children know that expressing their anger is really important because when we bother it all up inside, then that's when things can begin to get tricky. Either it suddenly explodes when we least want it to, or we begin to turn more internally to managing that anger and that's when we sometimes see issues like self-harm or eating disorders or other things being expressed in a far less kind of healthy way. So in order to do that to express that anger, then our children need to be able to recognize those feelings, to be able to label them, name them, know that they're anger and then to find some suitable outlets. And we're going to be thinking about how to do those things, the naming, the recognizing and expressing anger for this episode today. So first of all, we're going to turn our attention to how do we enable children to recognize their anger? Now if you're somebody who's pretty in tune with your own thoughts and feelings, then this might seem like a bit of a strange question. Well, it's just that angry feeling, but it's not like that for everyone. Until we've been taught to recognize anger, until we've been taught that it's okay and not to repress it, but to explore it and be curious about it, until we've been taught what that looks like and feels like in our own bodies, we don't know it's anger. Until we're taught a name for it, we can't name our anger and we must be able to name it if we're going to be able to tame it. So we need to help our children to build that emotional literacy so that when they feel anger, when they experience anger, they're able to recognize it because that is the first step in being able to constructively manage it. So there are quite a few different ways that we can do this. We can do things like using an anger journal, which might be a traditional written journal. It could be done as more of like a vlog or through pictures or even through play, but we can do with children and young people to recognize and begin to explore the things that make them feel angry, giving them the freedom to write, draw or play about those things will help them begin to explore and connect with that feeling and recognize it again in the future. We can use emotion cards or emojis to show and recognize when we're experiencing that anger or when we're reflecting perhaps on what happened yesterday or what happened last week to show and express the moments that made us angry then rather than always in the right now. We can encourage open conversations about emotions and we can use our emotion coaching type practice here by having open conversations about our own emotions, feelings and thoughts as well. We might say to a child, it made me feel angry when or I feel angry if or when I feel angry, my body feels like or I'm a little bit angry right now. Actually naming those emotions, naming those feelings, letting children see us role model, the recognition and the talking openly about a whole range of different feelings is really fantastic practice and will really help to develop that emotional literacy in our little ones. Where we're trying to get towards is the situation where our children feel comfortable kind of owning, recognizing and actually ultimately sharing the different things that they're feeling. In order to be able to do this and to do it well, we're going to need to explore this at times of calm. So it's important to remember this and I feel like a broken record on the times of calm, times of calm. But when we're thinking about any kind of big or difficult or overwhelming type situations, our brains aren't in their best place. They're working really hard to keep us safe. But that often means that all our thinking problem solving skills have gone offline because our very much more prehistoric kind of brain has come into play trying to make us run, trying to make us fight, trying to keep us safe. It's not too worried about our deep thinking, our communication skills right now. It just wants us to run away or hit the thing. And so these are not good times when we're angry or feeling other big things or otherwise overwhelmed. These are not good things to get explorative and curious. We want to get curious, but we need to do it at a time of calm. At times of relative calm, thinking speaking brain comes back online, and we're able to really begin to pick things apart, wonder about them, communicate about them, and then get curious as to how we might solve this problem or do things differently or what could we try next time. It's also absolutely vital that all of these conversations and interactions happen without blame or shame or judgment. A child will sometimes feel quite ashamed or angry with themselves or distressed in some way about anger that they might have felt or expressed. And sometimes, especially when we're in the early days of managing our anger, it might not have been expressed in the most constructive way. However, when we start kind of using blame, shame, punishment, judgment for those types of behavior, we make it very difficult for a child to express and explore that anger in the future. Sure, we're trying to work towards a situation where they don't tear up their exercise book next time or they don't tell us to do interesting things with colorful language. However, what we need to be able to do at those times of calm is to forgive and get curious. And then we can begin to wonder about next time. So no blame, no shame, no judgment. We don't want a child to harbour shame about these things that they're feeling. It's okay for them to feel these things. What we're going to work with them on is then how they act in response to those feelings. What we do not want to encourage is the repression of those feelings because they feel ashamed, judged, embarrassed about those feelings that they've had in the past. They want open conversations without fear of shame, blame or judgment. Next, we think about our kind of healthy outlets for our anger. So we've begun to recognize anger, we can name it a little bit. Now it's time to think about how do we go about taming it? What are healthy ways to express our anger? So in order for children to be able to express their anger in a healthy, more constructive way than you might have seen in the past, it's really important that we support by providing safe spaces and activities that they can engage with in order to express that anger in a way that is socially acceptable, safe for them, safe for us and constructive in helping them to work through their anger. Anger needs to be heard and felt it's there for a reason. So some great activities to think about would be anything physical or tactile activities like drawing, sport or even things like deep breathing exercises can really help. Things that we feel and do can really help to work through this maelstrom of emotions that might be going on in our head at the times when we've got big anger to deal with. So these kind of safe, tactile physical activities are going to allow our children to release their energy, but also to begin to process their emotions. That's why things like sport can be so great. You might have found this for yourself. If I'm feeling really angry about something, I'm going to go to the climbing wall and I'm going to go climb the hardest thing I can. And with every move that I make on the wall, I'm working through that anger, the physicality of that anger that's holding my body begins to unwind itself. And as I work through that stress and anxiety that I'm holding so tensely in my body, I get to the point where actually my brain begins to be able to start to process, get curious. What's actually going on here, Pugie? Let's have a think about this. What could we do differently? What's the crux of this issue? At other times or for other children, it might be that rather they're going big and physical with it, we actually need to find that space of calm. So we can bring that thinking speaking brain back on board before we begin to really process and deal with the anger underlying. So this might mean having a calm down corner or a little nook where a child can go to you can do this at home or at school. And you might have some sort of sensory tools and calming activities that the child might engage with. If you've ever created a self-soothe box, which is a box full of things which are kind of stimulating of our senses usually and help to calm us down, then this can be a great place and time to use that. And we can also help with calming down by using techniques like simple as counting to 10, using our deep breathing exercises or doing things like squeezing a stress ball. You'll have lots of ideas to add to this and it can be really, really helpful to actually work with a child to think about what are some ways that I can work through this angry feeling when it's overtaking my body and my brain. I want to get it out. What does that look like? At times of calm, brainstorm this with the child. And then at times of anger and distress, remind them what we thought would work. Oh, you said that you'd find it really helpful to punch a punch bag, to hit the ball with the round as about to run around the field to draw on this piece of paper with massive markers to tear up this piece of paper to smash the play dough. Whatever it might be, think with the child, explore, get creative. And then at times of anger, allow them to access those activities in a safe space and with safe people surrounding them. Next, as we think a little bit more deeply about the wider thing around helping children to express their anger more healthily, we come to the role of the adults and our adults in terms of modelling and communication. So adults need to think about how they can model healthy anger expression and communicate its importance to the children in their care. So just take a moment to reflect for yourself here. How do you model healthy anger expression to the children in your care? And how do you communicate the importance of that? How do you do it? How do you deal with anger? What do your children see when you're angry? Have you communicated how you do that? Do they know? Are you a role model to them? Or is your anger something that you keep hidden away and don't ever show to the children in your care? A, if you manage to do that, well done because it's remarkably hard to keep it cool all the time. But we need to think about how can we then perhaps communicate and talk about those angry times even if our children don't see them. One of the things we would love to be able to role model to our children and this one's not always easy but it's how to express frustration verbally without resorting to shouting. Now if you've got suggestions on how to make this work please do share them because this is one I do struggle with myself a little bit and I think probably most adults are the same. I find this much harder when with my own children and particularly if I'm struggling a little bit with my own kind of well-being and regulation it's easier to get to that point of irritation and anger bubbling over into shouting. Somehow a little easier when working with other people's children I find although there are limits. But how can we do that? How can we show our frustration using our words or in other ways without resorting to shouting? If we can role model that to our children then at least they have a good example to follow and of course this is a discussion we can have with our children at times of calm. How can we express our anger without resorting to shouting? My number one these days to try and avoid shouting personally and this is as an autistic parent of autistic children in a very busy and somewhat overwhelming household at times I actually tend to when I feel that anger rising and I think I'm going to say or do something that I'm not going to be proud of if I stay here I will say I need to leave right now and feeling angry and I will actually just exit from the situation and then explore it a little bit later on that's something I'm working quite hard on at the moment. Things we can do to help with expressing that anger if we're not at the point yet where we're about to blow our top but we can feel that anger that frustration beginning to rise is to do things that use I statements to explore our feelings and we can role model this for our children so that in turn they would learn to do it as well which actually helps everybody good communication is key to harmonious living in families in classrooms so there are studies that show that I statements tend to reduce hostility and defensiveness and that you statements tend to provoke anger so if we can turn it into I rather than you then that makes a big difference so what am I talking about here so for example instead of you never clean up after yourself sound familiar then instead you I might say I feel really stressed when the house is so untidy so instead of it being about the child you you did this wrong you did this thing you you you we turn it into I I feel such and such so rather than you did I feel so it's going to reduce that hostility and defensiveness and make it less likely that you're going to bounce off anger with anger between the two parties involved here the next thing that we can be thinking about teaching and role-modelling are problem-solving skills for our children young people so they need problem-solving skills in order to be able to manage their anger because anger has a source anger is something that is needing to be heard and dealt with there's a reason for anger we don't just feel it for absolutely no reason at all and so what we need to be able to do is to employ our best problem-solving skills in order to be able to work out well why am I angry and what can I do about it so we need to help our children think about how to approach challenges in a constructive way how can they have a I can attitude when it comes to solving problems big and small we can do this by enabling by showing by letting them succeed in this by encouraging them to think through solutions so here as the supporting adult it's really important that we don't just do it all for the child so for example when we're thinking about these ways to work through frustration and the things that might make us feel better and be a healthy outlet for that anger we could give a kid a list of things that they could try or we can brainstorm it alongside them and sure we might contribute to that conversation but let's let them lead it let's let them come up with some ideas let's let them have and own those ideas even if they were your idea first let the child own it let it be theirs let this be a problem that they have solved with your support you can guide children to ask problem solving style questions like what could happen differently next time get curious that's a big part of problem solving and it also shifts the focus from kind of blame and shame and all that negative destructive type stuff to problem solving and proactive and positivity about next time being a little bit different perhaps in how it feels and maybe in how we act as well and I think we can do is to actually role play scenarios where anger arises and then brainstorm different ways to handle them so we can do that like as a role play between people and literally act out or you can role play with puppets or toys or lumps of play dough or whatever you like you can also do it through stories so if you notice a character in a story experiencing anger then we can discuss what might that character do next how could that situation have been resolved differently what could have gone wrong if what would help it to be better and so on and so forth so problems of using stories as well as role play and indeed play and then finally this is a big one and we could do a whole podcast episode on this or 10 if you wanted to is actually if we can teach assertiveness skills that can help our children to express their needs without resorting to aggression so if we can take that aggression that we're sometimes seeing that might be really challenging and not very socially acceptable not very nice for the child either for what it's worth and we're able instead to teach the child the skills that they need to actually express themselves assertively to be able to ask for what they need and to advocate for themselves then things often can turn out a little bit differently that's big that's not something we have time for in today's episode but if you would like a whole episode on teaching assertiveness skills then I'm super happy to go there just let me know on the socials or in a comment on Patreon if you're one of my patrons and I'm happy to record an episode on that but assertiveness skills really really great in terms of managing anger in a more constructive way and preventing it getting to the point of overspill okay so as we come to the end of today's episode we just need to remember and bear in mind that helping our children to express their anger in a healthy way is a skill that's going to serve them throughout their lives anger is a normal and healthy thing to feel so our children need to understand what the triggers are they need to explore different outlets they need to see constructive behavior modeled by us and they need to learn problem solving skills and perhaps some assertiveness skills too and this is going to really guide them towards that more emotional resilience this is not about not feeling anger this is about recognizing anger and doing something healthy and constructive with it I really hope that there have been some helpful ideas in here for you if you did like what you heard today then please do subscribe and like and share my work you can if you wish to support my work further by joining me over on Patreon for a pound a month where you get early access to all my resources and the chance to shape and influence what I'm going to create next or if you want to support me even more and have a little bit pooky time face to face then you could invite me to speak at your next event or in your setting or indeed invite me along for a webinar thank you so much for listening and for everything that you are all doing for the children and young people in your care every day it really really matters this has been pooky bonders with me pooky night smith until next time stay curious stay compassionate and keep pondering over