How Parental Anger Effects our Children and How to Cope.
By Whitney Chmiela

Parenting is the hardest job in the world, with long unpaid hours of noisy, messy, repetitive, exhausting, frustrating work. It is no wonder and justifiable feelings of anger sometimes. It is far too often that parents teeter the line between anger and abuse. Parents are concerned about how frequently they get angry and how they react, and with good reason. Parents are particularly concerned with corporal punishment (physical punishment). Corporal punishment is a small step from excessive anger which can ultimately lead to abuse. There is a growing epidemic of child abuse in North America. Non abusive anger is just as destructive for a child’s spirit and psyche. Children with angry parents will start believing that they are bad people and that they deserve the treatment they are receiving. As well, children will learn negative ways of dealing with their own anger.

Let’s start by defining what defines anger. Anger serves a purpose by either discharging or blocking awareness of other painful feelings (emotional or physical) or unmet needs or desires. It also relieves tension. When you are angry you feel powerful. Whereas when you are anxious, you have feelings of vulnerability and helplessness.

To become angry two requirements are needed stress and trigger thoughts. Stress is an everyday norm between working long hours, taking care of children and a house and trying to find you “you” time, couple time, and one-on-one time with your children. Trigger thoughts are a particular issue that drives you crazy such as, someone who constantly popping gum or always leaving their dirty laundry around the house. The trigger thoughts ignite the stressful feelings into anger. Trigger thoughts can fall into the following forms: * They ascribe negative traits to the misbehaving person. “You’re so lazy/stubborn/selfish/cruel.” * They assume a negative intent behind his or her behaviour. “You’re doing this on purpose to hurt me.” * Magnify the behaviour to intolerable proportions. “I can’t stand this, this is unbearable.”

Without these trigger thoughts you cannot have anger. As well you cannot have anger without stress. Trigger thoughts allow you to avoid responsibility for your own emotions and justify your anger towards someone else.

The key in coping with your anger is identifying your trigger thoughts and changing them. Here are 9 ways to cope with your anger. The first 4 deal with changing your trigger thoughts. The rest have to do with changing the way you act and react.

1. Develop coping statements: create and memorize some messages/matrass that can help you keep your cool in stressful situations. Examples: “relax, stay calm”, “I’m staying calm. I don’t have to be angry to cope with this.” 2. Assess the real cause: parents assume their children are behaving badly on purpose to provoke them-to punish them, to test them, to drive them crazy, to “get at” them. Researchers and child developmental experts have suggested that most of the time this is not the case. It’s important for parents to understand that there are other factors in your child’s behaviour.

Factor #1: A child’s temperament. The built in wiring that each child is issued at or before birth. The way he or she tends to respond to life experiences. Characteristics that help determine temperament are general activity level, basic deposition, and ability to adapt to change, distractibility, and persistence. It’s pointless to be angry at a child whose shyness, high activity level, or difficulty with change that is their temperament.

Factor#2: The main task of childhood is to gain independence and autonomy. To achieve this goal your child has to learn to make decisions and choices, experiences the consequences of those decisions and choices, and develop a sense of separateness from his or her parents. This means most of a child’s behaviour is aimed at demonstrating their independence, testing their limits, disobeying parental rules, and trying to control the outcome of difficult situations.

Factor #3: children’s behaviour is aimed at getting their own needs met. Needs can range from the more fundamental (to achieve significance, to feet autonomous, to belong) to more everyday tasks (to get praise, attention, physical nurturing). Trying to meet your child’s needs may change their behaviour.

3. Replace negative labels: To help reduce your anger you must avoid those proactive terms that make you see red such as “lazy”, “spoiled”, and “thoughtless. “Replacing these negative thoughts with more positive neutral labels will help you. You need to stick to the facts like an investigator on a case looking for clues. Without labels your anger will be far easier to control.

4. Assess the magnitude of the problem: How truly serious is the problem? Replace provocative exaggerations with accurate, behavioral descriptions of exactly what’s happening. Examples “it’s outrageous.” “completely intolerable.” The absence of trigger thoughts prevents you from escalating to anger.

5. Use a time-out: to prevent the situation from escalating and to think about appropriate response, take a break. Think about choices and consequences so that you can be clear about what you want from your child and about the consequences of his or her noncompliance. Get yourself a tall glass water drink it all, count to fifty very slow, or have a cup of tea.

6. Practice relaxation: the more stress in your life in general, the easier it is to be provoked into anger. The early signs of anger include increased muscle tension (clenched jaw or fists, a constricted feeling in chest), and a shift in breathing pattern (heavy or rapid breathing, feeling short of breath). Breathing deeply requires that your chest and belly expand, and enables the slow, full replenishing of oxygen to the lungs, so it’s almost impossible to breathe deeply and maintain a high stress level.

* Sit or lie down in a relaxed position and put one hand on your belly * Inhale slowly and deeply, pushing the air down into your belly and making the hand resting there rise * Gently exhale with a slow, whooshing sound, keeping your muscles relaxed and saying to yourself “relax” * Continue taking long, slow, deep breaths into your belly and let them out gently. Focus on the sound of your breath and the movement of your belly and notice how you become more and more relaxed

7. Identify what you need and ask for it: once you can identify your underlying feeling of why you feeling anger such as disappointment, guilt, shame, embarrassment you can than take yourself before it turns into anger. Ex. If you are feeling guilty about your two year old hitting another child in the playground, perhaps you need to remind yourself that this is a stage that he or she will outgrow with adequate guidance from you. Once you identify what you need, ask for it assertively.

8. Plan ahead: in some cases, if you can anticipate situations that have the potential for triggering anger, you can devise a coping strategy. This reduces the chances of being caught off guard and reacting explosively.

How children are affected by angry parents

Anger is inevitable at sometimes for everyone. Children are allowed to have angry feelings. How your child handles their anger may be inappropriate. No difference than setting limits on any other behaviours that you deem inappropriate. Anger is on the hadest emotions to cope with appropriately. It probably feels at times like you have no controlover your anger at all. Children of angry parents are more aggressive and noncompliant. The children are usually less empathetic and ovderall poor adjustment. There is a strong link between anger and delinquency in teens. The effects of angry parents can continue to impact adult child including increasing degrees of depression, social alienation, spousal abuse.