As a parent or someone in a parenting role, you play a valuable role in your child’s/teen’s success. There are intentional ways to grow a healthy parent-child relationship. Growing your child’s/teen’s skills to manage anger provides a terrific opportunity.

Children age 11-14 are still in the process of learning about their strong and changing feelings. They do not fully understand the physical and mental takeover that can occur when angry. While striving for more independence, the sense of a lack of control that anger can produce can frighten them, adding to the length and intensity of their upset. It might also humiliate them if they are mad in front of respected others like teachers, siblings, friends, or relatives. Learning how to deal with anger without suppressing it or expressing it by hurting others and themselves is critical. Your support and guidance matter greatly.

Research confirms that when children/teens learn to tolerate, manage, and express their feelings, it simultaneously strengthens their executive functioning skills.^1 They can better use self-control, solve problems, and focus their attention. This directly impacts their school success. However, the opposite is also true. Those children/teens who do not learn to manage their feelings through the guidance and support of caring adults may have attention issues and problem-solving difficulties.

Anger is not bad or negative. You should not avoid or shut down the experience of it. There’s a good reason for it. Everyone has experienced someone who has lost control and acted in ways that harmed themselves or others when angry. However, every feeling, including anger, serves a critical purpose. Anger provides essential information about who a person is, what emotional or physical needs are not getting met, and where their boundaries lie. Understanding this often misunderstood feeling is vital to helping your children/teens better understand themselves and learn healthy ways to manage their intense feelings.

Everyone can face challenges with feeling overcome by anger. Your child/teen may slam the bedroom door as they refuse to tell you what is happening and why they are so upset. You may also hear from a teacher that your child/teen has been aggressive or said something hurtful to another student. Anger may cover hurt, humiliation, fear, and stress. It may also mask guilt, shame, grief, or envy. Or, it could be the tip of an iceberg of a submerged mass of frustration. As a parent or someone in a parenting role, you play an essential role in helping your child/teen connect to a greater understanding of their experience as they learn to identify their feelings and needs better.

Whether your eleven-year-old breaks down in frustration over trying to complete math homework or your thirteen-year-old yells after not being allowed to attend an unsupervised party, anger, and its many accompanying feelings can become regular challenges if you don’t help your child/teen create plans and strategies for coping with and making space for these big emotions.

Today, in the short term, learning to manage anger can create

● a sense of confidence in your child/teen that they can regain calm and focus

● trust in each other that you and your child/teen have the competence to make space for a range of feelings in healthy ways and

● added daily peace of mind

Tomorrow, in the long term, your child/teen

● builds skills in self-awareness

● builds skills in self-control and managing feelings and

● builds assertive communication to communicate needs and boundaries critical for keeping them healthy and