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

Teens and emerging adults ages 15-19 still learn about their strong and changing feelings. They may 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. Teens may feel social pains more acutely because of the increasing importance of the roles of peers in their lives. Learning how to deal with anger without suppressing it, beating it down, or expressing it by hurting others and themselves is critical. Your support and guidance matter greatly.

Research confirms that when teens learn to manage their feelings, their executive functions are simultaneously strengthened. ^1 They can better use self-control, problem-solve, and focus their attention, directly impacting their school success. However, the opposite is also true. Teens who do not learn to manage their feelings through the guidance and support of caring adults may have attention issues and difficulty solving problems.

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 key to helping your teens better understand themselves and learn healthy ways to manage their intense feelings.^1

Everyone can face challenges in feeling overcome by anger. Your teen may slam the bedroom door as they refuse to tell you what is happening and why they are so upset. Anger may cover hurt, humiliation, fear, and stress. It may also mask guilt, shame, grief, or envy.

As a parent or someone in a parenting role, you play an important role in helping your teen better understand their experience as they learn to identify their feelings and needs better.

Whether your fifteen-year-old melts down in frustration over trying to get math homework accomplished or your nineteen-year-old yells after not being allowed to attend an unsupervised party, anger, and its many accompanying feelings can become a regular challenge if you don’t help your teen create plans and strategies for coping with and making space to express anger.

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

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

● trust in each other that you and your 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 teen

● builds skills in self-awareness

● builds skills in self-control and managing feelings, and

● build assertive communication to communicate critical needs and boundaries to keep them healthy and safe

This five-step process helps you and your teen manage anger and builds essential skills in your teen. The same process can also address...