Child Anger Management

Cues to Anger

In addition to being aware of events that can cause anger, it is invaluable to work with children to help them identify cues which occur when one gets angry.   These cues serve as warning signs that you have become angry and that your anger is continuing to escalate. They can be broken down into four cue categories: physical, behavioral, emotional, and cognitive (or thought) cues.

Physical Cues

Physical cues involve the way our bodies respond when we become angry. For example, our heart rates may increase, we may feel tightness in our chests, or we may feel hot and flushed. These physical cues can also warn us that our anger is escalating out of control or approaching a 10 on the anger meter. I will ask children to remember a time when they felt really, really angry.  I ask them to close their eyes and picture it happening to them.  I ask them how they feel.  We talk about the importance of how our body can let us know that we are feeling really angry.  This can save us from making a bad choice.


Behavioral Cues

 Behavioral cues involve the behaviors we display when we get angry, which are observed by other people around us. For example, we may clench our fists, pace back and forth, slam a door, or raise our voices. These behavioral responses are the second cue of our anger. As with physical cues, they are warning signs that we may be approaching a 10 on the anger meter.  I work with parents and caretakers to recognize these cues and intervene with their children before the anger escalates further.


Emotional Cues

 Emotional cues involve other feelings that may occur concurrently with our anger. For example, we may become angry when we feel abandoned, afraid, discounted, disrespected, guilty, humiliated, impatient, insecure, jealous, or rejected. These kinds of feelings are the core or primary feelings that underlie our anger. It is easy to discount these primary feelings because they often make us feel vulnerable. An important component of anger management is to become aware of, and to recognize, the primary feelings that underlie our anger. In this group, we will view anger as a secondary emotion to these more primary feelings.

Cognitive Cues

Cognitive cues refer to the thoughts that occur in response to the anger-provoking event. When children become angry, they may interpret events in certain ways. For example, they may interpret a friend’s comments as attacking, while the friend certainly doesn't mean the statement that way.   Some people call these thoughts “self-talk” because they resemble a conversation we are having with ourselves. For people with anger problems, this self-talk is usually very critical and hostile in tone and content. It reflects beliefs about the way they think the world should be; beliefs about people, places, and things.

Closely related to thoughts and self-talk are fantasies and images. We view fantasies and images as other types of cognitive cues that can indicate an escalation of anger. For example, we might fantasize about seeking revenge on a perceived enemy or imagine or visualize our spouse having an affair. When we have these fantasies and images, our anger can escalate
even more rapidly.
 

One thing I encourage parents and caretakers to do is to periodically check in with their children and a regular basis.  Some children are really good at hiding their anger, and it is so much easier to deal with those feelings when the child's anger scale is at a 6 and not a 10.  By checking in, it gives the parent and child a chance to connect and make sure they are both "on the same page".

This leads us to the next section: "Creating an anger control plan"

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