Hot Buttons -- Managing Parental Anger

Last week, I spoke with a woman who told me that when her son was born, she thought mothering was so easy, she couldn't imagine it ever being difficult.  Then her son turned 15 months and everything changed.  Instead of being cuddly and easy to please, he threw tantrums, became defiant, and even seemed to be deliberately pushing her buttons.  She felt enraged with him at times and found herself yelling at him far more than was normal for her easy-going temperament.

"He just makes me so MAD sometimes.  But it's not something I'm comfortable talking to other mothers about.  I'm not supposed to feel this way about my son."

Anger is an emotion all people feel, including parents.  The problem for parents, however, is that feeling angry at our children can drive us to behave in ways we'd rather not and/or make us guilt-ridden.  We may find ourselves screaming, "What is wrong with you?" Or, even if we don't scream or act angry towards our children, we may still have guilt for even feeling angry towards them.  For many of us, the ideal parent is one who loves, nurtures, and teaches, not someone who feels rage toward their child. 

Just as our children are going to be angry with us at times, so are we going to be angry with them.  Thus, similar to what Mary suggested in an earlier post, the question isn't "How do I stop being angry at my child," but rather, "How do I manage this normal and natural emotion?" 

Here's a process I suggest to get you started thinking about managing your own parental anger:

Step 1 -- Accept your anger.

When you accept your anger rather than denying it, or telling yourself you shouldn't feel it, you're apt to handle it far more effectively and/or alleviate guilt for even feeling it. 

Step 2 -- Know your hot buttons.

What behaviors send you over the edge?  Is it when your child laughs at you while telling her not to hit her sister?  How about when he ignores you? Or deliberately defies you?  How about when she whines or cries, or even hits you, because she didn't get her way? 

Make a list of your hot buttons.  Arrange them in order with the hottest buttons listed first.

Step 3 -- Understand your child will most likely perform these behaviors more than once.

We may become enraged when our child laughs in our face for the first time we tell her to stop hitting her sister, yet, when she does it again, we still have the same enraged response!  When we find a hot button, we need to accept that the likelihood of our children performing that behavior at least one more time is very high.  Knowing this means we're not taken by surprise in the future and allows for a more controlled emotional response, which leads to the next step.

Step 4 -- Visualize a controlled emotional response.

Instead of yelling, or slamming her bedroom door, imagine yourself picking up your laughing daughter, placing her gently in a chair in her room, and quietly closing the door.  Imagine how it might feel to respond this way.  You may still feel anger, but maybe it's a more calm and rational kind of anger.  Hold onto that feeling for a minute or two.  That's the feeling you want to conjure up the next time you find yourself in that particular anger-provoking situation. 

The idea here is that a "bottom-up event" is turned into a "top-down" event (Benson, 1996).  Bottom-up events occur in the environment and elicit an emotional response from the brain.  When our kid is doing something we don't like, we react emotionally to this bottom-up event.  Top-down events, on the other hand, occur in our minds rather than our environment.  The nice thing about these latter events is that we can consciously modify our emotional response to them.  This is especially helpful since many of our emotional responses to social situations occur before we've had time to consciously process them (Bargh & Williams, 2006). 

Turning that hot button behavior into a top-down event means practicing a controlled emotional response in our minds first, making it far easier to access that feeling when the real event actually occurs. 

Now, you may be wondering why you shouldn't just practice a "happy" response to the situation.  I think it's important for us to be realistic about our emotions and not pressure ourselves to never feel anger, which, if you're human, is nearly impossible anyway.  Plus, anger is a useful emotion because it signals to us that something we don't like is occurring.  Without it, our decision-making process might be just as impaired as when anger overtakes us (Damasio, 2005).  Thus, anger only becomes a "bad" emotion when we don't manage it effectively.

Finally, I want to point out that it's perfectly okay for your child to see you angry.  You can tell your child, "I'm very angry right now because you hit your sister."  Children need to know it's normal and natural to be angry.  But they also need to learn there's an effective way to express it, and modeling appropriate expressions is one way to teach that valuable lesson.   

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If you're interested in reading more about parental anger, I highly suggest one of the few books to cover this subject: Love and Anger - The Parental Dilemma, by Nancy Samalin (see our sidebar for a link).  Not only does this book provide some strategies to managing anger, just reading it can bring relief from guilt as it makes you feel like you're part of a very supportive group. 

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Bargh, J.A., and Williams, E.L. (2006).  The Automaticity of Social Life.  Current Directions in Psychological Science, 15, 1-4.

Comments

[Mary P]

I like the idea of creating an alternate response in your own mind. Generally, my practice has been, at the moment of provocation, to take a deep breath and try to respond without rage. If I don't think that's possible, I simply walk away.

I'd also brainstorm ideas of how to change whatever behaviour was driving me mental, but I've never gone so far as to mentally pre-create my response. I like it.

[hilary]

Great post. I'm am deep in tantrums with my 2year old and I have learned that timeouts (5min) help my son and me decompress enough that I can walk back into the room- explain the situation to him and let him know that it doesn't make mamma happy. We had about 2wks straight of back and forth timeouts, over the past week we've had none and I always remind him how happy I am that he's playing nice and being such a good boy.

[stefanierj]

If it had been Mary writing that post, I'd swear the person she was talking about was ME. I have always had a hot temper and have really tried to control it, but I am not always successful, so I appreciate this post.

[Mary P]

Aw, Stef. I don't think ANYONE gets through the toddler years without losing their temper with their child. The issue, as I'm sure you know, is not the temper itself, but what you do with it.

And! Learning constructive ways to handle your anger when your child is a toddler is GREAT practice for when they get to their teens. (Says the woman utterly swamped by the blighters.)

[Holly]

I found the toddler years to be a breeze back then I didn't get angry because it seemed so harmless when a near-baby broke your rules...no disrespect intended.

It's these preteen years that are invoking the anger. When she is defiant I take it so much more personally. I know it is not logical, but my first feeling is one of FAILURE. I feel like "I just spent ten years of my life raising this child and THIS is what I've taught her!!"

She is like the cake that didn't rise sometimes and THAT makes me angry!

[Laura]

Holly,

Ah, yes, the preteen years! I can see how that can feel so much more personal.

She's reached a new period of development and she's testing boundaries all over again. Just as with the toddler years, remaining consistent is the key. The teaching continues...and you will get through it!

The key may be to step back and remind yourself and her brain is going through another intense period of pruning. Then there's the very intense need to differentiate from the family. She's got a LOT going on inside of her. Use this information as your self-talk through this period. It's not about you and your parenting. It's about what she's going through growth wise.

All the best!

Laura