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Anger Management and Your 'Tween

Hot-tempered flare-ups can become a fact of life with preteens, or ‘tweens. They reach for the independence they crave – but aren’t quite ready for – with challenging behavior, anger and disrespect. The discipline techniques that worked when they were younger seem suddenly out-of-date.
The solution: Teaching anger management by learning to manage your own emotions.
One of America’s leading authorities on children, Robert Coles, a Harvard professor of pediatric psychiatry and medical humanities who’s won the Pulitzer Prize and the National Medal of Freedom, has often explored the theme of parents’ actions coming back to haunt them. Coles begins his book The Moral Life of Children with an illustrative story from Leo Tolstoy:

An ailing, senile father-in-law comes to live with his son’s family. The young daughter-in-law resents his presence and the mess he makes, so instead of eating at the family’s table, she gives him a dishpan in the kitchen.

One day the mother sees her little boy hammering some wood, and asks him what he’s making. ‘It’s a dishpan, mommy,’ he says. ‘So I can feed you when you’re old.’

“Our children,” Coles concludes, “are measuring us not by what we say, but by our deeds.”
Most experts agree.

“Giving in to parental ‘road rage’ teaches your children that it’s ok,” says Linda Dunlap, a child-development expert who chairs the Marist College psychology department.

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So ask yourself: In a disagreement with a friend or relative on the phone, a clerk or manager in a store, do you react with threats, intimidation and bullying or with obscene language?
Anger management is something anyone can learn, says Naomi Drew, the author of Peaceful Parents, Peaceful Kids: Practical Ways to Create a Calm and Happy Home. “Instead of yelling, tell yourself, in your mind, ‘Stop.’ This gives us a distance from our reaction so we don’t escalate. Then take a long, slow deep breath. Oxygen feeds the brain and literally helps us think.”

If that’s not enough, “say ‘I’m so angry, I’ve got to go cool off a minute before I do something I’m going to regret.’” Then leave and do wherever is calming.

Be a detective and figure out what helps you cool off, she says. Maybe it’s breathing, closing your eyes, straightening up, going to the garden, looking at the sky, getting some tea or water. Perhaps repeating a statement, like, ‘I can handle this. I can handle this.’

When you finally feel cooler, you’re ready to go back.

Other expert tips:

--Stay emotionally in touch with your ‘tween every day. Small issues can snowball when ‘tweens and their parents lose touch.

--Strive for consistent reactions from both parents. Though it can be hard for busy spouses to stay in sync, kids who get mixed signals may regard their parents as unreliable and arbitrary, Dunlap says.

--Pick your battles. You can’t lock horns over everything. Decide what’s really important to you, and compromise on what’s not.

--Pat yourself on the back. Remember your ‘tween behaves worst with you because it’s safe, says Anthony E. Wolf, PhD, a clinical psychologist and the author of The Secret of Parenting: How to Be in Charge of Today's Kids--from Toddlers to Preteens--Without Threats or Punishment. That’s normal and appropriate -- and means the child feels loved.

--Spend 15 to 20 minutes each night just listening to your child. Even if all you hear about is gaming or videos, your time spent listening will pay off when you have to set limits. “Very often,” Drew says, “they’ll listen back.”

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