Anger management in children is a concern for family members, teachers, and the child’s peers. Children who struggle to control their angry emotions, as a result, also experience peer isolation and rejection, are often negatively perceived by their teachers, and can cause anxiety within their own families. Therefore, therapy for these children and teens requires an intensive, high-frequency contact approach and should involve family members and other relevant individuals.inclusion of family members & respective others.
Components of Anger Management Child/Youth Therapy
Play Therapy -Anger Management
Play allow children to act out the situations that evoke anger in them. The therapist bears witness to the validity of their anger thereby soothing it. Dramatic play allows children to re-enact problematic situations and experiment with alternate coping tools.
Movement
Anger is an energetic, forceful emotion. Children have access to a number of ways to release, without hurting anyone or anything, their angry energies and impulses. This may include jumping on our trampoline in our playroom, doing small aerobic “mad moves”, ripping recyclables or, pounding clay.
Communication
Children learn to express in words what they are feeling. Children express what makes them angry and state their needs to others. They practise using a language that invites others to support them. They learn how to problem solve and resolve interpersonal conflict in a calm, productive manner.
Cognitive Behavioural Therapy – CBT
Anger is strongly associated with the meaning one gives to the problematic situation and to others involved.
Developmentally appropriate skill-building games and storytelling help younger children reframe their self-talk. Teenagers learn the process of CBT with videos, game-play, or discussion.
Specific “thinking traps” are associated with explosive anger, which children and teens learn to recognise and avoid.
Family, School & Community Integration
Community agencies, like schools and childcares, often send children with anger management struggles to therapy.
At Help for Families Canada we actively integrate significant others in the therapy process from assessment to relapse prevention. We will share effective strategies with parents, repair family relationships, and (with consent) exchange strategies & tools with classroom teachers & childcare workers.