Crisis stages
There are several difficult, crisis stages in a child’s life:
- Birth crisis - a child who has been in the womb for 9 months experiences stress during childbirth. The first independent breath of air brings pain, meaning that the child is no longer one with the mother, but acquires a new status - not a fetus, but a newborn.
- Crisis of 1 year - a child, experiencing an urgent need to learn about the world, begins to take a vertical position from a lying position, that is, to walk, learns about the world and any prohibition causes protest.
- Crisis of 3 years - the child begins to understand that he is not just part of a huge world, he is an individual who has his own needs. Not yet clearly understanding what he wants and why he needs it, he tries to achieve his goal by any means, becomes nervous, aggressive and capricious.
- Crisis of 7 years - during this period the child goes to school, begins to realize that now there are certain responsibilities that must be fulfilled or punishment will follow.
It is the last two stages (3 years and 7 years) that are especially difficult for both children and their parents. At this time, you can expect anything from the child. An unreasonable whim may arise (he wants to walk five stops, rather than travel this distance by bus), a hysteria may occur (which usually follows an unsatisfied whim), an attack of aggression will begin, during which the child will begin to beat the parents surrounding the children, throw objects at adults , spit on them, kick them, scratch them. What to do in such a situation? Just wait for the crisis stage to pass? Or make some decision. Wouldn't the moment be missed if we let everything take its course and expect everything to resolve itself?
Consider age
1 year
The baby is not even a year old, but he already knows how to angrily kick his feet, scream, and tries to hit or bite those around him. To say that he is an aggressive child would be strange. He's just curious. He is bursting with the desire to explore the world: to touch, taste, spill, tear, scatter everything. He still can’t understand why it’s “impossible”; he doesn’t really know how to explain what he wants. Prohibitions and misunderstanding on the part of adults cause discontent and aggressive impulses, which he is not yet able to cope with.
Learn to feel and understand the little person. This will help in time to eliminate sources of irritation, which can be simple things: fatigue, hunger or thirst.
Encourage your child's exploration and find a safe way for him to explore the world. You can jump in puddles - you will need waterproof clothing. Tear paper, smear paints, play with water - you're welcome - you just need to prepare the space. Don’t regret it, you will spend this time usefully, unlike the time you would have to kill to calm down a failed researcher. And so, the child is happy and developing.
2-3 years
Psychologists call the age between two and three years the peak of aggressive behavior. The child becomes increasingly aware that he is an individual and strives for independence. There comes a period of “myself”, when attempts by adults to help can be regarded by the child as confirmation of their own incompetence and cause irritation. A sense of ownership develops when a neighbor in the sandbox can get hit on the head with a shovel for encroaching on “my car.”
The baby demonstrates what he likes and what he doesn’t. He is just learning to control emotions and express thoughts and feelings in words, so actions come to the forefront.
Wild screams and arching of the back can mean: “Give me this,” and attempts to bite: “I don’t want to leave, I haven’t finished playing yet!” Often such actions are also reconnaissance in force: “What will happen if I do this. Will I be able to achieve what I want?”
Minimize your desire to help your child in everything. Let him conquer the slides, build towers and send boats sailing through the puddles. Give more freedom, but be safe.
Learn to share and change. Explain that during a conflict it is good to be able to negotiate. It’s bad to hit, push, bite.
If something is prohibited, do not allow it under the pressure of hysterics. The rebel will realize that the tactic was successful and will begin to apply it everywhere.
4-7 years
The child improves speech, studies his feelings, and learns to control emotions. Aggressive attacks, as a rule, become less and less frequent and, if expressed, are usually expressed not through actions, but through words.
For seven-year-olds, the source of aggression can be conflicts with classmates, the teacher, or difficulties in learning. Children are getting used to their new role as schoolchildren and need their parents’ support more than ever. Communicate with your child more often, find out the reasons for the anxiety, and help.
If aggression does not subside with age and even intensifies, look for the reasons. Perhaps all this time the child was not taught to cope with negative feelings and was shown the wrong model of behavior. We'll talk about this further.
We analyze the causes of aggression and nervousness.
Before we move on to finding out the causes of nervousness and aggression, we need to understand what aggression is. Children's aggression is a way of actively expressing dissatisfaction and anger, manifested through negativism (that is, denial) of others and an attempt to cause damage (to objects) or injury (to people, animals). For parental reassurance, I would like to say that there are no parents in the world who would not encounter manifestations of child aggression. A completely different situation arises when aggression is accompanied by nervousness; in such a situation, you should not console yourself with statistics and difficult childhood ages; you should immediately turn to psychologists, neurologists and, possibly, psychiatrists.
The cause of aggression, as a rule, is the child’s overwhelming negative emotions and anger associated with a certain situation. Analyzing the causes of aggressive manifestations in children, we can roughly distinguish several groups:
This group of reasons occupies a leading position for the reason that everything comes from the family. There are often cases when the parents themselves, in particular the mother herself, become the culprit for the appearance of aggressive actions. This situation could become cruelty, alienation and indifference of the mother, assault or costs of educationwhen parents try not to notice the first signs of aggression. Domestic violence, humiliation of human dignity, strict authoritarianism and despotism in upbringing, and the immoral lifestyle of parents also do not pass by the child’s psyche. Sometimes parents, without meaning to, become the initiators of aggression. Such cases include cases where there is no unity in upbringing: one parent allows, and the second is categorically against, then for the child the authority will be the one who allows a lot, and the one who does not allow is the object of aggression.
Parents' guilt
This group includes somatic and chromosomal diseases that lead to disruption of brain function, delayed mental and psychomotor development, impaired socialization, hyperactivity, increased nervous excitability, deficits of attention and intelligence. The list goes on and on, but does this make sense? Let's just say that there is no fault of the parents here (unless they provoked the onset of the disease), everything happens not from the whims and whims of the child, but from the fact that these actions are uncontrollable and are always accompanied by increased nervous excitability, hysterics, excessive tearfulness, and a depressed state . Experienced doctors, psychotherapists and psychologists need to work here, and parents can support and love the child no matter what.
Diseases- Social factors This group includes watching provocative films and TV series, playing violent computer games, and aggression from peers.
- Age-related characteristics are exactly what was mentioned above: the crisis of 3 and 7 years old, an attempt to learn the boundaries of what is permitted, ways to achieve a goal no matter what.
Anger management: what to do if your child is always angry
Is it possible for children and adults to be angry? Not only is it possible, but it is also necessary. Anger is a protective emotion, an important marker of discomfort, danger, or boundary violation. But this does not mean at all that you should allow your child to fight, scream and take away other people’s toys. Psychologist Yana Filimonova discusses the main parental mistakes in “anger management” and suggests how to teach a child to correctly express anger and draw conclusions from the situation that caused it.
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Parents make a big mistake by confusing the very feeling of anger and its manifestations. Anger helps you defend boundaries, protect yourself from unfriendly people, and cope with danger. Good contact with your anger in the future will provide your daughter or son with the ability to say a firm “no”, defend yourself in a dispute, and defend your rights. Suppressed anger is the culprit of many somatic diseases. And also timidity, poor contact with my desires (how can I know what I want if I don’t even know what I don’t like?) and hidden hostility towards others (because suppressed anger is still anger).
The message “don’t be angry” forces the child to direct his efforts not to calming down and resolving the situation, but to trying to simply hide his anger. Therefore, you should not utter phrases like: “You can’t be angry,” “Why are you arguing, it’s better to go and make peace soon,” “No one would want to be friends with such an angry girl.”
Then what: to allow a kindergartener to fight if someone took his toy, and for a schoolchild to tear other people’s notebooks with homework? No. It is worth explaining in a language that a child can understand: hitting other people and damaging their things is prohibited, but there are other ways to express anger.
If you are so angry that you cannot think, it is acceptable to hit a pillow or kick the sofa (psychologists also advise adults to do this). Having calmed down a little, you should think and tell in words why you were so angry. A child of 3-6 years old is already quite capable of explaining what made him angry. You just have to come to terms with some things: you can’t take that girl’s beautiful doll, and you’re not supposed to touch daddy’s tablet either. But perhaps the girl will allow you to play with the doll a little, and dad can show beautiful pictures on the tablet or play a game together.
You can help a student not only discover the reasons for his anger, but also try to find a way out of the situation
For example, establish contact with a teacher or talk with a classmate with whom you had a quarrel.
If a son comes home from school and declares “I hate Vasya, he is no longer my friend!” - do not be afraid of such a categorical statement. It’s good that your child, in principle, knows how to verbalize his aggression. In such cases, the technique of active listening helps, that is, reformulating what was said without evaluation or direct advice.
- It looks like you are very angry with Vasya.
- Yes, he played football with Dima and Misha, but they didn’t take me! I'm not friends with them anymore either.
“You’re upset that you weren’t allowed to play football.”
- Of course, what do you think! They say I can't do anything. But Dima then promised to show how to dribble the ball.
Here it would be appropriate to suggest: “Maybe tomorrow I should ask Dima to show you how to dribble the ball?” - "Yes, probably. They were just getting ready to go to the site tomorrow.” Even if the situation turns out to be not so favorable, the child has already comprehended what happened, gained experience in how to calm down and cope with emotions. He will also understand that there is a reasonable adult nearby who will help him cope with his feelings and analyze the situation.
The other extreme is when children's anger serves as an excuse for any action. Tears and screaming help you beg for an expensive toy. “We are angry, forgive us” - an excuse to the mother of another child, whom an angry three-year-old sprinkled with sand and hit on the head with a shovel.
This is bad for several reasons. Firstly, the presence of a little tyrant in the house does not improve family relationships and does not make the home atmosphere pleasant. Secondly, the child becomes less and less socialized, since the rules accepted at home will not be supported in kindergarten and school. He will have to completely unexpectedly face prohibitions, which will cause extreme stress: before everything was possible, but now suddenly it’s impossible, even if you scream and stomp your feet.
Thirdly, one of the functions of parents is to create reasonable boundaries for their child’s behavior, which change as he grows up.
And these frameworks serve not only for socialization and teaching the child to order, but also for protection.
Therefore, tyrant children usually grow up not so much spoiled as nervous. The absence of clear prohibitions is dangerous for the child himself, and he feels it. Permissiveness is not equal to either care or love - it is unhealthy and weakens the psyche.
In the future, so-called internalization will occur: the child will, as it were, place the parent inside himself and appropriate the control function in the form in which he received it. Therefore, it is important that in critical situations, dad or mom really help him cope with anger, do not indulge or suppress. Because the voice that says “Let’s think together” or “How can you say that, Vasya is your friend!” will sound in his head all his life (or until he goes to a psychotherapist).
Starting from middle school, the child is already able to take the position of another in order to try to understand the feelings and motives of the other party to the conflict.
You decided to come to your senses and are trying really hard in algebra, but the nasty Irina Petrovna still lowers your grades and doesn’t call you to the board? Yes, it's offensive and very annoying. But maybe she's used to poorly completed homework and cheating? And if a little time passes, will she notice the changes? And if not, what could be done to improve the situation? The ability not only to transform anger into words, but to draw some conclusions from it and from the situation is very valuable.
Do not forget that the child in any case takes his behavior patterns from the family. If dad insists that you should never be angry, and then half an hour later he raises his voice at someone at home, the value of his words drops sharply. And the child, alas, draws conclusions about the permissiveness of those who have power: when I grow up, and then...
Unconscious attitudes of parents also play an important role. Adults who are more likely to have a “don't get angry” attitude may be out of touch with their own anger and suppress it—messages that are usually passed down in families from generation to generation. The attitude “you can’t be angry with your family” is very common. “Mom and dad wish you well”, “Don’t quarrel with your sister, you are family” - such rules support the myth of an ideal, friendly family in which everyone loves each other and never quarrels. It is clear that such an ideal is unattainable.
Suppressed anger leads to conflicts and secret grievances: when there is no way to express anger directly, it still finds its way
Parents who are afraid of “upsetting” and “angry” their child may have grown up in an overly strict environment: they were subjected to physical violence, humiliation, and constant criticism. They suffered themselves and now they want the child to not be denied anything. Seeing his tears and angry face is unbearable, as painful episodes from his own childhood are recalled. “Am I really the same as my mom and dad were? No, I want to be kind and understanding." It is worth realizing this identification with a child’s image and separating your own difficult memories from the current situation.
Being a good and loving parent does not at all contradict the setting of reasonable prohibitions. Parenting is not only about encouraging and expressing love, but also about teaching self-control and socialization.
Ways to deal with aggression in a child
Of course, aggressive attacks can and should be fought. We will not take into account the second group of causes of aggressive manifestations; as mentioned earlier, this requires treatment and control by experienced doctors, psychologists and special educators.
Considering the first group of reasons , let's say that the most basic way to eliminate aggressiveness in a child is to start with yourself, reconsider your attitude towards the child and people around you, change your upbringing methods and visit a family and child psychologist. Time will pass and everything will be forgotten, it is important to let the child know that he is loved. For the third group, the solution to the situation will be limiting watching TV, not allowing them to play computer games, conducting empirical conversations explaining why it is or is not worth doing this, and visiting a psychologist who will help the child understand himself, get rid of complexes and change behavior tactics with peers.
You should react to age-related manifestations of aggression calmly, but warily. First, it’s worth figuring out exactly why the baby behaves this way: does he not have enough attention from his parents, and is he trying to attract attention to himself? Is he jealous of mom or dad for his younger (older) brother (sister)? He wanted to play with this particular toy, but the toy did not belong to the baby? Talk to the child, explain why you gave the younger child a little more time, that he is defenseless and needs care, and offer to help you. Tell him that now he will help you, and then you will read a book together, draw, go for a walk, etc. Psychologists offer the following methods to combat aggressive manifestations in children:
- Ask your child to draw the reason for the aggression on a piece of album paper and offer to tear the paper.
- Inhale and count to 10.
- To throw out all the anger on the pillows, that is, to beat her like a punching bag.
- Shift your attention to something else.
- Keep your child busy with sports (gymnastics, football).
Thus, before deciding how to deal with a child’s aggression, it is worth first determining its cause. Nervousness is a sign of ill health, the presence of a somatic or psychiatric illness, which can only be dealt with by highly specialized specialists.
Learn to extinguish the heat of a hysteria
All discussions and analysis of conflict situations are possible when the child is just beginning to experience negative emotions. If a hysterical attack is in full swing, talking will not help or will make it worse.
To calm a child, psychologists advise switching his attention away from hysterics. For example, to a loud sound or unexpected action. As if by accident, drop something loud, suddenly turn on the music, scream, turn off the light.
If your baby continues to be hysterical, screaming, or trying to hit you, wrap him in a tight hug and hold him until he calms down.
And no matter how difficult it is, watch your emotional message - act calmly and confidently. You cannot extinguish aggression with aggression.
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Chill out
Hit a pillow or punching bag, throw a stone or ball at a wall. Help your child find the most effective way to calm his temper through exercise.
Photo source: bitnet.ru
Warning: Most researchers conclude that this strategy can backfire and increase impulsivity. Use this method only when you are convinced of its effectiveness.
Develop emotional vocabulary
Many children show aggression through stomping, screaming, hitting and biting because they simply don't know how to express their frustration in any other way.
You can help your child create his own vocabulary of emotions. Here are a few words to start with: angry, upset, mad, frustrated, worried, enraged, apprehensive, stressed, nervous, anxious, annoyed, enraged.
Photo source: happy-giraffe.ru
Once your child learns new emotion words, he will find it easier to talk about and describe his anger.
Bottom line
Anger in a child is a natural feeling that manifests itself in subsequent years. However, there are age periods when outbursts of anger are normal, and times when their frequent occurrence is pathological. The outcome of events will largely depend on the decisions and actions of parents, who are the teachers who develop certain qualities and behavior patterns in the child.
Anger does not affect life expectancy unless a person begins to harm himself or others. If parents do not solve the child’s anger problem or succumb to his emotions, then they can develop the habit of aggression in him for any reason. This can lead to either mental disorders or problems with the law in adulthood.
The prognosis for the inability to cope with one's own anger is disappointing. But it is the parents who must teach the child to understand and control their own outbursts. This is difficult to do if the parents themselves are aggressive and do not know how to control personal emotions. Then it is better to delegate the solution to this problem to specialists.
