Helping Boys Deal with Anger

This week’s article summary is How to Help Boys Deal with Anger.

Intended as advice for parents, the article is appropriate for teachers as well.

There were particular lines in the article that while broad-brush can help both parents and teachers work with boys who struggle with managing their anger.

Boys first need to understand that anger is biological, normal, and healthy. The key is how to deal with it.

From a bell curve perspective, boys deal with anger externally (verbal and physical) while girls more often internalize their anger.

Part of growing up is learning to recognize when your anger is escalating and then developing ways to deal with these emotions so you don’t harm yourself or others. We’ve all heard that the ability to self-regulate is a key to school success, and managing emotions, including anger, is obviously part of self-regulation.

As most of us have experienced, it’s useless to deal rationally with someone in tantrum mode. Once people go to the reptilian flight, fight or freeze part of their brain, there isn’t much anyone can do until they get tired, breakdown and cry, or just give in. Once they regain composure, however, we can help them by doing a post mortem and talking about what they felt and what they might do the next time. Yes, their understanding is gradual but most of us (unlike the Joe Pesci character in Good Fellas) do learn to develop internal self-control and regulation to deal with our fits of pique.

I really liked the sentence “you can feel whatever you want to feel but you can’t always do whatever you want” which validates for kids how they’re feeling but reminds them they’re a part of a community that has rules of acceptable behavior. Even we adults have these same feelings but have reflected, practiced, and learned to respond, not innately react, in a rational manner even when we begin to lose our cool.

Joe

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Concerns about boys and anger abound, as comedian and writer Michael Ian Black captured in his viral 2018 New York Times opinion piece “The Boys Are Not All Right.” “The man who feels lost but wishes to preserve his fully masculine self has only two choices: withdrawal or rage,” he wrote.

My two boys do not inherently struggle with anger simply because they are boys. And yet they do lash out — sometimes in frustration, sometimes when I ask them to do something they don’t want to. I want to help them navigate that anger so they can experience the feeling but not be overwhelmed by it.

First and foremost, it helps to understand the basics of what anger is: basically, a response to a perceived threat. The body releases adrenaline (the hormone that plays a key role in the fight-or-flight response) and the heart rate and blood pressure go up. It is absolutely fine — and sometimes really positive — to feel angry. It’s when that anger is not managed in a healthy way that it can become problematic.

Here are some tips for parents to keep in mind.

Understand that there can be differences in how boys and girls experience and express anger: Obviously, there is so much nuance when it comes to individuals, emotions — and how they express those emotions. It is not fair, nor accurate, to say that all boys experience anger one way, while all girls experience it another. And research shows it is a myth that boys and men experience anger more than girls and women. Yet experts say there can be big broad-strokes distinctions parents might want to at least have in mind as they help guide their children through all of this. Psychologists have a saying that boys externalize and girls internalize. This means that boys are more likely to take their anger and distress and direct it outward, where it can become verbal or physical aggression. On the other hand, girls are more likely to direct their anger and frustrations inward towards themselves, so it can become self-blame or even depression.

Help your child learn how to label his feelings: The first step to stress and anger management is to help your child identify what’s going on, and to empathize with it. Young kids don’t always recognize what they’re experiencing. If you don’t understand what the problem is — in this case, feelings of anger or frustration that might lead a child to act out — you can’t solve the problem. Labeling the feeling is so important. In a younger kid, that might mean explicitly describing their emotions — like, “your body looks like it’s feeling frustrated,” or “it seems like you are feeling angry, because I told you no.” Don’t worry about being presumptuous or getting it wrong. Your kid might turn around and tell you that they’re not actually feeling angry, they’re feeling XYZ thing — and that’s totally fine. You’ve prompted them to identify what is going on internally. Older kids and teens probably won’t respond all that well to those kinds of prompts, but they might still need some help identifying their feelings in the moment. So for them, labeling might sound something more like, “If I were in this situation, I’d probably feel pretty mad. Walk me through what’s going on for you.”

Be soothing: Although parents might react to a child’s anger or outburst by walking away (and strategic ignoring can be one way to help diffuse tantrums), experts say there is a strong argument to be made for soothing children. Anger can overwhelm young children. They do not necessarily have the ability to calm themselves down so that they become more reasonable. There are many ways to soothe and comfort an angry young child, but it may require a shift in the parent’s mindset or focus in the moment. Be patient and calm. Make it clear that you’re not looking to just stifle or deny their anger in the moment — which is especially important with boys, who have historically been taught to bottle up their emotions. The goal is ultimately to help your kids get to a point where they’re able to self-soothe, perhaps by taking deep breaths, walking away or taking a few moments to themselves to calm down. By acting calm and soothing in the moment yourself, you’re modeling compassion for oneself and for others, which is a very good thing.

Provide consequences: Don’t confuse being soothing with being permissive. Consequences are needed when anger spills over into aggression, especially as boys get older. One sentence to use when working with boys is that “you can feel whatever you want to feel, but you can’t always do whatever you want to do.” Consequences can take many different forms, depending on how old your child is, what the specific circumstances are, and what his personality responds to — and, of course, those things can change by the day. But things like brief time-outs or loss of privileges can be powerful tools in teaching boys that there is a difference between emotions and behaviors. Spend a bit of time thinking about the types of consequences you’re comfortable with, so that you’re not blurting out random threats after your child has expressed their anger in a way you’re not comfortable with. Certain strategies work better for some children than others, so you might need to recalibrate and try out a few things. Remember, what you’re trying to teach is that it is absolutely OK to feel angry and to express that you are feeling angry. It is not OK to act out on that anger in an aggressive way.

If you’re worried about your child’s anger, ask for help: Psychologists use the standards of frequency, duration, intensity, and age-appropriateness when they assess whether a behavior is a symptom of a disorder, so those are criteria parents who are concerned about their son’s anger or aggression should pay attention to. There aren’t hard and fast rules about what’s typical and what’s not, but if your son seems to be struggling with anger on a daily basis, that might be a sign something more serious is going on. It’s also helpful to consider whether certain behaviors — like aggression — are happening across settings, such as if your child is having similar problems at home and at school. That kind of consistency signals that it is less about the particular situation in which they find themselves, and more about their general response to feelings of anger. If you’re concerned, talking to your child’s pediatrician is a good place to start, and checking in with his teachers can also be helpful.