Ep #67: From Angry to Empowered: How to Model Anger for Your Kids

What should your child’s speech look like at ages two, three, four, five? Are they hitting their developmental milestones, communication milestones? Today we’re going to talk, a few milestones to watch out for, and then of course, give you a couple of tips, just a few things that you can pick from to start working on to help them really develop those communication skills and their speech skills. It’s kind of amazing. I think you’re going to love it and it’s coming up right after this.

Welcome to the Raising Healthy Kid Brains podcast where moms and teachers come to learn all about kids’ brains, how they work, how they learn, how they grow and simple tips and tricks for raising the most resilient, kind, smart, compassionate kids we can. All while having lots of grace and compassion for ourselves because you know what? We all really need and deserve that too. I am your host, Amy Nielson. Let’s get ready to start the show.

This is one of those episodes that I love, where we’re going to talk and go into detail on an emotion. And today we’re talking about anger. And I think this is really valuable because it’s something we can be aware of for ourselves, but also for our children, because we’re parenting kids that have emotions. And we want to know how to talk to them about that and how to help them through those kinds of things.

Now, I’m pulling some of my information today from Brené Brown’s book, Atlas of the Heart. And it basically is like the encyclopedia of emotions. This book is amazing. I love it. I recommend it to everyone. It’s such a good reference and helps really build emotional literacy. And it’s something you’re just going to want to have on hand as you’re raising kids and raising yourself.

So let’s start by talking about anger. And she says when you look across research, you learn that anger is an emotion that we feel when something gets in the way of our desired outcome or when we believe that there’s a violation of the way things should be. So when people feel like something is unfair or when something got in the way, there was something they really wanted or we’re trying to do if we’re talking about kids.

And anger, I used to really, I don’t like, feeling anger is one of my least favorite emotions. There’s probably a lot of reasons for that, but I find it very energy exhausting. And I don’t love it. It’s not my favorite emotion, but it is an action emotion. And I think for a long time I thought anger was a bad emotion and really maybe can we maybe move away from bad emotions, good emotions and just talk about different kinds of emotions. They’re all kind of normal and healthy and the way that we express them is what really matters, rather than the emotion itself.

So anger is an action emotion. We should be angry when things are very, very wrong. There are things that happen in our world that we should be angry about. And so anger is not necessarily bad. Anger is an action emotion that makes us want to do something when we feel it or when something happens to us. It can vary from mild irritation to fury and rage.

So Brené says that anger is a full contact emotion because it’s activating our nervous system. And it can affect and impact our thoughts and behaviors. And that over time can take a real toll on our mental health if we’re not figuring out how to regulate it and express it correctly. And maybe saying correctly is weird. Expressing it in a healthy way for us. There’s a quote in here I just feel is so, so powerful that I want to share. And she says, “Anger is a catalyst. Holding onto it will make us exhausted and sick.”

I think if you’ve been angry for a long time, whether you had a good reason or not, it is exhausting, it’s so exhausting. It’s such an energy, intense emotion. Internalizing anger, she says, will take away from our joy and spirit. So we don’t want to just internalize it. Holding onto it, not good. She says externalizing anger will make us less effective in our attempts to create change and forge connection. So what do we do with it? What do we do with anger?

She says it’s an emotion that we need to transform into something life giving, because anger is an action emotion. So can we take it and transform it into something life giving like courage, love, change, compassion, justice? Isn’t that so good? I love it so much. So how do we talk to our kids around, “I can see that you’re angry. I’m thinking that maybe you’re feeling angry because you felt like something was supposed to happen like this. And then this got in the way. Or you felt that this wasn’t fair because so and so got the toy and you felt like it was your turn.”

And so we validate the fact that they’re feeling angry, that this is a real emotion. Then we say, “Let’s take that anger and do something good with it. What could we do with that anger, that emotion you have? It creates change. It’s a strong emotion, it will help you make changes that are good in your life. What is something we can do with that?” And then we can talk around solutions. What can we do with that? Is this a place for you to have compassion for someone? Is this a space for you to have courage to stand up and say what you need? What can we do with that?

And I love that. Wouldn’t that be so powerful if we could teach kids that being angry isn’t bad, that being angry is a way to start change? And then the way that we do that, the step for that is to be able to take that anger and transform it into something life giving or life changing. How good is that? I love it so much.

So another thing that she has in here that I really, really like, she has some great graphics and again, go get this book. It’s amazing. But she has some really good things around, so often when we’re saying that we’re angry, there’s actually maybe a whole bunch of different emotions that are actually happening that might not be anger or there’s a thing that’s expressing as anger, but it’s maybe a different emotion. And so I thought this was really, really helpful.

She said, “Behind this anger might be”, and then gives a list of emotions. It might be frustration, we’re trying to do something and something’s getting in our way or something wasn’t fair. It might be fear. It might be anxiety. It might be loneliness or rejection or depression or embarrassment or humiliation. It might be grief or hurt. It might be sadness or isolation. It might be confusion or shame, guilt, jealousy. It might be outrage at injustice or helplessness. Helplessness is such a hard feeling.

And again, when we can take that and redirect it into action, what is something you can do? We’re giving kids their power back. So they don’t feel so helpless anymore. It’s a really empowering thing. Overwhelming stress. That one’s hard. So again, when we’re going to a space and we’re transforming that anger, that anger that they feel, we’re validating that they have it, and then we’re taking it. And we’re going to transform it into something life giving, life changing. What is something we can do with that? That’s so powerful. That’s so amazing.

And then we can help kids understand and not try to internalize this or trying to hide this anger that they have. We’re not trying to hold onto it because that’s the only thing that they can do to try to get justice for the injustice that happened. No, we’re going to let it go, and we’re not going to internalize it. And we’re not going to just take it out on people. We’re not externalizing it. What we’re going to do is we’re going to take it and we’re going to transform it into something that we can do. We’re going to get our power back. And I love this for myself and I love this for my kids and I love it for yours.

We can teach kids how to do this. We start, we model it for them. So if you know how, if you listen to this, if you listen to me. And if you go get this book that I’m recommending, which is Brené Brown’s Atlas of the Heart, we can start this. And we can make this change and help them harness the energy and the power of anger for all of the good that it can do, which is creating change in the world and change in our lives for ourselves.

I know I’m inspired to do better and I hope that this was inspiring for you as well. Thank you for coming and chatting with me today and hanging out with me while we learn more about our emotions and increase our emotional literacy so that we can model that and teach that to the kids that we serve. I’ll see you again here next week. Have an amazing one.

Don’t you just love all the fun things we’re learning on the show together? Well, we wanted to give you a chance to practice a little bit of it at home. And so we made you a special freebie just for being a listener here and you can grab it at planningplaytime.com\special-freebie. That is planningplaytime.com\special-freebie. So what this freebie is, I’ll tell you, is an amazing alphabet activity that you can start using with your kiddos and it is based in play and is so fun.

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Thank you for hanging out with me today for this fun chat on Raising Healthy Kid Brains. If you want to see more of what we’re doing to support kiddos and their amazing brains, come visit us on our website planningplaytime.com. See you next week.