VIOLENCE AND ANGER
When I was a kid, my parents raised me to be seen and not heard, and I did as they said or got the worst whooping of my life. Things have changed in the recent years, even though we as parents have the same challenges now as back then but there are other means of teaching our children besides whooping. Nothing has changed so far as having a long day at work, and things haven’t gone as expected. You are tired, frustrated, and are still thinking about your workday when you arrive home, and then there are the children to care for; before you left home, you’ve asked your child to do their homework and clean their room before going out to play. They tell you that they will make sure to do their homework and clean their rooms, but instead, after school, they rushed out the door immediately to play. You come home, walk through your front door and step on an overturned toy in the middle of the floor and nothing you told your child to do has been done;
( WHAT DO YOU DO, HOW DO YOU RESPOND?)
Some of us may just run outside, snatch the child up while yelling at the top of our lungs right in front of their friends! (“You are so lazy; you didn’t do anything that I told you to do, just watch, you will never go outside to play again!”)
For others, we may take away the child’s toys and make them sit in a corner.
As parents, we are faced with choices:
1. We react negatively to our child’s behavior.
OR
2. We role model healthy behaviors regardless of our child’s preferences.
With the mounds of frustration throughout the day, we as parents are at risk of reacting harshly towards our children. We encountered so many different personalities half of the time we are unaware of where the defeat is coming from; the stress that we feel is then transferred on to our children. If we increased the awareness of our emotions, we would be able to focus more on the issue at hand, in this case, the expectation of a clean room. Then, we will model a response that is helpful to our disappointment in their room-cleaning efforts.
Below are a few tip in becoming more aware.
VIOLENCE AND ANGER
1. Take advantage of your transitional times: On the way home from work get in tune with your emotions.
2. Take a moment to yourself to see what is upsetting you. If you know, the cause of your feelings is the first step to avoid reacting negatively or becoming aggressive to your children’s behaviors instead of modeling helpful responses.
Ask yourself: What triggered my stress and frustration today? How can I distress at the moment so I can thoughtfully respond lovingly?
We have to take ownership of our emotions:
We make an excuse saying some made us angry!” With this perspective, we assume that it is someone else’s fault for our feelings, and we are not accountable for our response after that. But when we become responsible for our attitudes and take ownership of our emotions, we will then take control of how we respond. As in the situation above, we will now be able to own how frustrated we were about the dirty room; we will be able to make a more conscious and helpful decision and give a healthy response.
As parents, we have been blessed and have an excellent opportunity to model our kids a respectful and helpful response to emotions.
Do children learn aggressive behavior?
Aggressive behaviors patterns are learned. When adults are acting violently children observe them and imitate exactly what they see. Eventually the child becomes frustrated they are going to act out violently because that is the only thing that they know to do. The child may grow up to become an introvert or a bully. How can we as adults expect children to know how to positively problem solve and feel great about themselves if we don’t teach them. When in a difficult situation do not lose control; remember your children are carefully watching and absorbing every ounce of what they hear and see. Demonstrating violent behavior to problem solve is creating a hostile playground for children to re-create and display what they have learned. When the child starts pre-school and a problem arise what are some ways you think that child will try to fix the problem. It sure will not be by communicating, the child doesn’t know how to communicate with other because he/she wasn’t taught. The way the child will handle the situation is by being aggressive to get their way. That same child will grow up and bully others for what he /she wants. We have to create a positive environment for our families.
Does violent video games teach children aggressive attitudes?
Research has failed to show a causal relation between playing violent games and perpetrating violent acts. They say the fighting that kids engage in is akin to play instead of fighting. I disagree, even though It has not been proven, it should be common knowledge that if you perpetrate violence then violence is received. Let’s think of this question as building a computer. The information that is input will be what commands the computer. It is the exact same way with raising children. The information and influences that we give them is all they have to use. If we teach negativity they will exhibit the same.