This month from the Kid Clinic: Parents, check out these four tips to help your child with anger

Anger is an emotion everyone experiences, and yet is one that produces so much turmoil. This is especially obvious in children and adolescents who struggle to regulate their emotions on a good day and are very hard pressed to do well on bad days.

Below are four tips to help parents to better understand not only anger, but also how to help their children express their anger in an appropriate manner.

First, anger is a secondary emotion. This means that a primary emotion was experienced first before changing into anger. For example, a child is called a name by a peer, feels hurt, and then becomes angry and retaliates.

Second, anger needs to be expressed. One of the worst things to do is bottle up that angry feeling. There are four simple rules to expressing anger.

1. Don’t hurt others.
2. Don’t hurt yourself.
3. Don’t destroy property.
4. Do talk about it.

Three, figure out what coping skills work for your child. Some ideas would be the following:

• time away from others to “cool off”
• listening to music
• drawing
• journaling
• exercise—like going for a walk.

After your child is less angry, talk to them about what happened and connect with them.

Four, make sure to reassure a child that if they handle their anger appropriately they will not be in trouble to telling you how they feel. This seems like an easy thing for us to know but children are insecure and if their history is of getting in trouble after being angry, they will need this reassurance even more.

The Campbell County Medical Group Kid Clinic is a school-based pediatric clinic offering medical care and counseling services for Campbell County students in pre-kindergarten through 12th grade and their siblings ages 2 weeks and up. It is located at 800 Butler Spaeth Rd., across from St. Matthew’s Catholic Church. The Kid Clinic is open Monday-Friday from 8 am-5 pm. For more information, call 307-688-8700 or visit www.cchwyo.org/kidclinic. The Kid Clinic is a collaborative effort between Campbell County Health and Campbell County School District.

This blog was written by Brianne Wooldridge, LPC, Kid Clinic Counselor