It's okay. We have understood that anger is a natural emotion and that, under certain circumstances, it can influence our relationship with children. It is never justifiable that we get carried away by it or let violent reactions develop.
Parents are huge
No one will be surprised if I testify against parenting currents that see the child as a little manipulative demon and selfish that only wants to take the measure and that, if we do not put on the sidewalk, we will eat alive and end up raising our hand if we do not raise it on time.
Maybe we have forgotten how small are the children. Imagine that someone on whom we depend totally, absolutely both emotionally and in terms of our own survival, loses control and threatens us.
The threat does not need to be an unquestionable violence. It would be enough with a shout or a word of hate or contempt, or the threat of stopping to love us or telling us that we are worthless. Simply that that person so important to us, from whom we receive the image of ourselves, blames us directly for his lack of control, so that the whole framework of our self-esteem falls apart.
AdvertisingFurther, that person we love madly, who yells at us angrily and raises our hand, even if he doesn't let it fall, it's huge. And when I say huge, I mean huge. That person measures and weighs up to two, three or four times what we. For a young child our hand is bigger than his face. Imagine that a giant of five meters shrieks at you and waves his huge hand in front of your eyes. I would die of fear. For that fear children feel when an adult rises in anger and menace before them, driven by anger.
Once assumed that we must learn to control anger towards children, whether these are direct causes or helpless victims of our frustrations for other causes, we can take the step to learn control techniques.
When the tensions are huge
Each person is different and vital circumstances are also different. Right now there are many fathers and mothers under enormous pressure: the one of the crisis that drowns until seeing exit, the one of the economic shortage, the one of the eternal schedules and the exhaustion, the one of the solitude and the lack of help of the surroundings. Precisely because we are under strong pressures that make everything so difficult for us, it is necessary to learn to control the anger that can reach us all.
And in addition, it may happen that this child ends up assuming these reactions as normal and copy them. When parents tend to shout or hit their children, they should not be surprised if children repeat these behaviors. Or worse, they become indifferent to them and return them or exert them on others.
Self-knowledge and self-control
All parents have felt overcome on occasion, either because of the vital external situation, or because of a complicated family dynamic. However, in any case, we can exercise control over our violent reactions through self-knowledge.
We have explained that anger is a normal response of the human being when he feels threatened or frustrated. In addition to the damage that we produce ourselves at the circulatory, hormonal and psychological level, it can also harm others, especially our children. And we don't want that for sure.
Self-analysis
If we feel that anger overflows us we should do an exercise to understand each other better. A good idea is to write the situations that produce anger, identifying, calm, the true causes of that feeling, isolating them, to put everything in its place. Sometimes the child is not the cause, but the work, the attitude of our partner, health or economic concerns or poor management of our time.
And when we believe that it really is something our son does, we can, at calmly analyze what alters us, identify if there is something in our parenting guidelines or in their environment that is altering it: the arrival of a brother, premature schooling, problems at school or any situation that overflows them. Above all, in this process, you have to be self-critical without being guilty. Identifying the problem is not a reason to harm us, but to find strength and solutions.
Download the frustration without screaming
A good way to unload frustration is tears. Do not be afraid to cry if something is wrong. Downloading negative feelings in this way, crying if we need it, is not bad, it helps us recover. But let's avoid crying in front of children. Do them with a friend, partner or even alone.
Or, in addition, let's look for techniques or exercises that help us channel frustration: sport, yoga or meditation.
Empathy and respect, the great recipe
Exercise empathy It is an equally valuable formula for channeling frustration before anger blinds us. It is a laborious process if we are not accustomed, and, although if we learn to breathe deeply and force ourselves, almost, to do it before exploding, it still works better if we do it when we are relaxed, trying to understand the causes of the behavior of the other that we both It has altered.
Another idea is that of strive to understand that the same respect that we hope others have for us is also entitled to receive it. It is enough, sometimes, to have this very consciously clear, so that our violent reactions stop. Towards our children we cannot do anything that we would consider intolerable or harmful towards ourselves.
Stop on time
Recognizing our physical sensations will give us a clear indicator that anger will overwhelm us. We must be attentive to signals such as accelerated pulse, headache, stomach ache, irritability and muscle tension to stop on time.
Before seeing how anger is triggered, it is better to take a break, relax and look at the situation from the outside, identifying what bothers us and expressing it more assertively. Sometimes, this time of reflection will allow us to discover that what makes us feel attacked is not what the child does, but other circumstances of which he is not the cause, or, simply, understand, that he is innocent and much more vulnerable than ourselves.
One last tip is orKeep the reactions children have before our own attitudes. Getting angry and screaming may stop your behavior, but it will not change your general condition or make you understand well what we expect. Explanations, patience, distraction and affection will undoubtedly give many better results.
