Mastering Anger and Aggression - The Brazelton Way

In this book we will attempt to map out the times when anger and aggressive feelings surge to the top for children. Most adults think of anger as an ugly emotion, one to keep under cover. Parents are likely to be horrified at their children's displays of hostility and loss of control. Yet anger is not only unavoidable, but necessary. There are many triggers for a child's predictable outbursts, and these become less upsetting when parents can anticipate them and understand how they can help their child learn to get them under control.

A baby's first angry outburst can come as shock to new parents. This is bound to happen before he's even 4 months old! Remember the first time your baby cried out angrily when you took too long to fetch his bottle? You were taken aback by his sharp new cries and down-turned mouth. In the first months, parents watch for their baby's needy cries—of hunger, pain, boredom, and fatigue—and are ready to respond. But seeing their baby get mad can be a shock. No longer so cute, nor so sweet and innocent, an angry baby is signaling a new way in which he is becoming a person.

Anger most often arises when our survival or well being appears to be threatened. We seem to have been designed to react this way so that we will recognize our predicament and do something about it. In fact, anger can set off physical responses—flushing, sweating, pounding heart, breathing hard and fast—that push us toward aggressive action.

Though "aggression" often refers to fighting or other hurtful physical acts, it can also mean simply asserting one's self. It is possible to protect one's self, get what one needs, and realize one's potential, all without hurting anyone. We value a child who is passionate about life and about others, a child who explores, tries out his impulses, and follows his dreams. But as he learns to assert himself in these ways, he needs his parents (or caregivers) nearby to set safe limits on this exploration. He will need to test them. A parent's limits reassure him that he will not be allowed to go too far. Discipline will show him that he will still be cared for in spite of his attempts to separate and become his own person. The tantrums of the second and third years are part of this passionate approach to life. Parents who remember this can see these years as the "terrific twos" instead of the "terrible twos."

Children experience irritation, annoyance, frustration, and anger, along with the physical sensations that may go with them, before they have words for such feelings. Even when they do, young children are for the most part too caught up in their busy activity of the moment to be monitoring their own feelings. As a result, they more often seem to be taken by surprise by them, and may need our help to stop, gather themselves, and figure out what the feeling is, where it came from, and what to do about it. Some children seem to do this on their own. Most need a parent's help to find words and use them. We often use terms like "boiling over" or "hotheaded" or "overheated" to convey what it feels like when anger is about to spill into action. Though this may seem abstract, four- and five-year-olds readily understand these images of angry feelings heating up inside. The longer anger lingers without being addressed, the more likely it is to boil over. That's one reason why learning to identify and name feelings early in life are critical skills.

When a child knows that he is feeling angry, he has the chance to let others know. But if these feelings overwhelm him, he'll lose control. Then his wailing and flailing will be his way of telling the world how he feels. With his cries, even a newborn can let his parents know when something is wrong, and that they must do something about it. As distressing as this can be for parents, there can also be a sense of relief in knowing that their baby can already alert them to his needs. Some babies can do so more clearly than others. Older children, too, differ in their capacity to register protest in clear, understandable ways that parents will want to respond to.

Each child will have his own unique threshold for reacting to threats of danger, frustration, or humiliation. One child may barely notice a threat, but another may respond by flying into action. A quiet child's response might be to shut down, or to run for cover; an active child might start waving his fists in the air. One child may seem untouched by one slight after another, only to explode later at a far more trivial one, while another may react every time. The speed and intensity of a child's reaction is unique to him, a feature of his temperament. So is the way he settles down and responds to his parents' efforts to calm him.

To help a child recognize his feelings and learn to handle them, parents will need to be open to all of his feelings, and to face their own self-control. For a child's feelings and behavior will, of course, set off our own. We are bound to react, and at times to model less self-control than we would like. This may just be because the child has shocked or offended us. The hurt may run deeper, though, when a child's feelings, or the way he acts on them, call up the "ghosts" from our own pasts.

Expectations for handling emotions such as anger vary from one family to another, from one culture to another. These differences are adapted to the conditions a community faces, and will shape a child's emotional responses. Some cultures, for example, have had to live with constant threats, and as a result their members may always be on guard, or prone to strong reactions. In some cultures, emotions may be expressed intensely, and in rapid succession; in others, they may be held back, or revealed only with great restraint.

"Touchpoints" are the predictable stages in a child's development in which rapid spurts of learning occur. Just before each spurt in learning the child is likely to regress to earlier behavior—as the "cost" for the new step he is about take. He and his parents will feel desperate, and they may even fall apart. He's bound to feel undone by this backwards slide, a temporary loss of a previous accomplishment. But these regressions, or "touchpoints," are important opportunities for learning.