Page 48 - How Changing Your Anger Can Help You Be a Better Parent book

You can shift your negative thinking first to neutral thinking and then perhaps to positive or hopeful
thinking by repeating these short phrases to yourself. These mantras should be specific to the
situation and your child and feel empowering to you.

Your angry thoughts in the heat of the moment are based on how you perceive, interpret and
process what's happening in that situation. By using your positive mantras, you can quickly
change your angry thinking. You can get yourself to a calmer place with some intentional deep
breathing and some other emotional regulation tools. Then you’ll be able to change your thinking
patterns and positive mantras are the start.
For instance, you may say things to yourself like, it's just a stage, I'll get through this or he's just
being impulsive or I can cope, I don't have to get angry in this situation, she's just trying to push
my buttons, I can handle this.

These are short phrases that you can say in the moment to be able to change your angry thinking
and get to form a clear-thinking space in your mind, be able to shift those distorted thoughts,
prevent the trigger thoughts and be able to focus now on perhaps a healthier angry response.

You can expect healthier outcomes, being able to hold your kids responsible or accountable for
their behavior and feeling much better and closer to your child afterward.

Yelling is an aggressive behavior. Your intense energy is released, but your explosive reaction
may be frightening to your child. That’s sure to exacerbate your child’s emotional dysregulation,
causing the opposite of what you’re hoping for. Yelling is probably not going to calm them down,
unless it is out of fear.

For your child’s immature brain, without the connections yet to self-regulate and make sense of
intense emotional situations, your yelling may activate his/her stress response system. As the
survival part of your child’s brain is activated, you will see fight, flight or freeze behaviors.

What does your child need at that moment? Meet the need, change the behavior.

Here are some assertive statements. When being assertive when you’re angry, the goal is to state
the facts of the situation, your feelings at the time, and a fair request for your child to be able to
meet your expectations.

You could say something like, ‘I want you to pick up your clothes off the floor and either put them
in the closet or put them in the dirty clothes hamper. I get upset when I see that things aren't
cleaned up, since we had talked about that previously and it's time to do your homework.’

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