Ideas for coping skills and anger/frustration?

[granolamomma]

(Sorry if this is old, I love everything about MDC but the search feature.


I would appreciate if anyone could give me ideas of coping skills we could teach my ds (4) when he's frustrated. Right now he hollers immediately as a reaction. Developmentally his behavior and reactions are normal, the only reason I'm writing is b/c his language skills are behind, so we can't try and talk about things beyond superficial 'I don't want carrots' and 'please can I play on the computer'.

At school they've taught him to raise his hands slowly and take a deep breath while lowering them. But when he's fired up all he does is flap his arms and puff air : (and no, I'm not laughing at him b/c this is a stim or anything, he just looks like a pissed-off bird and it cracks me up.)

I've heard of punching pillows, but I'm not sure if I'm comfortable teaching him to release anger physically (esp. if it wasn't his instinct to begin with). I suppose I should let his room be his safe place to scream and get it all out, but again, not sure how that would help us in public.

He's not reacting abnormally, I just need to give him other ideas to calm down since talking about his frustrations is not really an option right now. And because he's often irritated at me, I don't know if trying to engage him in counting to 10 would work b/c the whole point is being mad at me (therefore not wanting to cooperate). Does that make sense?

Thanks-

Jen

[dianamerrell]

imo four is pretty young to be able to express or work through frustrations. would distracting or redirection work? what about a small bag of toys that are kept for this purpose - a busy bag.

i hope you are able to figure out what works for you and your son

[granolamomma]

Huh. I didn't think about if he was too young. I hope I explained it right - I'm not trying to push him into conforming, I just thought if he couldn't explain his frustrations I'd see if there were other tools we could teach him to release his feelings.

I know that many of his (NT) friends seem to talk about why they're mad (frustrated, really), so I thought I'd look for an alternative.


You really don't think 4 year-olds can learn to try to calm themselves?

[dianamerrell]

i believe you are doing great looking for ideas to help your son cope with frustrations and calm himself. and i think teaching him those skills could be very helpful.

i just personally believe it can be hard for children when their emotions are strong, my nt children quite often need help expressing themselves or talking through it.

i would try to keep frustrations down by distration, redirection, saying no as little as possible (pick battles). while modelling and helping the child work through it. it can take a long time for a new skill to be utilitzed. also, when a person is upset, the hippocampus (the area of the brain controlling emotions and language) cannot fuction properly. that means when upset we start losing the ability to use language constructivly, the more upset the less language available. this situation is is true of nt people and even more so with sn children.

HTH!

[Roar]

I would think more about physical release of anger and see if you can get more comfortable with it. I understand in an ideal world we'd like him to be able to talk it through, to keep it in perspective, etc. but those are not things that developmentally that he's capable of. So, what is the other option?

I don't see all physical release of negative emotion as bad. Punching someone else is bad, but taking a run, hitting tennis balls against a wall, etc. those are healthy releases that many adults use.

I would offer him one or two very simple physical releases for anger.