The Anger Iceberg

Dealing with anger is a fact of life when you’re a mom, no matter if it’s your anger or theirs that’s causing problems.

When your child wells up with anger, it’s very normal to become instantly defensive. As a mom, when your child becomes angry and acts out toward you, the best thing to do is to pause, to step away, and to take a minute to regain your composure.  If you need to remove yourself from the situation, that’s okay, and sometimes it’s the very best course of action.  Remind yourself that your child’s anger is not actually about you. It’s about their own emotions. Instead of turning immediately toward defensiveness, remind yourself of Truth such as; “I cannot control my child’s behavior,” or “this discipline is not working, I need to go at this from a different direction.”

Try to avoid telling your child to “calm down” or to say that they are overreacting - while acting out in anger is not okay, you want your child to know that feeling angry is okay. You can say, “I understand that you are angry about (fill in the blank), but we don’t (insert unacceptable behavior here) when we are angry.”

Lastly, I think it’s important for us as moms to realize that anger is often a secondary emotion. This means that feelings of anger are usually the byproduct of another emotion, and we express anger as a way to protect the true and raw feeling that is at the core of us. I love how simply The Gottman Institute expresses this idea with their image of the “Anger Iceberg”:

Try to figure out, “what emotion is really the core root of this anger?”  This step takes some reflection and hard work, but understanding this piece will draw you closer to your child or in knowledge of yourself and in the long run, it’s worth it.