Oh, Dearest Mother, Sweetest Virgin of Altagracia, our Patroness. You are our Advocate and to you we recommend our needs. You are our Teacher and like disciples we come to learn from the example of your holy life. You are our Mother, and like children, we come to offer you all of the love of our hearts. Receive, dearest Mother, our offerings and listen attentively to our supplications. Amen.



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tovlo4801
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Posted: July 14 2005 at 12:11pm | IP Logged Quote tovlo4801
I'm not sure how to help my 5 yo son. He's always been quick-tempered, but he's also such an extremely loving, sweet guy. His temper always disolves pretty quickly into his normal sunny disposition. (I just got done reading the book about the 4 temperments and I strongly suspect he's sanguine )

Here's my problem. He often expresses his anger with violent screaming and even hitting or kicking when he's at the peak of frustration. I've never seen him act out outside of our family, but his brother is a frequent recipient. I've always struggled with how to handle it because his brother often sets up situations where my youngest's frustrations are set to high volume. I usually take some time to talk with the youngest about what happened and help him see what a better way to handle the situation would have been. Depending on the situation I will often have him go stand on the wall for a while and then apologize to his brother. I also talk to the oldest about the situation he's created.

Yesterday my youngest went to the park with a friend and his mom. The friend's mom told me that my youngest got into a fight with another boy at the park - hitting and kicking and screaming fight.

The friend's mom is a loving person and saw how upset my son was, so she just took him and hugged him. She said he was just rigid with frustration and when she held him he dissolved into sobs. She told me she could see that he just didn't have the skills to deal with his frustration.

It turns out after talking with my son that he, his friend and the other boy were all playing and pretend screaming at the moms (moms were OK with this apparently). At some point my son felt it was too loud and tried to tell the other boys to be quiet. They didn't listen and so he got frustrated and started yelling, hitting and kicking.

We've talked in the past about using your words and I believe that he tried that, but after that didn't work he just got so frustrated that he didn't know what to do. I talked to him about walking away from the situation and about asking a mom for help. He sincerely seemed to feel bad that he didn't think of that, but he said he forgot.

So does anyone have any suggestions to help my sweet little boy with a rough temper learn some skills to manage his frustration?

Does anyone have any book suggestions with characters that have tempers they learned to manage? Or saints that we could read about who learned to overcome their temper?

TIA.
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MaryM
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Posted: July 14 2005 at 2:35pm | IP Logged Quote MaryM
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Or saints that we could read about who learned to overcome their temper?


St. Jerome apparently had a very bad temper. It's ironic because that is my oldest son's middle name. He really struggled with blow-up anger and lashing out in the years from about 5-10 or so. I really wasn't sure what it would be like when he was a teenager. I thought I'd never be able to handle him if he was like that, but he did outgrow it and has been a very restrainted and even-keeled teen.

I assume you are looking for books for you to read with him and I can't think of any off the top of my head. But a good mommy book is Love and Anger by Nancy Samalin. It is basically about parental anger and children pushing our buttons, but covers a lot about the manifestations of anger in general as well as modeling anger management for our children. It's been a long time since I read it and think I should read it again (my 5 year old is showing a lot of characteristics of his older brother).

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Courtney
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Posted: July 14 2005 at 3:29pm | IP Logged Quote Courtney
Richelle, my son who's 5yr old sounds just like yours! When he is at the height of his anger, he does not want ANY comforting. It takes him awhile before he will even let me hold him. My dd sets him up at times, as well. I haven't yet seen him do it towards kids outside of his sister, but when he was going through a separation anxiety thing recently, I had to leave him with a neighbor (who's house he'd been to several times and he usually loves going to) and he did throw a humongous anger fit with me for leaving him. It was one of those situations that I couldn't get out of and I knew my dh would be home within 45 minutes. My neighbor gently corraled him into the house and said he was fine within 5 minutes.

I just assumed, having only dealt with my dd before, that this was more of a difference btwn how boys express anger vs. girls. Like your son, he's happy go lucky most of the time. But when he does get mad, hands fly, screaming begins and he just appears miserably out of control.

I did notice today at swim team that as he was in line, some boys keep pushing and kicking each other (which their moms chose to ignore , and in the process he was pushed a couple of times. He said nothing. I think for my ds, he takes and takes and then blows up. I told him later he should turn around and say, "Please stop. You're bothering me." He seems to not really know how to stand up for himself until it's too late. I'd love to hear any other suggestions anyone has.

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