Friday 2 February 2018

Mastering the Parenting Backpedal When You Lose Your Cool

a post by Tyler Jacobson for the World of Psychology blog

People respond with anger when they feel hurt, upset, frustrated, afraid or threatened in some way. As one of the most powerful of emotions, anger activates every organ and muscle in the entire body, engaging the flight-or-fight response designed to protect you from perceived enemies. However, your kids are not your enemies. While it’s common to lose your cool with your kids, you also need to learn how to backpedal and make the situation right.

An Overview of Anger

Using anger to respond to kids is like using a bulldozer to clean a house – an extreme reaction. Anger can sometimes lead to an overreaction, which might indicate low feelings of self-worth or outside contributing factors in your life. For example, if you ask your child to take out the trash, you might overlook his failure to do so if you are in a good mood. However, if you had a rough day at work because your boss gave you a hard time, then you might take out your anger on your child, focusing on his failure to do his chores.

In other words, your response had zero to do with your child’s behavior and everything to do with your mood (Stosny, 2015). Try the following tips to better manage your emotions.

Continue reading as well as the rest of the blog post there are links to references (more usual in an academic journal article)



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