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Join me, Jess VanderWier, a registered psychotherapist, mom of three, and founder of Nurtured First, along with my husband Scott, as we dive deep into the stories of our friends, favourite celebrities, and influential figures.
In each episode, we skip the small talk and dive into vulnerable and honest conversations about topics like cycle breaking, trauma, race, mental health, parenting, sex, religion, postpartum, healing, and loss.
We are glad you are here.
PS: The name Robot Unicorn comes from our daughter. When we asked her what we should name the podcast, she confidently came up with this name because she loves robots, and she loves unicorns, so why not? There was something about the playfulness of the name, the confidence in her voice, and the fact that it represents that you can love two things at once that just felt right.
Uh Jess, welcome and good morning.
Welcome and good morning.
Um do you want to get right into it?
Do you have anything else to say?
Anything interesting?
We're supposed to get a big snowstorm.
I know.
It's not even that cold.
It's minus five Celsius.
Which is not terrible.
No.
Yeah, I don't know.
I don't know that I have anything else really
I mean we uh essentially live the exact same life.
You don't leave me alone.
What's that face?
I have nothing to say to you this morning.
It's just
Is this gonna be one of those episodes where you're really serious with me?
No, I just I'm trying to think if I have anything to say, anything to update people on.
No
Well, let's end it there.
We're done.
I wonder if people would be interested in the weird way we start these episodes.
Yeah, maybe.
Jordan, maybe we should leave a bunch of this in just to see what people think of our weird
Non-intro, intro.
Mm-hmm.
Oh, that's a good idea.
Because I feel like that'd be an interesting hook.
I don't know.
Yeah.
Use a random sound bite from the episode and then do the little jingle.
Welcome to Robot U.
S
Unicorn, we are so glad that you are here.
As always, let's start the show with a question from Scott.
Well, let's get into this.
Today we are talking about anger.
Specifically anger in children, obviously, but because we're all about family dynamics and connection and everything again in this episode
I did a full-lit review of more than a dozen different research articles or research studies that have been done.
Quite interesting.
Some with twins.
others with just like three year olds and following them through their adolescence and everything.
And I'm not gonna say I didn't learn anything, but a lot of this stuff I know that you had already
been doing research on.
So it was interesting to actually read some of the studies behind what you've already talked about.
Yeah, I feel like a lot of what you were reading when you were trying to research anger was confirming to the stuff that I've already been teaching or telling you.
So I mean that's always good to know that it is based on research, but nothing that you were sharing with me was surprising to me.
That was all stuff I knew.
And to be fair, I did try and seek out research
that refutes what you have said about anger.
And I really didn't find much that I would give credibility to.
Like either the studies were way too small or the design of the study or they weren't peer-reviewed.
So anyways
Good job on teaching factual information.
That's what I seek to do.
Oh, I wanted to have a discussion with you
about as a psychotherapist, owning a practice, working with other therapists and families and children.
I guess let's start with at the beginning.
What
first drew you to working with children and families?
And I think we've kind of asked something similar in previous episodes, but I want to know specifically
when it relates to children who show like signs of anger or aggression.
Like what drew you to that topic?
Yeah, I will say some of my favorite kids to work with over the years have been the kids that are labeled angry.
One of the reasons I love working with kids who are quote unquote angry.
By the way, I don't love labeling kids as angry, but we're gonna just say angry kids
For the podcast, just because it's easier.
Yeah, I would always say that every time we say angry kid, angry is in
Quotation marks.
Yeah, so just picture angry and quotation marks because we're never gonna come out and be like that's just an angry child.
And that's why I like working with angry kids so much, why I'm drawn to working with angry kids
Because I think that angry kids are some of the most misunderstood kids out there.
Angry kids often are labeled as angry, strong willed, they're said that they're stubborn.
Maybe I've heard even recently someone was telling about their own angry kid and they're saying,
Oh yeah, they were born with like a chip on their shoulder.
And I often think from early ages when these kids have more tantrums, more counter will at a young age, like they're stubborn, they're strong-willed, and they get
this label really early on and it just sticks with them.
And in my work with Angry Kids, what my entire job is, is to see why
Why are they angry?
Right?
And so parents come in or teachers come in with this kid is really angry, how do I punish them?
That's what they used to say, you know.
Think some people would still say the same thing.
Some people still say that.
I mean l I get that less now because they know that I'm not gonna tell them how to punish them.
Now the question has kind of changed more to how can I understand them, which I love.
That's great
Love that we're making some progress.
But the question used to always be, Jess, I have a really angry kid, all the discipline I'm doing isn't working.
How do I go about punishing them?
Because
they can't keep being this angry, right?
So my job is to come in and get curious and try and understand why are they so angry.
So you've had families come in and say those words to you?
Like how can we punish them or discipline them or whatever?
So many.
I'm thinking about even the sixteen year old girl that I was working with one time who was quote unquote angry and the parents literally came into me
sat down I so clearly remember this in the chairs in my office and said, look, when she was younger and she would be angry with us
we would just take away things that she wanted.
So we would take away her iPad.
You can't go to your friend's house tonight.
We'd take away privileges.
But now we've been doing this forever, ever since she was little.
And she would just get more angry, but she'd just go to her room and kinda sulk about it.
And now she's 16 and we took away the iPad last week.
She went in our room, destroyed our entire room, found the iPad, and used it anyway.
We tell her to go sit in her room for time out because she's being disrespectful to us.
She refuses.
And it's not like we can carry her and put her in the room and close the door anymore.
Right.
And they're like, so we're out of ideas.
Like what how else do we punish this?
And those are the kind of cases that I love to get because there's just so much room for change.
And I that's the case of a sixteen year old girl, but I will say in our practice we're seeing
a lot of anger specifically in boys, anger seems to be a little bit more of an acceptable emotion for them.
We do see it in girls, but sometimes with girls it it's coming out more in anxiety, but we're seeing a lot of boys in our practice
you know, six to thirteen ish, struggling a lot with anger.
That's a theme that we've just been having lately.
And so we're always really excited to get those referrals in because we know with anger we can work with something.
There the emotion is there, the feelings are there.
We just kind of have to understand why and how it's serving them.
So I don't know if that answers your question, but I will say I love angry kids and I'm really excited that we can dive into a little bit today.
What are some of the biggest misconceptions about angry children that are maybe still prevalent and that you wish people would understood differently?
A few things.
I think a huge misconception for angry children is that it's the child's fault that they're angry.
There's something the child needs to do in order to stop being so angry.
What's the alternative though?
Is it that it's the parents' fault
Not necessarily.
It could be anything.
We don't know why the child's angry, right?
So we our posture has to be curiosity.
It's not necessarily the parent's fault.
Like I was seeing a child who is angry.
Recently we were seeing someone in our practice and the
child is apparently angry and not listening and stubborn and defiant and we don't know why and the parents are fantastic and it's really confusing.
Well we get curious and realize that this boy is getting bullied
And the parents had no idea, the teacher had no idea it was going on behind everyone's back.
And it was coming out at home in anger.
Right.
So that's not the parents' fault.
But sometimes we have to really dig deep to figure out what's going on
So that's one thing I wish that people knew is that an angry child doesn't want to be an angry child.
And I think we need to change the way that we see children.
And I think this is Russ Green, I think is his name.
He's a child psychologist and he
coined the phrase kids do well when they can.
And I've always loved that phrase.
Like our kids want to do well, they desire to do well.
And if they're not doing well, there's something in their environment
that needs to be changed or there's something going on personally for them.
So if we look at our kids and we have a interpretation of their behavior that's a little bit more compassionate to them
Right, just assuming the best of them instead of assuming the worst of our angry kids.
I think that in itself helps us deal with our angry kids in a different way
Right.
So that would be the first thing I wish people would understand.
The second thing I wish people would understand is that if all you do is tell your angry kids to start taking some deep breaths.
It's not gonna work.
This is deeper.
I I think and and I I give coping tools like that too, right?
We need some coping tools to learn how to be angry.
But whatever it is, deep breaths, calming corners is not gonna be necessarily enough to solve your child's anger.
And a lot of people are like, they won't take a deep breath.
It's like, okay, so that's fine, just scratch that.
Like that doesn't matter that much.
Let's figure out the root cause.
So that that's really what's more important to me
And then the third thing I want people to understand how many things do you want them to know?
It's the third thing, it's the last thing, is that anger is often a cover for sadness.
Did you see this coming
Yes.
I have a comment, but you keep going, please.
A lot of times in the kids that I have worked with, anger is there to protect them.
It's a defense.
If I'm angry and I yell and I get mad and I protect myself as much as I can, then I can be safe from feeling how sad I really am
And I think a lot of the times with our angry kids, they don't have places to be sad that feel safe
So a lot of the work that we do in therapy, so let's say a child who's being bullied, right, if they don't have a place where they can feel
feel sad about the fact that they're being bullied and the words that that has been told to them and and they're carrying that sadness like deep deep down within themselves.
the anger makes sense as a way to continue to protect themselves from the words that someone is saying, right?
So a lot of times, and that's not the whole answer, but a lot of the times our angry kids don't have places
to be sad and release their tears and feel like they can calm themselves that way.
So the anger continues to build.
But the anger tells us that there is emotion there and so that's good.
I'd rather an angry kid than a kid who has no emotion
that's harder to come back from Apathy is maybe worse?
Apathy is harder to come back from.
If your kid is angry, I always say to parents, we have a lot we can work with.
There's emotion there.
We j we just
We have to kind of figure out how we're gonna support them, but if we have an apathetic kid who has no emotion left and of like a really flat affect, that's a little bit harder
Hm.
I guess that makes sense.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Okay.
Now, I feel like I don't a hundred percent agree.
And maybe this is unfounded, so it's more my own way of thinking about this, but
To me it doesn't really make sense that anger is often covering sadness.
Okay.
To me what would make more sense is saying that anger is often a cover for
uncomfortable stimuli or like feeling uncomfortable emotionally.
So it's I don't know maybe the brain's way of getting this uncomfortable thing away from you.
Or out of you.
So I feel like saying it's just sadness.
I have a hard time seeing how that is the case all the time.
Right.
It might not be the case all the time.
Sometimes anger is there because we simply need it or something
makes us angry in a very valid way, right?
Anger is not necessarily always wrong, but I think when we're dealing with angry kids
who are constantly angry all the time, that's where I start to look at it a little bit different.
And I start to wonder, how is anger serving them and where is it
maybe being a defense mechanism.
Yeah.
Yeah, so I wouldn't say I disagree with it being a defense mechanism.
I just don't I feel like it in my mind I have a hard time seeing how anger is
mostly covering up for sadness if it's not just anger in itself.
Mm-hmm.
Right?
Like it just to me it seems like it's your brain's response to
something that is uncomfortable for you.
Whether it's sadness or anxiety or whatever, something else, it's a way of getting that feeling out.
Mm-hmm.
That may be completely incorrect, but that's just the way I think about it.
It's hard for me to see that that's just sadness, that it's That's at the root cause of all anger.
Sometimes it can be, but also sometimes it can be I'm fearful of the situation I'm in and I'm backed against the corner into a corner here and I have to lash out.
Like that kind of thing, right?
So I think what we can actually kind of reframe anger in our mind a little bit as alarm.
I think that's kind of what you're talking about, right?
When our system is alarmed.
because something's going on, whether you're anxious at the root of it or you're sad at the root of it.
But anger often is like these alarm bells are going off in our body and it's a call to feel like we have to do something about it, right
And that feeling of anger and the action, the behaviors that often come with anger are two separate things.
But I think what you're describing is
the alarm system in the body kind of going off and being like, I need to respond, I need to do something about this.
It's more of like an active feeling in the body.
And I think that's very accurate.
Yeah, like I know what the feeling of anger in my body is.
Yeah.
Yeah, sometimes maybe it is kind of covering or coming out because of the sadness that I'm feeling of a certain situation, which is
has definitely happened, we know that.
But then I think also other times it's I don't like I'm annoyed by a situation occurring and
I just feel the anger or I'm unc it's just uncomfort, I think.
Yeah, and I mean I could probably get super deep into that, but then people might be feeling like it's a bit overanalyzing it a little bit, right?
But let's say you're annoyed by a situation that's happening and like give me an example of a time you've been angry and annoyed.
I mean it's usually I'm in the middle of like fixing something in the house
And then one or multiple of the girls need me or they all are making a big mess and spilling things and have to clean it up and it's stopping me from finishing the thing that I'm working on.
Right.
So you're feeling frustrated, you're feeling annoyed because you can't do the thing that you wanted to do.
And I could be totally wrong here.
And then at a deeper level it's like, Well, I really wanted to do this thing today.
I was really hoping to get it done.
That's really important to me.
Nobody in this house
sees how important this is to me.
So I'm feeling unseen.
I'm feeling unheard.
And like at least that's kind of what goes on for me, right?
So at a d even deeper level, like yes, it's frustrating and they're annoying you makes sense.
But at a deeper level, you're not getting the thing done that you wanted to do, and that's making you feel unseen or unheard or like
you can't do the thing you want to do and maybe there's some sadness around not being able to get the thing done that you wanted to do.
I feel like that's a bit of a stretch or you're like very loosely defining sadness then.
Right.
Like I think maybe your default is feeling sad about things.
And again, we could get into like how society has basically gendered certain emotions too.
So maybe it's just because I grew up and that was like we've talked about the only acceptable emotion for me to have was anger, then maybe that's just like it wired my brain to feel that way.
And I think your temperament
aligns a little bit more with the temperament of someone who is a little bit more easy to anger or And I got into this in the research that I looked into.
there is evidence to suggest that it's both genetic and environmental anger.
So it can be passed down, which I think it was in my family, and also it compounds on itself when
you have an environment where parents are more angry and it just kind of creates this cycle.
Yeah, and I think for you you're a very self-aware person and I think at this point in your life you're not super easy to anger
So it's a little bit different, but what why I'm trying to kind of push on this point of sadness is I think a lot of even parents define themselves like, I'm just an angry parent.
I'm easy to anger.
I'm a yeller.
My parents were yellers, I'm a yeller
And I think in those situations where anger is your default and you just see yourself as an angry person, to me, almost always in therapy when we have
either kids or adults who see themselves as angry people, there is a sadness that is being defendant, like that the alarm system of your body is defending you against.
And that's just almost always the case when I see this like consistent anger, not just like the one time my kids
Yeah, yeah, right.
Okay.
So that's why I'm trying to just push on that one a little bit.
It's a chronic anger.
Your alarm system is chronically on.
What's the deeper reason?
And often there are some tears and some safety that have to come out.
Yeah, okay.
No, I can see that.
So and maybe that's the difference.
Talking about like a one-off versus like
anger as like your identity and who you are.
Yeah, I would almost define that as a chronic anger then.
Right.
And so like I'm even thinking about your childhood, right?
You're saying like how anger was
the default and everybody was angry and your family was angry and you and I have talked about this before, right?
You're all seen as like this angry, a lot of anger.
Describe my family as either angry or incredibly passionate.
Right.
That's a nice way to say it, I think.
Yeah.
But what do we actually know, right?
Is that that was probably the alarm system always being activated because of all of this underlying trauma that everybody was going through.
Yep, for sure.
So I rant over.
Okay.
I'm on the same page with you now.
I wasn't convinced at first, but I think we just needed to define a few
Yeah, that's perfect.
This is why we have you, right?
We gotta have the skeptic.
Okay, let's get back on topic here.
In your practice, or I guess in situations that you've seen, how would you differentiate between what might be a typical
toddler tantrum or like angry outburst of even our seven, almost eight year old versus something that's more deep rooted and like needs to be handled emotionally.
Mm-hmm.
So I would ask myself and my clients, like
Toddler tantrums, again, let's look at child development, developmentally appropriate.
I saw someone on a Facebook thread that I was on just freaking out because they're toddler is like five tantrums a day.
And I think I even commented back like, hey, you know, developmentally appropriate.
Let's not get too worried about that.
So we're expecting toddlers to get angry about little things.
You know, the sun is shining, it's a perfect day, and they're pissed off at you.
Normal
The difference is as if they're never getting back to like a baseline of like happy or joy or other emotions.
Like we're talking about sort of contentment.
Some kind of contentment.
Like we should see our toddlers have these huge explosive meltdowns and then ideally come down from that, let out those tears, and then they're running and giggling and playing again a little bit later, right?
So they're coming back to that that contentment if we're not seeing that.
That's where I would get concerned.
Like it shouldn't just be all day long tantrum.
And then as we approach the older ages, if you're seeing a lot of power struggles, stubbornness, if you're defining your child as strong-willed, if
Everything feels like a battle, that's again where I'd be like, okay, not everything should feel like a battle.
There should be times where it's easier.
Yeah, there should be times when there's easier.
Should be a trying stage, like you know.
Yeah, yeah
In the research that I was reading
There's some large studies that have been done on that and what I found or what they found was that anger peaks in toddlerhood, obviously, so two to three years old.
And it's when language and self-control skills are really just starting to become more developed.
So they were saying it peaks at that time and then it progressively should get
better and better over time.
But it's just a normal stage of development.
And they found this in wide-ranging, very large studies.
Yeah, it's just important to note that your kids are born with all of the emotions that they're ever going to have.
It's all in them.
Yeah
But no tools.
No way they handle it.
So it's just a lot.
And that comes out in the toddler years.
There were some studies that I read on infancy and they were finding around the age of four months that
they could see that emotion of anger coming out.
So it's something that humans are obviously born with.
There's a component of genetics that are a part of it, but we're innately
able to express some of these emotions and in that study in particular they could block a specific goal from happening for the baby and see that they were getting frustrated and angry.
Which I just I found quite interesting.
And yeah, so I think that's important to know as we have these discussions on anger.
That anger is
An important emotion.
There's nothing wrong.
We're born with it.
It's part of who we are.
And what we're talking about here is when it becomes a problem, is when it's all the time.
Yeah, that makes sense.
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So I've been mentioning that I was reading a bunch of studies on genetics versus environment.
From your professional perspective.
What do you think shapes a child's tendency towards anger and aggression more?
I think it's a mix.
There's definitely both.
So we have children who are born
with a more active temperament, that's what it's called in the research, and this temperament from early on, you will see that these children are a little bit more prone to anger, they have a higher sense of justice
They might appear a little bit more strong-willed, they might be more highly sensitive to things in their environment.
And from the get-go, you might notice that these children have bigger emotions.
We saw that firsthand, I think, with our own daughter who was born with that temperament.
Yeah, I know.
She was able to roll over within two weeks.
I think we have a video of her two weeks old
And she was rolling from her back to her front and front to back already.
Like she's very active.
And as a a baby, she was loud.
Like she was so pterodactyl screeching.
All the time.
And as a toddler
Her tantrums were we I had already had a child at this point, we thought we had dealt with tantrums or her tantrums were next level.
Yep
And so I think that's not anything we did different between the two kids.
One kid was born with this temperament, the other two were not.
Right.
So I think it's really important that we bring that up because sometimes parents are like, what did I do to make them this way?
It's like it's possible you didn't do anything.
This is just how they're born.
Genetic trait that was passed on that.
But what can happen and what I've seen happen so many times in my clinical work
Is that someone who is born with that trait, a little bit more of a tendency towards, let's say, those big, big, deep emotions, has a parent who doesn't know how to deal with that.
Right, which is most of us, and let us tell you, like even when we were dealing with that, it was a lot.
And we had to be very mindful of the way we approach that child.
And a parent who doesn't know how to deal with it
A parent who could gets triggered by anger, a parent who maybe was yelled at themselves.
And so sometimes the parenting can really continue to fuel the anger and it doesn't go away.
It gets worse.
And I'm not saying this to shame parents, but
If you're you have that highly sensitive or that active temperament child and you start to yell at them when they're yelling at you, if you start to punish them, if you send them away from you when they're having those kind of big emotions
If you try and shut down their anger at all costs, if you don't let them have their tears, all of these different things can lead to more
built up anger, more built-up resentment.
And they might not be able to develop, like you were saying, after kind of that three year old stage, like usually between five to seven, we start seeing
Okay, they have some tools to regulate themselves now, but if they haven't learned how to regulate themselves in those early toddler years, five to seven is usually when we see the huge explosions.
And then like seven to thirteen is when they're coming to me.
Because by that time we should start to see some development of coping tools which comes from how we teach them.
Does that make sense?
Yeah, I think that does.
So I think there's a really good mix of both that we need to look at.
Yeah, and uh the research definitely agrees with what you're saying there.
It it was interesting because they did a bunch of twin studies and I mean it would not be ethical for them to
say one twin you have to spank and the other one you do.
But they did find that I think it was close to 1800.
I'm pretty sure that was the study where they had close to 1800 twins.
And just inevitably, a lot of them were parented differently.
Like even identical twins were treated differently.
And they saw fewer aggressive, angry types of behaviors from
the children that were let's say parented a little bit more gently.
Yeah.
That makes sense.
So that suggests that it's more environmental, but there are also studies and it they explain that children, let's say
Likely myself, I'd be interested to take like a genetic study of some kind.
But there are certain genes that predispose people to
being a little bit more angry or sets of genes, I guess.
And if that child is born into a family with parenting that's done more harshly or in more angry or aggressive manners, they will likely be angry and aggressive later in life.
they're predisposed to it and then also their environment kind of amplifies it.
Exactly.
But the children that were followed
who were predisposed to it but had gentler loving like within of course the boundaries of like an authoritative parent like we've talked about they were far more likely
to be calmer and get angry far less often.
Like basically your genetics play a part, but their environment that they grew up in is really what makes the difference.
Yes.
But if they have both the genes to be more angry and they're in a harsher environment, they are many multiples times more likely to be angry themselves.
And I think that's incredibly important research for us to remember.
Because I will say the other I'm passionate about for angry kids is angry kids get the most punishment.
Yep.
And angry kids need it the least.
You've been talking about
intergenerational, I guess anger.
And I mean you can see it in my family, I think it's pretty plainly obvious.
So
In a situation like mine, let's say, where it's very clear, like I know my great grandfather, the stories I hear about him, incredibly angry person.
My grandfather I know had that side to him.
My dad, same thing.
Me, especially when I was younger, did.
And now it's like only certain situations it will come out of me.
Mm-hmm.
But for the most part I feel like it's kind of
I'm pretty calm individual at this point, but how does one break out of those intergenerational challenges that
we have.
Like it's obviously genetic or maybe it's not obviously genetic, but it is very likely a mixture of genetic and environmental for me.
So if maybe I was someone who was constantly angry
How could I work through that?
Well you did.
Yeah, I know I did, but Yeah, so I'm like I'll give you some suggestions, but I think people would love to hear from you too, because I'm assuming there'll probably be lots of dads listening to this.
Like, yeah, that's me too, Scott.
Like
My dad was angry, his dad was angry, their dad was angry, you know.
I think in a lot of men we see this and then their son becomes angry and they're like, I don't know how to deal with this.
And I think the first thing is is there a desire there to not be that way
I think if there's a desire to not be angry, then we can work with that.
I think and a lot of parents who are struggling with anger, if they don't have the desire to do things different, like
I've seen that in some of the parents that I've worked with, right?
Like let's say the female partner wants to do things different, but the male partner's like, Oh, my dad yelled at me and
You know, this was my turned out fine and and there's not a desire to do something different.
That's harder to work with.
But if you're coming to me and you're like, I'm yelling at my kids all the time and I don't want to, and my dad yelled at me and I didn't like it
That's best case scenario.
So first of all, that's great if you're listening to this and you have a desire to do something different.
There's so many ways we can go about healing it.
I think one of the things is like we do need to remember what it was like to be a child
and to truly look critically at our experiences as a child.
I think a lot of times like you said, people will be like, Well, I was yelled at as a kid and I turned out fine.
Yeah.
I didn't like it at the time, but I've turned out fine.
Yeah.
I deserved it.
You know, I was a bratty kid.
And so a lot of the work that I have to do then is is like, okay, but let's really look into what was going on for you as a kid.
Right.
And I tell this story, I've told this on Nurture First a few times
of this person I was talking to said, Well, I was spanked as a child and, you know, I think I needed it 'cause I was bad.
And then I said, Okay, well, give me an example.
What was the time that you were spanked?
And then he said something about
Well, my sister knocked over my Lego tower and so I hit her and my parents had told me to stop hitting my sister.
Like, okay, so then what happened, right?
And we went through all these steps and okay, well my mom said that when dad gets home he's gonna spank me.
And so I was so afraid of my dad.
And my dad got home he spanked me.
Okay, and what did you learn?
Did you learn not to hate your sister?
Well no, I mean I still hit her, but I knew that if Dad was gonna be around that I shouldn't do that because Dad was gonna be there, I was terrified of my dad.
Yep.
Right.
And so what did you do the next time your sister did something and you didn't like it?
Well, I would yell at her, I'd kick her, I'd take her stuff from her room and like all these different things.
So there was no lesson that was being learned.
But unless we get curious about our experiences, we might just think, oh well, I deserved it because I was bad.
And a lot of
I would say these men specifically, not to pick on men, but just seems to be more common, they have a deep, deep internalized view that they are a bad person.
And that comes out in their parenting too, right?
It started when they were a kid.
Well, I was bad, so this, you know.
And then now they're saying that their own child is bad, but really what they're actually saying is like
I was bad, I'm still bad, and so my kid must be bad for doing this too.
So a lot of the work is much deeper than like a a specific strategy.
It's
changing the way that you s view yourself and changing the way that you view your child.
Because I think when we start to view our children as good and having a hard time, like good kids that are having a hard time that need our help
the way we respond to them completely changes.
But if I view my child as a bad kid who needs to learn a lesson, I'm gonna respond to them totally different.
So a lot of it is mindset and and the way we see kids as a starting point.
I think it was that was big for you too.
Yeah, for sure.
It's quite possible that it would be different for me.
I don't know, like it's a it's a different life, right?
You never know.
Yeah.
But me having a son
I don't know if it would change the way I act or the way I do things or the way I interact with a son versus having three daughters
It'd be very healing for you if you had had a son.
Yeah, probably.
Yeah.
Now, can you convince me then I am I'm playing devil's advocate here
I am skeptical of this idea of not following the same path because again, I feel like I turned out just fine.
And
If I have a son or daughter that is not angry or aggressive, they're going to be weak.
And
being angry or aggressive means that they're gonna get things done and they're gonna be successful and they're going to be strong.
And you see that in the world, right?
Like a lot of
the most popular leaders are just angry people and not necessarily the kindest individuals and people would not
I don't I don't know.
It's it would be refreshing, but I feel like people would think that someone who's not angry about things that are happening
people would find that kind of leader weak.
Yeah.
And and you're worried in this skeptical question that you're asking me, you're worried about raising a soft child.
Yeah.
Like a snowflake.
Yeah, I mean that's the that's the term that people use, right?
Especially on YouTube.
That makes total sense because you don't want to raise a kid who crumples at the first sign of someone saying something.
not very nice to them and they go cry in their room for the rest of the day, right?
And I think historically anger and aggression has been seen as a strong emotion, right?
It's the manly thing to do.
Of course
And so if you're raising your kid and you're trying to help them with their anger, are they no longer gonna have that grit and that ability to be strong in the world?
I think that's a valid question and I actually think it's a really important question because I do think that we have a bit of an issue right now where
A lot of people are leaning away from the harsh parenting as we should, but we're all almost going a little bit too far to the passive side.
And we're not allowing our children to experience any hardships, right?
Or we're trying to take away all the pain that they have.
And it can lead our kids to not have the ability to cope with the troubles that will come up in the world.
So I actually think in your skeptical scenario, you are hitting on an important point, which is
When we're teaching our children how to cope with anger and how to cope with aggression and the feelings in their body, we don't want to do that by taking away the things that make them feel angry and put like bubble wrapping them essentially, right?
That's not
going to help them because in the real world hard things happen all the time.
So our job is not to take away all the things that make them angry and upset and kind of bubble wrap them.
but is to teach them resilience and help them continue to have that grit, but we're gonna teach it to them in a different way than you learned it when you were a kid.
So for example
A lot of times people will say, you know, in the real world, if you show up late or you have an issue with your boss, you can't just yell at your boss.
You know, we can't just teach our kids that it's okay to yell at their bosses or whatever
I'm like, yeah, you're totally right.
Like if you're angry at a job, you can't just yell at your boss.
Your kids can't learn that, right?
So that's why we want to teach our kids early on how to deal with conflict in a healthy way.
how to communicate what they're feeling.
So I think the balance here in your question is yes, we want to teach our kids how to cope with disappointment, how to be resilient, and how to still have some of that grit while
helping them cope with their anger in in healthy and effective ways.
And I think when we can do that, we can raise very powerful and strong kids.
Why?
Because let's say for example we have a kid and we've been talking about the genetic and like the nature versus the nurture, right?
So you have a child who's, let's say, very sensitive, sensitive to lights, textures, overstimulated very quickly, and that ends up coming out in anger.
But in reality, I would say a lot of s angry kids are actually highly sensitive and don't know how to cope with it.
So if we could give our sensitive kids tools early on to be like
You're going to be sensitive in the world and the world is going to be loud.
There's going to be lots of things going on.
But here's some ways that you can cope with that so that you don't get to the point where you're screaming and yelling when you're at school
Right.
So we give them some tools to cope with it.
At the very same time, we don't say because you're so sensitive, I'm no longer gonna send you to school.
Right?
That's too much for you.
It's too overwhelming.
You shouldn't have to go to school and and be in such a place that's gonna be too overstimulating.
So at the same time we're still sending them.
Yep.
And we're giving them tools to cope with it.
And so now you have a child who learns, I can do a hard thing, like go to school where it's overstimulating and there's a lot going on.
And I can have tools to cope with the hard thing, and I can have a someone to talk to when that hard thing is really hard and I have a safe place to land.
And I think when you have that combination, that's how you can raise children who are truly resilient and who someday when they're adults and they're in the workforce, they're gonna know how to cope with
Like let's say their day at work is really overstimulating, but they're gonna actually have tools to know what to do so that they're not just flying off the handle at every person that comes their way.
Right.
Well, even outside of work too, right?
Relationships and every relationship that they deal with and every situation they deal with.
Yeah, like even in relationships, right?
If
Our highly sensitive daughter who's more prone to anger, one of the things she likes to do is when she's really angry, she'll just run away from us and like try and hide
Yep.
It's a way for her to kind of protect herself because she's deeply vulnerable in those moments and those are the hardest ones for her.
And so if we just let her be like, oh it's too much.
This this conversation's too hard for her.
We can't hold her responsible for her actions
And she just every time we just let her run away and like, you know what, it's fine, I'll just clean up her mess or whatever.
That's not giving her the skills to learn how to deal with conflict in the real world.
Right.
But when we can actually follow her, have a conversation, continue to hold our boundary, and teach her that she can actually deal with having these hard emotions, and it doesn't mean we're gonna yell at her every single time, but she can have a difficult
conversation.
Eventually in friendships and relationships, she's gonna learn how to have those difficult conversations and that it's okay and it's safe.
But if we never do that, we never follow through with that, never hold our boundaries, never follow through with these discussions
Eventually in relationships she's just gonna run away.
Like she's gonna know, well, even my parents couldn't handle my big feelings.
So how could a partner?
So I think the question and the question you asked is the question everybody's asking right now.
And there's a huge difference between being passive and permissive.
and thinking my child's too sensitive to handle the world and bubble wrapping them and raising a child that can be resilient because we've given them the tools to do so.
Yeah and the reality is
it will be more challenging as parents for certain kids.
Mm-hmm.
It doesn't make them worse.
It's just we just have to have different tools for these kids and that's what we're trying to talk about today.
And that's like
Not to pitch our anger course, but that's like what that course is all about, right?
When this episode launches, will it be launched?
I don't know.
Maybe.
I mean if our anger course is launched.
We'll have it linked if not.
Exciting news.
It's coming out soon.
But we've been working on this course and it's specifically for these tools for these kids who have these.
these different needs.
And I will say for myself, and maybe I'm biased, I'm highly sensitive for sure, but I notice so many things that you never notice.
Right.
And I feel like there are definitely benefits for me being that highly sensitive, maybe more historically prone to being angry.
There are benefits to
the traits that I have.
Yeah, for sure.
There's so many good things to having that trait too.
And like the natural, like we're kind of talking about resilience, like the natural kind of oomph that these kids have
I think they can be the most incredible leaders.
Like they can do such incredible things and just think, like you said, a lot of great leaders.
or like leaders of huge companies, not greatness.
I never said great.
I just said they get there 'cause of their anger.
Yes.
But I personally think
There is also leaders that can do really well because they have the skills to navigate people and they have the skills to deal with their own anger and those are the people that are highly respected.
And I want
our kids to grow up as people who are respected, respect others and respected for the way that they behave and they act.
You say that I don't know that the world
necessarily agree with sentiment but yeah maybe who I think respect yes but I don't actually think I have a small amount of people that I would put in that category who Okay let's get into more practical stuff.
So
We're gonna use you as an example first because you are the child therapist.
You know how to do this well.
When you first meet a child who has been labeled angry, how do you approach building trust and getting them to open up about what they're feeling
First thing I do is just try and find out what they're interested in.
So depending on their age, what do you like?
I've worked with a lot of angry boys and they often like chess.
Like multiple
Oh yeah, I've worked with a lot of boys who like to play chess.
So that's the first thing I do as a therapist is what do you like to do?
Let's do it together
It's like different games.
It's often gonna be far too vulnerable and never on the first session would I look at them be like, what's going on?
Why are you so angry?
You know, I gotta build a trust.
You have to build rapport.
And as parents, a lot of the time with the anger that's going on, you may have lost the rapport.
So you gotta do the same thing.
You gotta try and build the relationship back.
Because your child's only gonna be truly open with you once you have that foundation set.
So I think we always gotta go back to the basics of building the relationship, whether you're a child therapist or you're the parent in this situation or the teacher, it doesn't matter
So that's the first thing.
We do that for a while first.
Typically my line of questioning is never so direct with a child, right?
Never
Why are you angry?
Because they're not gonna necessarily tell me unless I have a very highly self-aware child who wants to talk about it.
It's right there on the tip of their tongue.
But typically we gotta do a little bit more beating around the bush type of work first.
So okay, tell me about school and then
Child tells you about school, tell me about home.
If I'm in therapy, we're probably drawing out people who make them feel safe in their life.
over time, so if they tell me about school, I try and notice when children give me answers that I feel are incomplete.
Our own kids do this too, right?
House school.
Oh, it was okay.
All right, so we have okay.
That feels incomplete to me.
So then I'll ask about the okay
And then I'll get something.
Oh yeah, well, so and so we're playing snow angels on the hill today.
Oh, okay.
So tell me more about that.
And your your best phrase for your angry child is gonna be, tell me more.
You're just gonna kinda keep getting them to tell you more, tell you tell me more and and keep digging because your angry child's not gonna it's not gonna be the first thing that they say that's the problem
But then outside of that, you might not even get an answer specifically from your child.
A lot of people are like, I got curious, I got nothing.
Then your job is to kind of survey the rest of their life, right?
Start to notice a pattern.
When is the anger happening?
Maybe it's always after school.
Maybe it's always in the morning.
Are you seeing any patterns?
Start to kind of keep an eye on that.
And then also I would start to wonder if there's any set sensitivities, like is it when they're overwhelmed?
Is it when they had a busy day?
Is it during transitions?
Like when are you seeing the majority of the anger
Does it happen at school?
Does it only happen at home?
So a lot of the getting curious is actually in your own head, not necessarily asking your kid, especially when they're younger.
And that's your job.
And like just start to observe and notice and realize that a child doesn't go from being content to being pissed off.
Like there's things that are happening in between.
And so
Our job is to try and just be this like scientist and try and just understand.
You can even write it in your notebook.
Try and take some notes.
That will help you get curious.
I'll say another thing that you could do is if the relationship is there between you and your child and you're like, I feel close to them, I just don't get it, like what's going on for them lately.
Let's say they storm off and they're in their bedroom.
I just wrote a post on this, so I just had this top of mind.
They storm off and they're in their bedroom.
I'll maybe grab a tea or a hot chocolate, something that they like.
I'd probably head over to their bedroom and sit on their bed with them and
Sit beside them and be like, hey, you know what I've been noticing lately?
It's like every time I ask you to do your homework, you're mad.
You slam the door, you walk away.
And look, I'm on your team
So let's try and get curious about this together.
What's up?
And just trying to partner, especially with your older kids in that way, is gonna get you really far.
Yep.
Now they know you're on your team versus you're just yelling at them to do their homework
Right.
Now can you clarify something for me?
Let's see, you were talking at the beginning about finding something that in common, playing a game with them.
Should you be asked going through this line of questioning at some point
Not interrogating, but like just kind of bringing things up casually while you're doing that with them.
So if I'm playing a board game with the girls.
I could be asking our oldest about school and friends and all that kind of stuff and issue any issues that's a great time because you're a little distracted.
I find I get the best answers from kids when they're also doing something else, right?
Because how intense is it to look into the eyes of your parent and be like, well, actually, you know
But if you if your eyes can be averted and you're working on something else or you're driving, driving is a great time.
They're in the back, you're in the front.
It's not like you have to make this direct eye contact.
Lots of opportunities like that to have those deeper conversations.
Now can I bring up
Let's say a specific example of of a child who comes home from school, maybe is in is four years old, is in junior kindergarten or preschool.
They're perfectly fine at school all day long.
But then as soon as they get home, they turn into almost a different kid and they start hitting their sibling because their sibling took a toy or something or has a toy that they want desperately and
Just acts totally different as soon as they're home.
What what reason might there be for that?
There's a few reasons
One, let's say you have a sensitive kid and they've had all of these things happen all day, lights, sounds, tastes, textures.
By the time they get home, they're probably super hungry, you know, they haven't had their after school snack yet
And it's just the perfect storm.
We've just hired enough.
So the sensory storm, I think, that can happen when a child gets home and then all of a sudden
It's chaos because you're coming home from school and it's all busy and then your parent just asks you just one more thing and it's like the last thing.
Like if you think of like you have like this bucket that you're drawing from, like it's the last thing, the last drop
and you just lose it.
So I think that's really common and it just shows that a lot of times our young children's school days are not set up for sensory success for these kids.
Another thing is a child may have not felt safe all day to cry about the things that are going on.
And one thing we know about kids is that especially these kids under the age of seven, they need to have tears and often.
I always say that on Nurture First.
It's like
They have to cry.
And so if a child hasn't cried all day long, there's a lot of pent-up tears.
And it's probably because they stubbed their toe and then their tummy hurt and then
so-and-so said a mean name to them and then they didn't get to be first in line and it's just all these little things that if they were home they would have quickly cried about that for a second and then moved on
but they haven't cried about it all day.
So then they see you, they're a safe person.
It's like, oh great, perfect.
And then without even thinking, they cry it all out.
And maybe it's that they're yelling at you and they're getting mad, but actually they're feeling safe with you and they had to let those tears out.
So that's the second reason
And the third kind of matches with that, but as kids get a little bit older, especially in our kids who maybe end up getting diagnosed someday with like ADHD or like some other neurodiversities.
They can often kind of hide their emotions really well.
We call it masking, so they can mask their emotions all day long.
Yep.
And they can appear very, very high functioning.
and they can appear that they understand what's going on at school and that they they get it all, but maybe they're not actually getting it all
And then when they get home again, it's just like a release of all the emotions that they've been having to hold together all day long.
So I do see that a lot.
So what would you do?
Do you handle those situations differently then?
Yes.
Then you try and create a calming environment for them when they get home.
Yep.
Yeah, I'll give you one suggestion for each, but folks can let us know because I could do a whole podcast episode on each other.
I mean this is the course too.
It covers all the stuff.
Or just take the course.
Yeah, honestly the course is really good.
I'm super happy with how it came out.
But yeah, let's just give one example for the sensory thing.
What I did do and have done and will continue to do is our daughter who's like that.
When we get home we're not gonna put a hundred demands on her.
Yep.
Right?
She knows where her backpacks and stuff goes.
We she puts that away.
The snack is there.
It's ready to go
and we're not gonna have a whole bunch of conversation with her while she eats that snack.
She has her snack, she has quiet time.
It's not the time to be like, how was your day?
And how was so-and-so?
And did your teacher was your teacher night like, no, no questioning.
It's too much.
Yep
And then only once she's had her snack and her quiet time and time to decompress, then we talk to her about her day.
It's just a simple change and it helps a lot.
Nice.
Okay, second one?
The second one was needing to feel safe with you.
These kids lots of hugs.
Yeah.
Especially kids who struggle with that separation.
The second I would see them, I would have a big smile on my face.
I would be very intentional to not be on my phone or distracted.
My arms would be open for a hug.
And I would say, I've been thinking about you today.
I couldn't wait to pick you up.
Yep.
And I would anticipate that there's gonna be tears.
And I would be totally fine with that.
I'd be like, yeah, makes sense.
I'm so glad you you feel like you can cry with me
And I would let them have their tears knowing that as soon as the tears are fully out, like we just let them come all the way out, they can move on with their night.
And we see that all the time, like in our practice and with our own kids.
Yep.
Once the tears are out, we can move on
So don't fear them.
Just welcome them in and know that that has to happen in order for your child to move on with their night.
And the third one, the masking one, you would start to notice that if you're seeing at home like your child's having a lot of difficulty with school
maybe like certain subjects at school are really hard.
Those are the kids who are more likely even to like start refusing to go to school because they feel like they have to put on this like certain show at school, but they can actually do it.
So in in those cases they're a little more complex, I'd be talking with the teacher, maybe getting them some support, maybe talking to a doctor
Especially if you're like thinking your child might have some like learning disabilities or like neurodiversity, something going on, sometimes that can come out in anger.
When in reality the child's just feeling like they're not smart, they're not as good as their at as their peers and and they need some extra support.
So that I would definitely be talking to a professional about that.
Okay.
Very good.
Where does discipline fit into the picture here?
Like how can parents set firm boundaries while not adding fuel to the anger fire?
that is within some of their children.
Know that boundaries are important.
Know that your child needs to know what they are ahead of time as often as you can.
Remember I think I sang this once, I won't sing it again on the podcast, but kids like to be told
Mr.
Rogers.
Oh, yep.
Yeah, they like to be told what they have to do when they're doing something new, what's going on.
Tell your kids the plan.
If there's rules that they're always pushing against, ask yourself why.
Remember, children want to do well and they do well when they can.
So ask yourself, is my boundary appropriate?
Is it realistic?
Like sometimes I think parents get the most angry at children for their own unrealistic expectation of their child.
So I guess my I would throw it back to the parent and ask yourself, is this realistic?
If you don't know, then maybe you have to do a little bit more research and we have tons of episodes and courses and all that on that on what is actually a realistic expectation of your child.
And if it is realistic, talk to your child about it in a calm moment and be like, hey, this is this is our rule, this is our expectation.
How can I help you meet that?
Sounds good
Next question.
Do you teach children specific techniques or exercises to manage their anger?
And what does that look like in practice?
Yes, I do.
So again, calming tools, I mean
Blah blah blah.
They're gr they're fine, but there's not the end all be all.
Okay, so yes, I do teach kids calming tools because I do believe that we all
need to have things that help us cope.
And the best way a parent can ever teach a calming tool is to just model it to them.
Model how you deal with your anger.
Be that calm presence to them.
That's gonna go further than any deep breaths.
So the number one thing that I do in therapy and what I teach all the therapists that I supervise is therapy should model like what you eventually want your the child to do for themselves.
So you're gonna you're just modeling the environment that you want the child to do.
So you're just modeling being calm.
You're modeling maybe taking some calming breaths, like let's say the child's screaming at you in therapy and you're just like, oof.
It feels like there's a lot going on in the room right now.
I think I'm just gonna take a couple breaths, just calm myself down.
Yep.
You know, so you're just modeling, you're always modeling what you want your child to do and and that's how they're gonna learn.
And
Yeah, we have resources that teach tons of different ways.
You know, some angry kids need to push on a wall or they need an outlet to kick a ball or to slap their hand on some
Pots and pans as drums.
Yep.
Uh I mean we have a whole toolkit on activities and different things you can do with kids.
So I'm not dismissing that.
I have a whole toolkit on that.
But I will say the greatest thing that you can do is just do those things yourself and your child will follow suit.
For sure.
And the research definitely agrees with you on that.
Everything I found was saying that the parents are caregiver who models.
Children always look to their parent as the model for how to live life.
So
If you are calm and in most circumstances you're showing what you want, they will eventually sort of learn the same thing.
Yeah.
That's all the research was showing that too.
I wonder if we need to do another episode on like how do we become a less angry parent or something like that.
Because I think a lot of this people will be like, okay, this is good, but I just can't stop yelling at my kids.
Okay, last question.
If you could give parents just one takeaway from everything we've talked about today, about
Angry children, what would that one thing be?
Okay, I'll be a little cheesier on this, but to say there's so much hope for your angry child.
Don't write them off.
Don't label them as angry.
There's so much hope for them.
There's so much we can do to support them.
And they don't have to be labeled angry for the rest of their lives.
So don't feel like you're stuck with this right now
And a lot of it, you know, might be genetic, it might be this temperament, and we can give you tools.
Not just we, but like, you know help you set up the environment.
Yeah.
The environment can be set up for success for your angry child.
So please
continue to have hope for them and continue to seek out tools like this episode today to support them and know that it won't necessarily be this hard forever.
Perfect.
I love it.
Beautiful.
That's a great way to end the episode.
Thanks so much.
Well thank you.
Thank you all.
This was a fantastic episode.
And like we said, we are working out a course.
I'm not sure if it's out or not.
Yeah, we'll see if it is by the time we're put this out.
If it's out, it'll be in the show notes.
If it's not, stay tuned.
But we love this topic.
and let us know if you want more.
Hey friends, thank you so much for listening to today's episode.
We are glad that you are here.
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