Dealing with Aggressive Children

Children with aggressive behavior constitute one of the most common and difficult challenges for parents, particularly for young parents. To work on this issue it is crucial that parents have developed a relationship (with the child) based on solid communication and trust.

Parents must be willing to take a step back from the situation and view their child’s behavior in context. What is unacceptable behavior to a parent may seem logical and appropriate to a child. The key to helping a child manage their own behavior is to teach them realistic, constructive alternatives to the behavior habits they have already developed.

A child with consistently aggressive behavior may be taught how to identify when they are feeling angry and then learn strategies to apply in such situations. Children, for example, may be taught to count-to-ten, take deep breaths, run around the oval or visualize a peaceful scene. Children should not be discouraged from feeling angry but rather taught how to deal appropriately with anger when it arises.

In this article, we will take a look at some practical examples of aggressive children and provide tips to deal with this challenge.

Why is My Child Being Aggressive?

Children often display aggressive behaviors  such as biting, kicking, hitting, screaming or yelling to express feelings that they find too complex to articulate. Children may endeavor to express frustration, anxiety, stress, fear or vulnerability through aggressive behavior.

Successful anger-management involves teaching children effective alternatives to aggressive behavior  Aggressive behavior often becomes a behavioral pattern for children because it is inadvertently reinforced. Such behavior is reinforced in a number of ways. The first of these is when the behavior solves a problem for a child.

 Tips to Deal with Aggressive Behavior

• Do not become aggressive yourself. Children often model their behavior on what you do, rather than what you say.
• Do not try to “talk things out” when your child is still angry. Wait until a quieter moment, when the anger has diffused. 
• When things have calmed down, discuss the aggressive behavior  Talk about what could have been done differently to avoid the aggression.
• Write down family rules. Agree together on what the rules will be and get everyone to sign that they are in agreement. Refer to the rules when required.
• If there are two parents in a household, stick together and be consistent in your approach to minimizing aggressive behavior.
• Rewarding assertive behavior will ultimately be more effective than punishing aggressive behavior.

Practical Activity: Comic Strip

This activity is designed to assist children in developing their ability to identify times when a choice can be made within the lead up to aggressive behaviour.

Instructions:

• Ask the child to think of a recent occasion when they behaved aggressively.
• Ask the child to describe what happened (in detail) leading up to the event.
• On a large (A3) sheet of paper, ask the child to draw the lead up to feeling angry in a series of comic strip frames (complete with speech and thought bubbles).
• Ask the child to choose a frame in the comic strip in which they could have behaved differently.
• Brainstorm alternative ways of behaving (eg. instead of yelling at Brian, I could have counted to ten and ignored him).
• Ask the child to re-draw the comic strip including this new behavior and a likely new ending.
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