Looking for an angry or aggressive child or teen therapist around Georgetown, Leander, Round Rock, or North Austin area?
I’d like to share some of my ideas and strategies that I use in angry aggressive child or teen therapy. Typically success involves two tiers of intervention. One is teaching skills for recognition that an emotional response is beginning, before it’s too late, and skills for communicating and managing the emotional response in acceptable ways. The second is working with parents, and sometimes educators or other caregivers. I work with parents to explore and decide on new strategies to try. Different ways and timing of talking to kids or teens, and new ways to set up discipline and behavioral management that should feel better and be more effective. Sometimes just having someone to talk with about what you get upset about helps too. Venting.
As an angry aggressive child or teen therapist in Old Town Georgetown, here is an overview of some of the methods I use for teaching anger recognition, expression, and self-regulation skills. I might start with a survey of stress triggers. I can give them a 1-5 scale with pockets, 1 meaning no problem, I can handle this, 4, could make me really mad, 5, out of control. It’s good to identify the triggers. Sometimes we find there are triggers we were not aware of, such as sensory problems with noise or bright light. The school cafeteria. This activity can be a good icebreaker, because your child or teen doesn’t have to talk to me or look at me. This helps if they were reluctant or mad about coming to see me.
Using gradations from 1-5 can also help with identifying signs from your body, behavior, and thoughts that an anger response is beginning. We need to help your angry aggressive child or teen notice when this is starting before we get to the fight or flight response, this results in adrenaline release and bypassing the smarter thinking parts of the brain so that a behavior occurs quickly without thinking. I also use menus of stress signs, stress triggers, and stress management strategies. I can get more information this way, and build awareness. If I just say, “How do you know when you are getting mad?” I may just get a shrug, or “I feel mad.”
We can identify observable behavioral changes, when your child or teen is at, say, a 2 or a 3 on their 1-5 scale. Like clenched fists. Then the parents or teachers can say, “You have your fists clenched. Are you at a 2 or a 3?” What can you notice in your body that tells you about getting upset?” Could be tight muscles, faster heart rate, hot ears, and so on. Eventually what should happen is the child or teen will notice their fists clenched, see you, anticipate what you will say, and then state they are at a 3. Eureka, now they are noticing more independently they are headed for trouble if they don’t take a break, say something, and do something to distract, mitigate, and return to emotional baseline. Then we can do the conversation and problem-solving piece.
Once we have independent emotional response recognition, before it’s too late, then we can work on anger management strategies. Again I can help your angry aggressive child or teen as their therapist with menus to choose strategies to try from. Their are categories of tools. Talking tools, thinking tools, relaxation tools, activity tools, special interests, and inappropriate tools. I like the last category because it let’s me point out that these things, like yelling, hitting, breaking, don’t fix the problem, they make it worse. So we don’t want to use those!
Often angry and aggressive children or teens do well with activity tools. If you can offer a breakout activity that they enjoy, like legos or video games, they can get busy and distracted and calm down. Plus the activity is incompatible with the undesired behaviors. They can’t do their preferred activity and chase you around the house screaming.
I also like teaching the thinking tools. What can you say to yourself that would make this seem less bad? Use your self-talk to self-soothe! Thinking tools are portable, you can take them anywhere with you as long as you can remember. Plus they are private. Nobody can see you using them. This is where we do what’s called cognitive-behavioral therapy, or CBT. Click the links to see more about that.
It’s pretty easy to teach these skills, and practice them in my office. I use some games and stories for support and visuals. We put everything on forms and templates so they can be reviewed or referenced at home or school. It can be harder to get someone to actually use their chosen anger management strategies. This is where behavioral modification therapy comes in.
Angry Aggressive Child or Teen Therapist Georgetown Behavioral Therapy
Let’s face it, the kids often don’t want to change. They may be reluctant to admit to a problem and do the work. The angry or aggressive child or teen may not want to take responsibility for their behavior. It’s easier to blame you or someone else. They may want you to change, or the rest of the world, to better suit them, so they don’t have to be mad and do these things.
This is where we can encourage success by offering incentives and creating a new structure of rewards, consequences, and discipline delivery. This is behavioral therapy. Yes, it means you, as a parent, or parents, work out what changes you want to implement. We make a plan in writing with rules and expectations and rewards. We talk about what to say, and often more importantly what to do, when your child or teen acts out in angry and aggressive ways. And, much more importantly, as you will learn, when they don’t.
You can use your angry aggressive child or teen therapist in Georgetown to set up what is called a credit system. We can develop a safety plan. Like what to say and do when things get scary. Get Mom and Dad on the same page and in agreement so they don’t inadvertently split or undermine one another. This is only difficult until it’s not. Having a third party to help negotiate different ideas about parenting to reach an agreement can make things feel a lot better in your house.
See at home or school video courses about anger management, behavior management, and more.
More about anger and aggression on this site.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4808268/