Curious Neuron

It's easier to be angry than sad: Tips to support your child (and yourself)

• Cindy Hovington, Ph.D. • Season 6 • Episode 30

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Regardless of being a child or an adult, it is much easier to express anger than sadness.

Something happened the other day with one of my kids that helped me realize I had missed this in my own child. There "easily upset" behaviour was actually them feeling sad about something.

This episode outlines the conversation I had with my child, gives you tips to teach your child emotion regulation skills and a reflection prompt to understand your own anger if you get upset very easily.

This week in the Reflective Parent Club, we are talking about triggers. We are testing this membership all summer, but don't miss out on the September launch.

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Source:
https://curiousneuron.com/2024/07/20/understanding-and-supporting-your-childs-emotion-regulation/

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Join our membership, The Reflective Parent Club to learn how to manage your emotions and model this for your child. Use code PODCAST 20 to get 20% off any membership and get 2 FREE WEEKS to try it out
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Speaker 1:

Hello, my dear friend, welcome back to another episode of the Curious Neuron podcast. My name is Cindy Huffington and I am your host. I have been talking with parents this summer and my mission is to reach 100 parents. Each one of you that has taken the time to schedule an appointment has made me just so happy. I'm not just talking now to this microphone in front of me. I'm speaking to the mom that moved away from her home in Dubai and is living in Ontario. I'm speaking to a mom in Montreal who has twins and is navigating working from home and understanding how to switch out of that sort of role into momhood in 14 steps. I'm speaking to a mom living in Japan, and she is Hungarian and now living in a new world, a new culture, raising her boys. I know who I'm talking to and the more I can do that, the more I know what you need to hear, and it's loud and clear that we need more support as parents and that we need to understand our kids more as well. All of you appreciate the research and the science and the education, and I we need to understand our kids more as well. All of you appreciate the research and the science and the education, and I'm going to continue doing that, but I also want to make sure that you are taking care of yourself.

Speaker 1:

One of the questions that I ask during these interviews that I'm conducting with parents is what are your needs? What makes you happy? You know what does that look like for you? And some parents can't answer that. Some parents are not sure what their needs are because they have a two-year-old or a three-year-old and for the past two, three years their needs have been nurturing that child and so their own needs, they feel, are not there anymore. It's about the needs of their child, and so part of my mission is always going to remind you. Part of my mission is going to be to remind you that your needs still matter.

Speaker 1:

Today we are focusing on something that happened to me, and I realized that I might not be alone when our child often displays anger. It is so easy to display anger. Think about yourself anger. It is so easy to display anger. Think about yourself or another adult in your life that expresses a lot of anger. It is an easier emotion to express or externalize than sadness is, but sometimes when somebody expresses anger, including our child, there's an underlying uncomfortable emotion that they're pushing away or are not even aware of Sadness, and sadness hurts. It hurts to admit it, it hurts to surface it and bring it up and say this is how I'm truly feeling, and it is much easier to stay stuck in our anger. And something happened with one of my kids that I want to share with you today and shed light on emotion regulation and sadness and anger.

Speaker 1:

But before, as always, I'd like to thank the Tannenbaum Open Science Institute for supporting the Curious Noun podcast, as well as the McConnell Foundation. So, for those of you who don't know, this podcast is supported by these two organizations and I'm so grateful. And because you have continued to download the podcast, continue to leave ratings and to review the podcast, I have received the funding for the next season, so I'm really excited about that, because I will be bringing in some guests and continue sharing my insights with you. I also want to say that what I might be doing is cutting down the number of guests on the podcast, not by much, but just a little bit, so that we can bring on one of the guests every month onto the Reflective Parent Club, which is a membership that I will be launching in September. We are currently in the testing phase of the membership. We are about to finish month one and I'm really excited about the results of this and how parents finally have a place to come and share what's stuck on their mind, to notice patterns, to build awareness around their own emotions and their child's, and to have the right words to say to their child and to themselves. And if you want to make sure that you don't miss the one-time discount that I'm going to be putting out there for this membership in September when we launch, make sure that you are part of the waitlist.

Speaker 1:

In addition to that, if you're an organization or a company or you work for one that you know supports parents, reach out to me at info at curiousneuroncom, because I want to create this sort of space in the workplace, so maybe bringing this reflective parent, you know, so that you can jump on at lunchtime. We have a meeting every Tuesday, one at noon Eastern time and one at 8 pm Eastern time every single Tuesday, and I've done that strategically because I know that some parents only have time for themselves when they're at work. So those two one hour meetings, you jump on the one you want. Those are your time to pause. It's for you. This time is for you, not your child, not your partner, no one else but you. And so I want to make sure that parents working can at least say hey, it's Tuesday, wow, I've had a really rough week or weekend. I need to get this off my chest because I'm not concentrating at work, and jump onto the Reflective Parenting Club at noon, get it out, go through the system that we're creating and then feel much better when they leave. So email me at info at kirstenoncom if you want to bring this to your workplace, daycare, school, any company, because I think it's important that we start doing that. And if you haven't done so yet, please take a moment to rate the podcast, to review it on Spotify or Apple podcasts. Um, because this does make a difference, um, for, as you can see, for the funding that I get to continue the podcast, it's not funding for me, by the way, it's funding for the people that are helping me build Curious Neuron and the podcast and get the guests and so on. So it's really important for this. Okay, that's done, let's move on to today's topic.

Speaker 1:

So, one of my kids I noticed so I had noticed this a while ago they were often moving towards anger very easily, and so it's very easy for a parent moving towards anger very easily, and so it's very easy for a parent, including myself, to say, wow, that kid gets angry very, very easily and I need to work on their anger. And then something happened. Something happened when I noticed that they were switching towards anger for something. So there was a consequence given for an action that this child had done. So there was a consequence given for an action that this child had done, and the consequence made my child very sad and, as I noticed, their sadness was escalating, it turned into anger. And that was the first time I realized oh, wait a second this entire time that I've been working on this child's anger, I should have been working on their sadness, but they were masking without realizing, because they're still young, masking their sadness with the anger, because sadness hurts. So here's what I did I used this particular situation to have this discussion.

Speaker 1:

So my child was very sad that they were not allowed to go do something because of the way that they had, you know, treated their sibling and something they had said to them. And so I sat with my child, I hugged him, I sat with him and held him through his sadness and, once he had regulated himself. I said sadness hurts. I know I don't like being sad either, and you know what I just realized In the moment sometimes, when you get angry, I think you're actually sad. And so we had this conversation around sadness and anger and we use different examples of what you know leads to us feeling sad Hearing a no right, like not being allowed to do something or ending something. So transitions, sometimes transitions are a little sad, like leaving grandma and grandpa's house, right, and it's easy for us to see the behavior change and say, wow, this kid's misbehaving or this kid's so angry. They get angry so easily. But it's because it's kind of sad underlying that.

Speaker 1:

Not, you know, the intensity isn't a 10 on 10, but there is some sadness associated with getting a consequence right. So let's say, uh, I don't know. Let's say your child is, um, I don't know. They're with siblings and they do something wrong and they do something that is disrespectful or hurtful, or throw a toy, whatever it is, and you say no, nintendo today, or no, you can't watch a movie tonight, whatever it is. That consequence they're angry. Right, how dare you give me that consequence? I love to play Nintendo or I was looking forward to movie night, but underlying that is a sadness of I'm not going to get, I'm not going to participate in movie night, or I don't get to play the game that I love playing. I can't play Mario Kart with my siblings, right, there's a sadness to that. There's a sadness and anger. But that sadness children don't really see that, and so I think it's our responsibility to remind them that sometimes it's easy to show anger but underlying that could be some sadness. Sometimes it's easy to show anger but underlying that could be some sadness.

Speaker 1:

I've often showed my kids this sort of dynamic in movies. So if you think of the Grinch, I always tell my kids many times these people that are, these characters that are very, very mean, there's an underlying sadness and they often show that in kids' movies. So there's a scene in the Grinch where he's reflecting on his childhood and he's not participating in the Christmas celebrations and he's alone, right, he's lonely and there's a sadness that comes with loneliness. So you can start that way to kind of show some characters that are angry. It could be in a book, it could be in a movie, it could be in a TV show, and start questioning your child. Did you notice? Was there any part that made you realize that that character is actually sad, but they're showing it as anger. We externalize it as anger, but we internalize and hide and suppress the sadness. And you can also think of you know some people around you, some people that might be very, very angry.

Speaker 1:

Sometimes there's an underlying sadness, a loneliness or trauma or a childhood adversity that isn't discussed very often. Many people that I've spoken with will describe their fathers this way, where there's a lot of anger, and that's the emotion that they express very easily, right? So the anger part is very easy for us to show and express and externalize. But what we have to start having the conversation around is the sadness part, and that is uncomfortable and that's okay. It doesn't mean that we have to push it away. Have this conversation with your child of it's okay to be sad. Come see me when you're sad, you don't have to get angry. You can hug me, I will hug you, I will spend time with you, we can hold each other, we can go for a walk. Maybe your child has their own way of working through their sadness. But if we don't recognize these moments when they are feeling sad and expressing it as anger, they won't learn how to regulate that sadness and that's going to lead to them being older and automatically going towards the anger, because that's known, it's their pattern and it's easier and more comfortable to do that rather than kind of sitting with that sadness.

Speaker 1:

So what is sitting with that sadness look like for your child? I'm sure the question just popped in your mind of okay, cindy great, you just use that phrase that I've heard everywhere sit with your sadness. What does that mean and what does that look like? Because many people in our generation I mean we didn't learn how to sit with sadness. We moved on, we got over it. Right, that's what we had learned, and so I think we have to figure out what that looks like for us, for ourselves.

Speaker 1:

If sitting in sadness means crying for you, that's okay. You don't have to hide your tears for your child. You don't have to explain what the tears are all about. You know you can explain it at a child appropriate level. You know people my age now are starting to I'm in my 40s are starting to experience the loss of a parent, and so if a grandparent you know your child's grandparent passes away, you don't have to suppress your sadness or our parents getting sick. We don't have to suppress the fact that we are sad about somebody being ill, but we also don't have to externalize it as anger. Use those moments to have conversations with your child. If you expressed anger more easily and you realized that in retrospect, the next day you can have that conversation with your child, I was really sad that so-and-so is sick, and so when you asked me something or when you did that, I got angry really really easily and I'm so sorry, I'm just sad, and it's really really hard. Right, having those conversations with your child are the conversations that are going to allow them to build these skills.

Speaker 1:

It's not a simple recipe, but the basics of all of this, of learning how to regulate our emotions and how to express them, is by seeing what our parents do in our environment, not learning. This has consequences. So I'm going to post an article in the show notes and I also have a new blog post on my website that summarizes this article. But there were components of emotion regulation that maybe you're not aware of and I want to share that with you. So what they talk about are these three components. There's emotional awareness, so that's the ability to identify one's own emotional experience.

Speaker 1:

Poor emotional awareness can contribute to internalizing symptoms like anxiety and depression. Then there's expression management. So this includes both the inhibition of emotion expression, which is known as suppressing your emotions, and dysregulated or exaggerated emotional expression Expression. So suppressing your emotions can lead to internalizing symptoms, while exaggerated expressions can lead to externalizing your symptoms and that can lead to aggression. So it's not about only doing one or the other and not doing any of them, but just being aware of how often, right? So if you are somebody that often suppresses emotions, thinking that that's a good way for your child to learn about emotions, which is just always being calm, that's actually not a good thing to do all the time, right? Sometimes, for sure, there are moments when we have to suppress our emotions. I think of being at work, right? Or even teachers that are constantly in scenarios where they have to suppress emotions, medical staff, anybody. Basically, when you're at work or in front of your child, you might feel like you have to suppress your emotions, you might be stressed and you're trying to look like everything is fine, but suppressing your emotions leads to more anxiety or more chances of anxiety or depression. On the other end, there's externalizing, and if you are often externalizing, often yelling and screaming and just never really controlling that emotion, then that leads to higher chances of aggressive behavior through your words, through your actions.

Speaker 1:

The third component of this is emotional, or emotion, coping. So these are strategies that we use to manage these negative emotions in a constructive way. Effective coping can reduce both internalizing and externalizing, but again, that doesn't mean that you're not expressing any emotion at all. So if you've listened to this and you say you know what, cindy, I recognize this in my child or myself or my partner or a family member or a colleague. Here's how we can start to have maybe some reflections around this and with our child, here's some guidance to help you teach them about their emotions and what regulating their emotions looks like.

Speaker 1:

Let's start off with your child. So the first part of all of this is really encouraging their emotional awareness, so helping them identify these different emotions that they have. It could involve, you know, talking about their feelings, but more than that, it's about what you're modeling in yourself. So the more aware you are of your own emotions, the easier it gets to kind of have these conversations with them. And again, it's not about perfection. You know that everything I talk about here with Curious Neuron doesn't have to do with perfection. I don't want you to be a perfect parent or think that there has to be this idea of a perfect parent. Look, I made a mistake with my own kid. I didn't notice the underlying sadness, which is why I'm sharing this with you, to bring you, you know, to kind of bring up your awareness around this kind of bring up your awareness around this. But then once we notice it and we're more aware of it, it's about taking action right.

Speaker 1:

So when there are moments when you realize in retrospect, you know what yesterday my child was angry but it's because I said no, I gave them a consequence, or they couldn't go play with their friend outside, and so they got mad and they stomped their feet and they threw their toys. They expressed their anger. Sit down with them and talk about that, tell them. You know, when I said no to you yesterday and you couldn't go play with your friends outside because I don't know you hadn't put away your toys in your room and I asked you several times and you ignored me, I can see that you were really, really mad. You kicked your toys and you yelled at me. You can't do that when you're angry in this house. You can be angry, but you still can't try to break things or be disrespectful towards me. But more than that, I'm sure it made you sad that you couldn't see your friends. You think that emotion might have been there too, right?

Speaker 1:

So having this kind of conversation with develop a little bit of awareness, and it's never about asking them to suppress an emotion. Anger can still be there, with the underlying sadness, but it's about showing them that there are certain ways that are acceptable to you know. Show anger. You can. In my house you can raise your voice if you're really, really upset. You're not yelling, you're not disrespecting anybody, you're not calling anybody names. That is not allowed in our, our house, whether we're an adult or a child, there is never um. The words that we use is always lift somebody up, never put them down. Right, so you can get mad at somebody, but you don't put them down. You don't have to put them up in that moment, but just don't put somebody down. No disrespecting and no name calling, and that's fair rule to you.

Speaker 1:

Can be angry and maybe ask for space and walk away, maybe express and just like grunt or whatever it is. Give them something that they can do when they're angry and a way to express it Walking away from the situation is not always possible. Let's think of us as adults. Are we that good at regulating anger, anger in that moment? Do we look at our partner, if we're really, really angry at them and say, hmm, I'm going to walk away right now and talk to you tomorrow and I'm calmer? No, we might yell, and in that moment it's kind of okay, but as long as we don't disrespect each other and call each other names, because if we are doing that in front of our kids, we are modeling this for our children and and we don't want that. So it starts with us.

Speaker 1:

So, now that your child is aware of when these moments happen, and maybe helping them understand what that feels like in their body, where do you feel your anger? I remember after having my third child, I went to the dentist and she asked me if I would grind my teeth at night and I said no, I'm pretty sure I don't. I asked my husband and he said no, I never heard you grind your teeth, and it was only in a moment of anger that I realized I was clenching my jaw really, really hard when I was angry. And then I had to develop the awareness around this and then I stopped and now everything's okay, thank goodness. But just to show that we are feeling our anger somewhere in our body and that awareness piece of knowing when we feel angry also comes with knowing what it feels like in our body.

Speaker 1:

But then we need to tell them what to do with this. You know emotion that they're feeling and how to kind of cope with it. So once they're able to recognize it and know what's the acceptable-ish way of expressing it right, whatever works in your home then they have to have some tools or skills in terms of how to cope with this. Everybody will have a different coping mechanism. Some people, you know, when it comes to deep breathing, it works well. Other people feel like in the moment it's just, it doesn't work and that's okay.

Speaker 1:

Moving, you know if you need to step away from the situation because in that moment you're not going to say anything that's productive. Teach your child that it's okay to step away. I've explained to my kids that I'm okay with them having to step away. You know, if they need that moment, that's okay, and I do the same thing with my partner. Maybe they need to move and go for a walk with you, or maybe they need to do some jumping jacks in their room or go play in the backyard something, and then, if your child is old enough, you can teach them how to journal. You know, and reflect through the problem that's causing them to feel this angry, but you don't do it right now, in the moment.

Speaker 1:

Right, think about being in your most intense moment of anger with your partner or a family member, and they would say take a deep breath. Or why don't you go journal, right? Always put yourself in the situation, the same situation you're placing your child in. Put yourself in that situation. Would it work? And if not, let's move on to the next solution, shall we? Because you know it's just about maybe taking the time first and then thinking about what's causing me to feel this angry, and we can use that example for ourselves, right? So if we are having or had an argument with our partner during dinnertime, let's say and we ignore them, we put the kids to bed and then we go our own ways. One's upstairs and one's on a different floor in a different room. We were each watching your own TV show, and you need to take the time to think about it. You can write about it. You can talk about it out loud on your phone, go for a walk and say it out loud, reflect on it by writing Whatever works best for you.

Speaker 1:

But what caused you to feel this angry? Or is it a trigger? What is the trigger? There are so many things or reasons why we would feel triggered, and it could be because of the way somebody made us feel, or it could be because of a pattern that is stuck, you know, in our minds that we have to kind of undo. These are all things that we talk about in the Reflective Pairing Club, and I think that it's really important for all of us to have these tools to be able to identify these things. So, take the time to think about what made you angry and this, again, is something that can you know. You can have this conversation with your child. What made you feel this angry? And again, if they realize because I was sad that I couldn't play with my friends, then that's great, that's okay, that's a good insight and that's the conversation that you can have with your child. And again, when it comes to coping tools, give things a try. Maybe breathing works for them. Teach them different tools that they can use.

Speaker 1:

And if this episode feels familiar to you and the way that you sort of externalize or internalize emotions, here's a reflection prompt for you what triggers you? What brings you from zero to 100? Think about a conversation you have with somebody that leads to you feeling very angry. Think about situations and moments that lead to you yelling, whether it's with your child, friend, partner, family member. Start writing those down. I hope you have a Curious Neuron notepad by now, because we often have these reflection prompts and I think that that's the best way for you to become more aware of things and patterns that you have and things that you're doing or what you're saying.

Speaker 1:

We can't just continuously you know power through our days and our weeks and our months and say I need to be better at X, y, z, we need to do something about it. So if emotions are one of the things that you were working on, it's not as easy as grabbing a weight and working out. It's about really reflecting and pinpointing what the problem is. So start writing that in your notebook. What brings you from zero to 100? And maybe, maybe, just maybe, by writing the reasons, you will see that there might be some underlying sadness there. And if you do notice that, then what will you do to sit with it next time?

Speaker 1:

If a partner says something to you that makes you feel disrespected or shamed and you yell back at them and call them names, why not address the sadness and set the boundary? Don't speak to me that way, or I don't like it when you speak to me that way, or I need to set a limit right now. If you want to speak to me that way, then I will walk away. Right, you matter, then I will walk away. Right, you matter, and I can talk about your child every single Monday, but in the end it starts with you. You have to remember that you are important and that you matter, and start the work on yourself first and you'll see it'll trickle down to your child. I promise you, and that, my dear friend, is all I have for you today.

Speaker 1:

I hope that this episode was insightful for you and that you learned something and that it gave you something to reflect on. That's all I want for you is to have that one reflection of the week every single Monday, and I know from the parents that I've been having conversations with that many of you are struggling, feeling lonely or struggling with your well-being. We had a chart, a psychological well-being chart, that parents filled out last week for the Reflective Parent Club, and the domain that most parents scored low on was life's purpose, so we're going to talk about that in an upcoming episode. I definitely think that we need to, you know, bring that back up, because I think that when we become parents, we just forget about ourselves, and that is why I'm here. I want to help you.

Speaker 1:

I hope you have a beautiful and lovely week. Don't forget, if you want to chat with me, click the link in the show notes and book a meeting in my calendar. I have some dates left and I will extend it into September because I think I will need more time. And also, if you don't want to miss the discount for the Reflective Parent Club, join the waitlist in the link below. I have the resource for you about the article that I read and a Curious Neuron blog post up in the show notes or down in the show notes as well. I will see you next Monday. Bye.