Managing Children’s Anger and Developing Emotional Literacy

Understanding Children’s Anger

Check out some great free activities to use with children below.

Anger can manifest in different ways for children. Some children may react aggressively or shut down when angry. It’s important to educate children on managing their own anger. Children need emotional regulation skills to fully engage and participate positively in the classroom.

Recognizing Your Own Emotions

Adults need to tune into their own emotions and share these openly with children. This modeling helps children understand emotions and that it’s normal to experience anger, anxiety, and more. Take time to write down your own emotions throughout the day to build self-awareness.

Sharing Emotions with Children

Verbally share your emotions with children to normalize feelings for them. Explain what situations caused certain emotions and how you self-regulated. Ask children to share their own emotions after various activities and events. Build class surveys and open discussions on feelings.

Making Emotions Visible

Emotions can seem invisible to children. Using visual illustrations and metaphors makes anger, anxiety, and more concrete. Books like ”The Red Beast- Picture Book” include colorful images to depict emotions and regulation strategies visually.

Teaching Emotional Literacy

Emotional literacy should be taught like reading literacy. Surround children with modeling, discussion, and activities about feelings. Have them recognise emotions in themselves and others. Develop their emotional vocabulary.

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Emotional Regulation Strategies

Equip children with a toolbox of strategies to manage emotions, like breathing exercises, movement breaks, listening to music, talking it through, and more. Tailor strategies to individual children’s needs.

Using Visuals and Activities

Activities like acting out emotions or using visual prompts make emotional literacy hands-on. The Red Beast workbook activities have children classify words as kind or hurtful and visualize emotional arousal levels.

Parent and Teacher Cooperation

Managing children’s anger takes teamwork between parents and teachers. Educators can provide strategies and emotional literacy foundations, while parents reinforce these skills consistently at home.

Consistency and Repetition

Building any skill requires consistent practice over time. Emotional regulation must be exercised daily to become engrained habits, like learning to read or toilet training. Aim for 14 days of focused emotional literacy activities.

Self-Regulation Skills

The ultimate goal is children independently managing their emotions, not relying solely on adult regulation. With greater emotional awareness, children can recognize rising anger and apply the taught calming strategies.

Tools for Managing Anger

Provide children with a toolbox of techniques to pull from when emotions surge, like deep breathing, movement breaks, focused listening, and comforting sensory items. The more tools they have, the better prepared they are in any situation.

Preventing Meltdowns

Work on recognizing emotional triggers and signs of escalation. Help children intervene early before reaching full meltdown mode, when regulation is extremely difficult. Over time, this prevention lowers meltdown frequency.

The Red Beast Resources

The Red Beast Book

This illustrated children’s book makes anger visible through the metaphor of the red beast. It normalizes and explains anger in child-friendly ways that inspire discussion. here

The Red Beast Workbook

With engaging activities and illustrations, this workbook helps children understand anger triggers, bodily signs, and management strategies over 14 days. here

Using Workbook as 14-Day Program

The 2-week workbook program aims to build emotional literacy through repetition. This cements new coping skills into long-term memory for children to access a

8 Key Ways You Can Use the Red Beast Workbook to Help Children to Understand and Regulate Anger

1. Use Metaphors to Explain Anger: The concept of the “Red Beast” serves as a metaphor for anger, making it easier for children to understand and visualize their emotions.

2. Teach Emotional Regulation: It’s important to help children recognize their emotions and learn how to control them. This can be done through activities and exercises that promote self-awareness and self-control.

3. Implement a Consistent Program: The workbook is designed as a 14-day program, emphasizing the importance of consistency and repetition in teaching emotional regulation.

4. Promote Positive Reinforcement: Praise and positive reinforcement are key in helping children manage their anger. Recognize their efforts and progress to motivate them to continue practicing their anger management strategies.

5. Incorporate Whole-Class Activities: The workbook and its strategies are not just for individual children struggling with anger. They can be used for the whole class to promote a better understanding of emotions and empathy among peers.

6. Understand Sensory Sensitivities: Recognise that sensory sensitivities can be a significant trigger for anger in children. Some children may be oversensitive to certain stimuli (like the sound of others eating or the texture of certain materials), while others may be undersensitive. Understanding these sensitivities can help in managing situations that might trigger anger.

7.Use Visual Aids: Visual aids can be a powerful tool for teaching children about their emotions. For example, using the analogy of bowls of different sizes to represent sensory systems can help children understand why they might react differently to certain stimuli.

8. Individualise Learning: Recognise that each child is unique and may react differently to different situations. What works for one child may not work for another. Therefore, it’s important to individualize learning and strategies for managing anger.