A simple guide in helping kids with their aggression: Expert shares tips

Parenting is a blissful process of watching your kids grow up and become individuals with their own set of values and ideals. As parents, we always tend to provide the best to our children. Be it whatever they expect from us, their needs, their wants – everything we try to meet in the best way possible. However, with time, it is also important to teach them the importance of being able to hold on their emotions, especially the ones that are difficult to deal with. Anger is one such emotion that they can have difficulty initially navigating with. In such cases, we need to teach them the tips and tricks to express it in healthy ways. In one of her recent Instagram posts, Psychologist Jazmine McCoy said that we should not teach the kids to suppress the emotions, instead we should teach them to direct it in healthy ways.

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Common reasons why kids show aggression:

Intense emotions: With age, their brain starts to develop. In that process, they experience emotions that they are not sure of how to regulate. Hence, they end up showing it.

Needs: Their needs are not being met, and they are directing it through aggression.

Aggression solves things: In their prior experience, they have learnt that aggression has proved to be fruitful in meeting their needs.

Attention: Aggression helps in getting attention and hence they use it as a tool.

“When it comes to childhood aggression, I could write a whole book. But I hope these quick tips and insights are helpful,” read an excerpt of her post. Jazmine further noted down a few steps in helping kids with their aggression. They are, as follows:

Regulate the emotions: When they start to get angry, we must combat that with calmness. Instead of getting angry at them, we should teach them to regulate their emotions in a healthy way.

Validate their feelings: More often than ever, children show anger because they are trying to be heard. It is important to validate their emotions, all the while redirecting it in a better way.

Give them healthy ways: Instead of asking them to shut up or suppress their feelings, we must give them healthy ways and things to do, to release their aggression.