Expressing emotions safely
Together with your child, take a look at how they feel when they experience anger: is this feeling located in their belly? In their throat? In their hands? Search for the most effective method of expressing anger and finding an outlet for this emotion. For example:
• Deep breaths and counting to four – take a deep breath and while exhaling, count up to four in your head. You can show the numbers with your fingers. It slows down exhalation and calms the body down.
• Keeping the feather in the air – raise your hand high and release the imaginary feather from your hand, then keep it in the air only by blowing on it. In this way you focus on a specific activity that distracts you from the source of anger and you regulate your breathing.
• Take your anger out on a soft pillow – show how you can safely take your anger out on a pillow: hit it with your hands when it’s lying on the floor, then lift it up, crumple it and squeeze it firmly.
• Crumpling paper – crumple a sheet of paper up into a small ball. Note that before crumpling, you have to make sure that no one needs it and that no important information is written on it.
• Tearing a sheet of paper to shreds – straighten out the sheet and tear it into small pieces, then throw them into the bin. You can also collect them, lift them up in your hands and let them go so that you can watch them fall slowly – as if they weren’t carrying the anger with which they were torn apart.
• Drawing anger – take a large sheet of paper, draw on it shapes and patterns that come to your mind and tell your child that this is what your anger looks like – as expressed through drawing.