9 year old DS’s anger

[Anonnymouse85]

He’s always been sensitive but is a well behaved, kind boy. Never had any issues at school and teachers always say how lovely he is so this clearly isn’t a problem at school.

But outside school, he can’t seem to control his anger when he gets frustrated/doesn’t feel like doing something or sometimes when things don’t go his way or he feels unfairly treated. It’s not really “bratty” behaviour - if say, he wanted a biscuit and we said no, he wouldn’t kick off over something like that. But it’s when he gets frustrated when something doesn’t work, or eg, he plays hockey and at the moment, the coach won’t let him play in the position he wants to so he’ll sometimes get angry about that after a match. Or when he’s doing homework he finds hard, there will be a lot of whinging which will turn to anger. He got angry the other morning because he woke with a blocked nose that he couldn’t clear and so got out of bed making angry noises and kicking a toy around his room. His anger is often out of proportion to the event that’s triggered it and he can get angry about things that really don’t warrant it.

To be clear, he’s never violent or physical towards anyone but will kick toys, clench his fists, snap/shout at us, stomp out of the room. We try really hard not to get cross with him when he’s like this but it’s hard sometimes especially when he bites your head off at anything you say. I’ve learnt to just calmly tell him not to talk to me like that etc. In the heat of the moment, nothing gets through to him - no suggestion of deep breathing, having a hug to help him calm etc.

He’ll sometimes eventually hug me and say sorry. He says he gets upset because he can’t stop himself acting like that when he’s angry. He’s always telling me he has “anger issues.” I’ve asked him how he thinks I can help him but he doesn’t know (which I guess he wouldn’t).

We don’t know what to do. I’ve told him that feeling angry is not wrong - but the way he acts when he’s angry is. I feel there needs to be consequences for when he screams, shouts and is generally vile to us when he’s like this, but he obviously needs help to manage his emotions.

Any experience or advice?

…also, when he decides he doesn’t want to do something, he WILL NOT do it.

He was having piano lessons (at his request) but eventually decided he didn’t want to continue and nothing we said could make him.

He also had a bad experience with swimming lessons when he was younger and point blank refused to have any further lessons, despite lots of reassurance from us/the teacher. We kept taking him but he wouldn’t get in the pool. He still can’t swim (but likes going swimming with us).

Now I’m reading this and feel like I’ve raised him to realise that if he kicks off enough, he doesn’t have to do something - but I can’t physically force him to do things he doesn’t want to do?

Yes my DS age 8 is like this. He has ADHD and can get frustrated at school too, although (I hope!) to a much lesser extent.

Following your post and hopefully there’ll be good advice!

My DTS1 (8yo) is a similar happy, loving little boy - except when something annoys him and then he lashes out! I strongly suspect ADHD for him too, he used to have regular enormous meltdowns when smaller (twice daily at one point ) but has largely grown out of those now <touches wood madly>. Instead we get the whining, which turns to shouting and saying "well I WON'T" and also hitting as well - mainly his twin brother (who admittedly does wind him up on purpose - not that that excuses it!) but occasionally other kids who annoy him. It's like he has no sense of proportion; in his head it's oh, X pushed me a bit, so I am completely entitled to give him a very hard shove back and with the refusals, once the red mist descends there is absolutely no point trying to reason with him.

A few things that I've found which do work are:

• making sure he gets enough sleep - tiredness was/ is a massive trigger for him
• making sure he has enough fresh air and exercise - again, he is terrible if allowed too much screen time
• feeding him proper food at regular mealtimes - not easy as he is a very fussy eater, but at least if he enjoys it he will eat enough
• now he's older, explaining to him the consequences of his actions - "you wanted to go swimming, so we paid for your lessons. If you don't want to go any more, that's a lot of money wasted and we could have done X with it. I'm cross/ sad/ disappointed that you're wasting this money" - or "if you hit people like a toddler, sooner or later you WILL get into big trouble and they can ask you to leave your school/ football club/ wherever, or your friends won't want to be friends with you any more"
• realising that some of the tactics we often try with kids just don't work - I learned this on a parenting course - we're often told to teach them to hit a cushion/ count to ten/ calm down etc, and if we were in a real temper would any of those calm us down?! Of course not, but we expect kids to be able to do those things pretty much the only thing that works with DTS1 when you can tell he's getting to boiling point is to head him off at the pass - "oh look DS, shall we choose something nice to bake?" "DS, could you help me with this, you're really good at it?" "DS, your friend's mum told me they've been to X place recently and enjoyed it, do you think you'd like to go?" - and so on, anything to distract him really...

It's so bloody hard though, it's still like parenting a toddler in many respects, it worries me that he sees nothing wrong with lashing out if someone annoys him and just says aggrievedly "well they were irritating me!" - he has been told till we're blue in the face that this isn't acceptable behaviour but nothing seems to get through

Thank you both.

@MissGwenCooper I can identify with a lot of what you’ve said. He’s never hit anybody, or been physically angry towards anyone though (which I’m grateful for!)

What do you do with your DS refuses to do something, like the swimming situation? I have friends who, when their kids don’t want to do something like that, they’ll just tell them sternly “you’re doing it” and they’ll do it. But there’s no way on earth I can get him to do something he doesn’t want to do - so sometimes I feel like it’s as though he’s getting his own way through the anger.

With regards to ADHD - wouldn’t he have other symptoms?

Yes it is bloody hard, isn’t it? I feel like I’m on egg shells with him a lot of the time, which is just ridiculous.

My 9 year old Is similar with ways he gets angry, he has ASD though and was diagnosed in reception, but very similar ways to what your describing. Even the apologising afterwards. Does he play videogames - if so does he get over the top angry with them?
Today when we went to the park my 9 year old was pretending to be shopkeeper and his younger brother came over and started 'stealing' the items, 9 year old got very angry with this and then started kicking the pretend shop.
With regards to the hockey game you was.talking about it could be an expectation thing, so he expected it to go a certain way and it never so now he can't enjoy It the same. Maybe he thought about it for a long time beforehand and was disappointed. I've started to not tell my son about certain plans I've found this helps with the expectation thing, I know this can't be done for everything.
He will get angry at what he perceives as Injustice or not fair such as people hacking on games or when people broke the rules at school and didn't listen. And he will talk about how unfair this is at night time non stop.
Maybe you could start an emotion diary/journal with him, it could help put things into perspective for him and you as a family. Also this might sound cringe or corny but practice gratitude with him this has helped our family lots - each night we say 3 things we are greatful for- even if it's been a bad day. It has helped with not getting so upset about things.
Not sure if any of this will help hope things get easier for you!

God all of this is so accurate ' it's like parenting a toddler ' I say this all the time

Yes, definitely gets OTT angry with video games - we try to limit them.
And yes anything perceived as being “unfair” winds him up too.
i don’t know how open he’ll be the gratitude idea but I’ll give anything a go!!

Hi @Anonnymouse85 - if DS point blank refuses to do something, I do go back to the toddler mantra of 'pick your battles'! If it's not important, I just feel like there's no point struggling with him to (for example) eat his vegetables at every meal, as long as he eats them most of the time. If it's non-negotiable - doing homework etc - I try to stay calm and just repeat, we aren't doing anything else till you've done this, it has to be done. I do try to use a bit of logic and unpick why he doesn't want to do something, and find out if he's being reasonable or not - he finds homework hard so I say ok, if you do it now I will help you, but if you leave it to the last minute then I won't have time to help - your choice. If possible (and I know it isn't always!) then I try to have the discussion at a different time to the actual trigger point - so if I knew he didn't want to play football at school on Wednesday, discuss it with him the night/ weekend before to find out why. TBH sometimes I see his point - he doesn't want to play football because he's not enjoying it any more, fair enough - sometimes not - he wanted to give up karate because it was 'boring' but I explained that I pay monthly for it so he would at least have to do the month. If he didn't want to continue after then, fine, but I told him I would be very cross if he didn't at least see out a month of it when he'd asked to join in the first place. He (begrudgingly) did it and is still going a year later, it was just the initial thought that he didn't like!

Re: the ADHD, he meets a lot of the typical criteria - very very active, can't calm down, doesn't pay attention - and some of the less well known ones - never been a good sleeper or eater, absolutely cannot wait with any sort of patience. At the same time his teacher hasn't flagged it as an issue with me (and I have asked), so I just try to learn about techniques to help him and use those rather than medication - but the impulsivity, particularly the hitting, is the major issue one useful tip I gained from an ADHD/ ASD workshop was to 'live life out loud' - you have to keep saying "DS, you make me cross/ angry/ sad/ frustrated when you do that" "DS, other people will be unhappy/ irritated/ not want to play with you if you do this" "DS, you make people scared/ avoid you/ not be your friend when you behave like that" - and so on, really spell out to him how his behaviour makes others feel, because it could be that he genuinely doesn't get it.

Oh blimey @Mumtoboys1 , DS has had utter meltdowns over his games TBH I try to keep his gaming time to a minimum but DP loves gaming, so it's hard. He will moan, whinge, sulk and tantrum if he feels treated unfairly, and harp on about it for bloody ages. I will definitely try the gratitude journal though, anything is worth a shot!!

Oh, in one of our ADHD sessions we also talked about the 'behaviour iceberg' which I also try to bear in mind - so when I see DS kicking off about something which seems quite minor, in his mind it may not be minor, or it may be that something else has upset him and this very small event has tipped him over the edge! They explained that someone with ASD/ ADHD may (for example) come downstairs looking forward to sitting in their favourite chair and watching their favourite TV programme - then they come into the living room and their sibling is sitting in that chair and watching a different programme, perfectly innocently as they didn't know the other person wanted to do those things. So if this happened, DS would immediately launch into a mad tizzy whilst I and/ or DTS2 would be utterly baffled about why he was so bothered about us sitting watching TV. I don't know if this could be the cause of some of your DS's anger @Anonnymouse85 - as @Mumtoboys1 says, it's played out one way in his head and the reality is different, and he can't adjust?

@MissGwenCooper It could be something like that but it’s more often things that just frustrate him/annoy him or that he doesn’t want to do. He can get really irate about, for example, his sock being twisted/not feeling right/having a rough thread in it that’s rubbing his foot.

It’s really hard to reason with him when he’s like it - sometimes he’s best just left to cool down himself because anything you say/do just annoys him more. If he’s just left, within 20 mins or so he can usually snap out of it.

That does sound like it could be a sensory sensitivity @Anonnymouse85 ? Although I think it’s so hard to distinct between what’s an every day sensitivity and what’s a sign of more.

Example for my DS today, I collected him from school on foot, he asked if I’d brought the car (we live a mile away!) and I hadn’t, so that annoyed him. He was then just being so grumpy, and when DS2 wanted to go to the playground, and I said yes for 10 minutes, he got so annoyed and was really screechy and mean to DS2. As predicted when we got to the playground he enjoyed himself and wanted to stay longer.

He said his friend had been mean to him today, but he’s often rude and angry when seemingly nothing has gone wrong, so hard to know if that was the cause! My DS just gets angry when he’s asked/told to do something he really doesn’t want to do. He’s fine with certain things like clearing his plates, tidying, but it’s in particular when transitioning from playing or watching tv.

Have you tried the zones of regulation with him? School uses them here so I use it at home too. Anger is red zone and we ask DS (9) what would help him return to green zone. Often he takes time on his own to calm down and then we discuss behaviour and he apologises. Sometimes he needs a hug to help calm down. I let him decide. I think he explodes at home because he's so well behaved all day at school.

Hunger and screen time are triggers for him too.

He's improving at controlling his anger so it's definitely helping.

@freespirit333 yes, that’s it - it’s hard to tell whether his behaviour is due to an “issue” or condition or whether it’s just “him”.

@44bookworm I’ve not heard of zones of regulation - I’ll look into that.