Anger Management For Children.

[LynetteScavo]

DS is due to start an anger management course next week. Ds's school seem to think this will be some sort of magic cure. I'm not so sure.

Any one have experience of anger management courses for children?

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How old is DS?

I've done AM work at home with my son aged 9, with Aspergers. I got the basic info from a NAS seminar but there are no easy fixes, you have to work damned hard to find personalised strategies that work for your child and you have to be 100% consistent and committed. I worked intensively with DS for three months before he could even recognise what anger was. We used lots of visual charts to record progress, had regular discussions, used his obsessive interests to motivate him.

How often is your son going to have AM sessions, and how long will the course last? My son has had social skills groups in school before but half an hour once a week won't help anyone if there's nothing in between. You may be better off working with him yourself.

I can give you some tips if you're interested, I have plenty of charts etc. Let me know here and I'll give an email address if you want more.

may not be totally relevant, but a friend of mine has been recommending 'How to love your angry child' for get the name of the author. She has read it and said it really helped her deal with her children...I'm in the queue to borrow it. Might be useful fo ryou to ponder on?

I've worked with behaviour support teachers who do anger management with children and seem to do a really good job. They focus on work around feelings, what kinds of situations generate particular feelings and how best to manage them.

They can be a 'magic cure' if the difficulties aren't too entrenched, long standing, or actually the school's poor management, but I think you're right to reserve some healthy scepticism about how instantaneous this might be!

It might be worth speaking to the school to see if you can talk to the person who's doing the work to discuss what and how they hope to achieve change (and what the hoped for outcomes are) and how you can best work together to support this.

Good luck!

Thanks for answering. DS isn 9. He'll be going to six 1 1/2 hour sessions with other children aged 6-9.

When you say visual charts, Karen, do you been star charts? We've had very little success with these in the past. (DS tends to destroy them- usually in a range, and laminating them just results in scissor use!)

He goes to a social skills group in school once a week (not sure how long it is, maybe only 1/2 hour )which he absolutely loves.

There seem to be so many books on anger management in children on Amazon, that is didn't know where to start! So thanks for that reccomendation, PandaG.

Not starcharts, no. They didn't have much impact on my boy either. I use a 5 point scale to help him identify stages of anger, what to do at each stage to help himself calm. As I've said, there are no quick fixes and addressing anger will take several months before you begin to make progress, but it can be done. My son used to tear off wardrobe doors and banister rails in his rages and it would take him several hours to come down from a meltdown, but it's been several months since he's had anything like that because our work focuses on avoiding getting to that stage by using self-awareness and prevention techniques. He's a much calmer little boy now.

Remember, you can't do anything about anger when you've already reached the rage stage. You have to work with your boy when he's calm, help him to understand anger and how harmful it is to him, help him to WANT to tackle the problem. Work on it with strategies and motivators that suit him personally. It's vital that you get him on board or you could be wasting your time.

The 5 point scale sounds good. I don't really want to put my email adress on here. Can you CAT me?

Email me at [email protected]