"If your child breaks the rules, make your initial reaction one of...

[emkana]

.. surprise and sorrow rather than anger - indeed, try never to get angry at all"

it says in the parenting book I am just looking at. (Detoxing Childhood)

I've failed miserably at this, I flare up (far too) easily. Trying to calm down, and trying to counterbalance my temper with lots of positive attention and happy time spent together, but wanted to ask here...

is it possible or even desirable never to show anger towards your children?

i thing that anger is a perfectly reasonable response in some circumstances - and i come back to my stock response on a lot of these negative 'v' positive parenting choices...as long as you give plenty of loves cuddles and kisses - then kids know that the anger is a proportional response to the deed done.

its when anger is the only response that theres a problem

i really really really honestly truly with all my heart think this is hippy shit gone mad

parents are allowed to shout at their kids - its perfectly normal - as long as its proportionate to the offence and its not the only form of discipline - indeed response in the home.

I shout a lot at mine too, and feel horrible afterwards. Agree with Custardo though that shouting isnt a bad thing all the time, we are all human, parents are humans who get cross sometimes. Thats just real life, it would be an odd upbringing never to see your parents get cross.
BUT I wish I shouted less. Am working on it.

agree with Custard (as per normal )

Well I fail miserably in this one too. I know some people don't get angry much so it is probably easier for them but frankly sometimes ds's behaviuor would try a saint and I am certainly not one of those. Even dh who is the calmest person I've ever met and never normally gets angry has been known to very occasionally (I think 2-3 times in 4 years) raise his voice to ds.

On the other hand I do believe if you can stay calm and use disappointment and sadness rather than anger when disapproving of behaviour it is probably more productive.

I think it is possible to hardly ever or even never show anger to your children but for many people that is pretty hard to do. My dad was quite an angry person so I suppose I learnt it there. So was my mum but she displaced it into depression. All I can do is try and get angry less often.

As to whether it is desirable to never anger to your children- In the past I'd have said that was a lot of poppycock and ther was nothing wrong with some righteous anger.

Recently however I've realised that if we get angry our children get scared there is no getting away from that.

Anger is an emotion that inspires fear, especially if someone who is ultimately fairly powerless (i.e. a child) is confronted with someone more powerful than them (e.g. an adult) who is angry. For some children that fear will turn to anger (ds does this)- as it does in a lot of adults.

This I think is what leads to the 'difficult child' syndrome for a lot of families, which is a sort of vicious circle of angry/difficult child and shouting angry parent. The child is actualy being quite brave and converting fear to anger but the parent just sees the 'difficult behaviour'. The children who are just scared are more likely to come into line and behave.

If the parent can stop being angry the child will stop being scared but the process is probably a very painful one as the child needs to learn to trust we won't get angry with them again.

All great in theory but almost impossible for me to put into practise all the time I'm afraid. God parenting is so difficult !!

i think disappointment is a great weapon, but its emotional manipulation all the same and i can't see how its any better or worse than shouting.

i use it against my teenagers - my dd is particularly susceptible to this - which works to my advantage a lot, especially when she is being mean to me in moments of teenage angst.

bump because I'm interested in this

I grew up feeling as if I has "disappointed" my parents, I would rather have a bollocking any day of the week!

had not has, damn my sausage fingers!

I think feigned surprise and sorrow is very shallow and manipulative. A brief and constructive shout followed by a cuddle and a calm explanation is much more honest imo.
But then I don't have rules, I don't know how you would go about that

Being angry at a child and then letting them know that it was the behaviour you did not like is the best way.
Saying your dissapointed is the worst thing as the poor child is forever trying not to dissapoint people and it becomes a vicious circle of self-doubt.
My parents never really shouted at us but made us feel bad in many other ways .
I always tell my children i will always LOVE them but sometimes i might not LIKE them if they have done something bad.

I do get where this is coming from

to put it in a different perspective, at work, in a pre-school, I will say "You have made me sad" rather than "you have made me angry" which works better for me.
Anger is not an emotion I would want to feel at work, towards the children I work with.

But it is different with your own children.
But, I am not a very explosive person anyway, I am very calm at most situations, so my initial reaction is not very often anger.

My reaction is not feigned surprise or sorrow, it is genuine

So I would agree, that for me this approach works.

And when I do need to get angry, my children, bloody well listen!

What sorts of behaviours make people angry and shout? (My main one is waiting three hours for one of them to put their socks on...)

With me its if i ask them nicely if they want something or ask them to do something and i can ask 3 or 4 times and they ignore me and if that happens sometimes i just explode!
It's very different with someone else's child as you would say "I'm not happy about what you did" but with your own children you are MUCH stricter.
Even our pre-school playleader (soon to be ex-playleader) was always patient with the children in her care but would be quite scary with her own children.
And for some children ANY attention is all they want

depends on the age for me I think. My oldest is 19 months and yes, I shout at him for things like picking up the toilet brush, slashing in the toilet, hitting the baby and other things that pose some sort of danger, but only after I've told him no twice first. I know this thread is aimed at older children and I don't have experiece yet, but I would never want younger children to ever think i was dissapointed in them, I would much rather them know their actions have made me angry and angry at them, dissapointment, IMO, is a far more negative emotion to put onto a child, you can apologise for being angry and give hugs and kisses. Can you ever really apologise for dissapointment?

why would you apologise for being disappointed though?
if you are disappointed, don't apologise for it

and why would you apologise for being angry, if your kid had made you angry?

so you tell your kids off and then apologise for it?
see, I don't get that

children need to learn there are consequences for their actions

be it anger or disappointment

if you then apologise to your child for your feelings, then they will be confused

Is is not better to be honest with your emotions not try and fake them...when my kids do something very annoying I feel angry not surprised and sad. As long as you are not always shouting over tiny thing I think by showing real emotions you are teaching them consequences and how to deal with other peoples' reactions.

I would rather have had honest anger from my parents than the feeling I was letting them down.

I would have rather my mum vented her anger by shouting at me rather than the disappointed silences she got into - and she did a lot of both. I was a 'challenging' little madam.

Shouting got it all over and done with and the air is cleared after it finished and I apologised.

However I believe she stayed true to what she wsa feeling at the time and not 'putting on an act'

I agree that showing disappointment all the time seems like emotional blackmail.

We are all human and get angry, even as parents.

like others have said:

you need a whole repertoire of appropriate responses

disappointment can be at least as scary as anger

faking is potentially risky (though obviously sometimes you have to fake being a nicer person than you are- or at least mine would run for the hills)

Purepurple, I think the point of apologising is when you realise you got angry more because of your state of mind rather than because of what your child actually did.

Recently I got angry and shouted at DS for fiddling with things in the bathroom one evening rather than brushing his teeth. I don't normally react like that but it was Friday and I'd had a hard week at work and DH was away etc
He was understandably upset. I apologised and explained why I had flown of the handle unexpectedly rather than reminding him of what he was supposed to be doing as I normally would.

Purepurple I was talking more about my personal experiences. My ds1 is only 19 months old, so when he does something after being told not to and I get angry, I raise my voice to tell him off, he cries but then I also think it's important to let him know that I still love him and that everything is ok, so although |I was angry, anger is an emotion that is easily recovered from where I don't think dissapointment is, if that makes sense.
As he gets older, I will obviously need to tell him off and will no doubt shout but I hope I will have the opportunity to apologise for shouting at him and explain why I reacted like that

"i really really really honestly truly with all my heart think this is hippy shit gone mad"

Custardo, you are the wind beneath my (shouty) wings. Just raised voice a bit after DS pushed something off the side of the TV into DH's guitar for the second time this morning. I tried the calm voice the first time, obv didn't make much of an impression.

He cried, I cuddled him, we're fine again (I think). He is playing away from the TV.

Was feeling like a horrible mummy but now a little more hopeful I haven't scarred him for life...