What do you do about the anger?

[Knitjob]

My nearly 12 yr old gets really angry. He shouts and slams doors and then 5 minutes later is back to normal.

Later this week he has to miss school to take part in a music competition. I was writing him a letter to give to his teacher. He wasn't happy with exactly what I had written so started shouting and carrying on.

My usual tactic is just to ignore the shouting, much as I did when he was a toddler. But I'm not sure that's the best way any more.. Should I be punishing him, sending him to his room, taking away his iPad, every time he shouts?

How much of this is normal pre-teen hormonal confusion and how much is bad behaviour that needs sorting out? I can't tell.

He doesn't get angry all day long or anything, but there will be an outburst most days. More of an over-reaction than angry maybe, I don't know.

This morning he slept in. I woke him up as soon as I got up, usually he is awake before me. He went nuts because I hadn't woken him on time, even though I did it as soon as I got up.

It's just endless. Is there something wrong with him? Is this normal? How do I deal with it? I just don't know.

[Lifeaback]

I once watched something on supernanny about hormonal anger which seemed to work well. The problem with pre-teens/teens is they've got all these intense bubbling emotions, which they don't yet know how to manage or control acceptably. On supernanny, she gave the young girl balloons to blow into to get the anger, and they also tried with ice cubes to throw into the bathtub/shower. Just a thought, might be worth trying if he's on board. Speak to him when he's in a calm normal state and ask him to articulate why he gets angry and what he thinks might help, work together on this. Has he always been an angry child or had issues with this? If it's fairly new behaviour, hopefully it is hormonal and will die down. One thing to stress is that you need to make sure he realises that it's not an acceptable way to behave and won't get him what he wants- you don't want to ingrain this into his behaviour as he grows into an adult. Hope some of that has been helpful for you op, good luck and I hope it sorts itself out fairly soon

[EveryoneTalkAboutPopMusic]

My DS has occasional outbursts too. Depending on what’s happened, we will either talk to him or occasionally punish if things have got out of hand. He needs to understand that everyone gets angry, it’s how we deal with anger and how we treat other people that is important.