It is a common thing for teenagers to get in trouble because they fail to manage their intense anger or are unable to properly discharge their feelings and frustrations. Teenagers express their hurt feelings in multiple ways but something they all have in common is they struggle to experience anger and do not know how to deal with expressing it appropriately. Inappropriate expressions of frustration or anger can lead them to have serious consequences. How can you as parents help them get through this? Let's find out.
Understanding
The first step in solving this problem is understanding your troubled kids. Anger is an emotion that often becomes quite challenging for teens and at times it can also be overwhelming. When teens do not know how they can cope with their angry emotions, they often tend to act directly on these feelings put not only them but others at risk. As a parent it is important to understand the emotions that are underneath that anger, it can be hurt, disappointment, frustration, or anything else. Teens tend to avoid this feeling or sometimes they are not even aware of this. So it would be helpful for the teens to get in touch with their emotions and act accordingly which can only happen if the parent behaves responsibly and tries to understand the cause of it.
Strategies that Can Help Teens Safely Express their Anger
The challenge in helping teenagers deal with their anger is it often comes at the risk of them and others being unsafe. Now there are ways that parents can help an angry teenager to successfully cope with his or her anger and safely express it.
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Participation in Physical Activities
Most teens feel a strong impulse to do something physically when they feel angry. A safe way would be to engage them in sports or any sort of physical activity that helps them express their anger daily, but without hurting themselves or others.
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Punching Bags
To help teenagers cope with their anger, you need to provide them with a safe way to let their feelings out. Punching bags in this situation works fine as a safe way to let your children's anger out, but safely. You can also opt for a foam-padded bat or a pillow for this activity.
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Taking a Time-out or Time-in
This works perfectly well in providing angry teenagers alone time to express their emotions. They can use this time and space to cry out, yell, or do anything else that is needed so they and others can stay safe, without being negatively affected.
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Identifying Triggers
As mentioned before, anger is always an emotion that is triggered by some other emotion, it might be hurt, disappointment, or frustration. So when your teenager gets angry the next time, it would be better to work with them on finding the root cause that is causing this anger or outburst. The more knowledge they have of these triggers, the more control they would have over this emotion.
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Music
Music is a well-known therapy that works with complicated issues like teenage anger as well. Listening to music is a common way among teenagers to calm themselves and work well while identifying the causes of their emotions and expressing feelings. This can look different for every individual as some find peace in singing, some in dancing, and some in listening to rage-filled songs.
However, it is important to remember that if these strategies do not work, getting professional help might be necessary.
