Both views are correct. Problems with anger management in children are often a mixture of components. These components include developmental levels, a feeling of lack of control over life, poor parenting skills, heredity, and true emotional or behavioral disorders may all contribute to problems with anger management in children.
Children, being immature, often have more trouble controlling their emotions than most adults. They have not had time to learn coping skills, plus they do not have the ability to invoke the control that an adult may be able to do. At some stages of maturity, children have a self-centered view of things. What they want is all that matters to them. It is all they can address. Also, at different stages of development, children have a need to gain more control and withdraw from parental control to some extent, i.e. the terrible twos, or adolescence. This can lead to angry outbursts as they feel the conflict of pulling away and staying dependent.
Sometimes children feel they have no control over what happens in their life and that leads to daily frustration. This feeling of lack of control can result because of an over-controlling parent, or simply because the child is not old enough or mature enough to be given that control. This can present in out of control outbursts. Sometimes this uncontrolled anger is a passing phase that is overcome as the child matures. Other times, it is a lifelong problem that spans from childhood all the way into adulthood.
Problems with anger management in children can also be due to a learned behavior, where the child has learned to manipulate their environment with their angry outbursts. This happens when the child repeatedly loses control and has a tantrum when things don’t go as desired. The parent, or some other person, gives the child the desired thing that the tantrum is for, and the child soon learns that a tantrum yields the desire outcome. Or, a tantrum may result in leaving an area that stresses the child, such as church or a shopping center. The child soon learns that pitching a fit will result in removal for the area that is undesirable to him/her. This leads to repeated tantrums in an attempt to get the desired result.
In addition, problems with anger management in children may be the result of a true emotional or behavioral disorder. If the response is extra intense, lasts longer than expected, or is more frequent than that of other children, one can expect that the child has a disorder that requires medical and/or psychiatric intervention.
How can parents determine if their child is having a normal temper tantrum, or an anger management problem? The determining factors the length of duration, frequency of episodes, degree of provocation, and the child’s awareness of the trigger and intensity. If any or all of these are beyond the expected, then a parent can assume the child has a disorder and not just having a normal anger reaction.
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