Help! My child is constantly angry!

As parents, we have never understood that anger can be transferred from us to our
children. If your children can copy your mannerism/traits as their parent, nothing
stops your anger traits from being transferred to them. Anger can be communicated
in our conscious or un – conscious conversations to our children. Communication is
a combination of our behaviour and attitudes which we do every day but never
conscious on the effect of these on the people around us especially our children. It
is true that our aim when communicating is to get others to connect with us, convert
them to our ideologies or beliefs while we also give out information. This is usually
done through our speech and body language. The cost of anger is extremely heavy
and it is not something we can afford to pay for, and its effect can be very deadly.

One of the costs of communicating anger to our children is resentment. Within the
family space, there is an unspoken and unresolved resentment your children have
because all your daily communication with them is laced with anger. They avoid you
like a plague and unconsciously begin to act irrational, irritable and rude towards
you and others. Anger is transferable, remember it is a behaviour and an attitude,
so if your children start acting out do not be surprised or taken aback by their
reactions. Anger in itself is not to our benefit when dealing with our children.It is
very powerful yet so useless! It is powerful when channeled in the right direction
toward something profitable, it is useless because it causes one to be blind which
can result in an overactive display of reaction that is destructive, which we always
go back to fix and sometimes may not have the opportunity to fix. The buildup of
resentment leads to shattered trust and this might take you years to rebuild. They
do not communicate with you anymore first because they resent you for always
communicating anger and now their trust for you is broken. The home which should
be a safe space for your children has become an uncomfortable and awkward
environment for the entire family. You can literally slice a chunk of tension in the
home which should never be so. With all of these happenings, the chances to raise
a very peaceful and soft-spoken individual can be very slim.

Your children have been damaged by your actions, as every little thing is escalated like a mine waiting to
explode. Parents can get angry but always think about the prolonged effect this
might have on the children. I was in conversations with a 10-year-old boy who had a
long face and sad eyes, he snapped at the slightest thing done by his siblings, he
found their jokes extremely boring and wanted to be left alone all the time. I
observed him for a period of time, He screamed out if he requested for something
and it was not attended to in time or correctly. This went on for the duration I was
around. His mum had said he needed anger management class and I objected to it.
I probed further only to realize that he was acting out the character of one of his
parents, it was disheartening but this happens to be our current reality. The parent
in question has become the message that he or she communicates. Every time the
child comes in contact with the said parent, he /she sees an angry per son. We have
to parent ourselves first before we can do same to our children. Self-awareness is a
progressive state.