In childhood, a small frustration can be felt as the end of the world. It is common to see children at school struggling to manage their emotions, throwing objects away, biting a friend, throwing themselves on the floor, crying with rage, crumpling up a paper with an activity they are unable to do or shouting to get what they want .
If anger is difficult to deal with as adults, early life is even more complicated. Children tend to lose control more easily because the frontal lobe – the region of the brain responsible for decision making – and the prefrontal cortex – responsible for the decision-making process and reasoning, are not yet fully developed, which makes the even more challenging emotion control.
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Even though it is a basic emotion that is part of all of us and that must be welcomed as well as the others, it is possible to help children to deal with anger in a more constructive way at school. Thus, little by little, we can help them to recognize their own emotions, that of their colleagues and to manage their own behavior. Below are some practical techniques and tips to help promote social and emotional learning in childhood.
Teach feelings and emotions
Children tend to have explosive reactions when they do not understand their feelings and emotions or when they are not able to put them into words. A child who cannot verbalize that he is very angry or angry, will show his emotion through behavior that is often inappropriate to get attention from those close to him and to vent what he is feeling. Therefore, help the child to identify and name the feelings, the so-called emotional literacy . Slowly teach more sophisticated words, such as worry and loneliness, which can also trigger anger .
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When you notice that an emotion like anger is manifesting, return it to the child saying that he realizes that he is angry at that moment. The richer the vocabulary and the more examples close to the child’s reality are incorporated into this learning, the better this process will be. Gradually, they will learn to name feelings on their own.
A good suggestion is to make use of children’s books . Even if the central theme is not really about emotions, always ask children throughout the reading what they think each character felt at different times in the story. Help to expand the vocabulary from this understanding, bringing clear examples that are in the narrative and in the illustrations.
The São Paulo writer Blandina Franco wrote two very interesting children’s books about rabies. One of them, entitled “Fúlvio, the heated” , tells the story of a very “heated” volcano that is always about to explode and leads readers to understand the mysteries that leave it that way. The other suggestion is the work “The anger “, which tells the story of a little monster that initially felt little anger, but that over time this emotion began to grow and take over everything.
Reading activities can be divided into several others. Propose thematic activities as a conversation circle in which students can tell situations in which they felt like the characters. Question what sensations you felt in your body, if your face felt hot or you wanted to scream out loud. Also ask how they reacted and if they know how to calm down. Also explain that when we feel angry, we run the risk of doing wrong to other people, including our friends at school and our family. So it is important that we learn to recognize when we are angry, what are the signals that our body sends, and what are the situations that most easily take us seriously.
You can also propose that students build a “little anger monster” with recyclable material. Encourage them to give the little monster a name, to create a story about his life, to cite everything that makes him angry and what makes him calm down. Give suggestions for what can calm the monster, such as taking a deep breath, drawing a picture, asking for help or taking a walk. Talking about emotions through characters is a very effective technique for children.
Anger can be a warning sign in childhood when it occurs in an excessive way, and can indicate, for example, the presence of a depression or that the child is suffering some type of violence at school or at home. Pay attention to cases that attract attention and seek specialized help.
Learning how to deal with anger is key to self-knowledge and developing it is a lifelong process that does not end in childhood. Getting to know means knowing how to deal with yourself, learning to manage the challenges that arise in life and understanding your own behaviors and thoughts. It is also to recognize what motivates and what infuriates us. Therefore, learning to identify, name and manage our emotions is a fundamental part of human development. Who knows what the world would be like if many of us adults had learned to do this from an early age.
