TLP 294: Parenting Angry Children, Part 8 | how to help our kids with their wrath

Truth.Love.Parent.

Subscribe

Download

Share

00

00:00

And this is a huge deal. The current belief concerning the centrality of emotion is devastating our nation.

00:09

We're being told that we have no control over emotion, but that our emotion has complete control over us.

00:15

Welcome to Truth. Love. Parents. Where we use God's Word to become intentional premeditated parents.

00:24

Here's your host, A .M. Brewster. If you were just searching for help for your screaming, yelling, erupting child and you just found this episode, please know that I really, really, really, really do want to help.

00:34

But, I think that if you really want the help for what you're looking, you should start with part one of this series.

00:40

Simply jumping in on this episode won't help you with your child as much as you may want. There's a lot to understand about our children and anger, and unless we deal with the fruit, the root, and the truth, we'll miss a vital part of the solution.

00:52

But that's seven episodes worth of content. Yeah, I know, I never intended to spend this much time on this subject, but I really am glad that we have.

01:02

It's been so enlightening and encouraging for me. I feel much more prepared to think through and address the anger issues

01:08

I know I'm going to face this year with my students, and I pray that you've been equipped as well. And if you're new to the show, my name is

01:15

Aaron. I have a family of four who invites up to eight at -risk teen boys and two resident assistants to live with us for nine months.

01:22

I created this podcast so, Lord willing, you will never have to send a child to a program like ours.

01:28

We have a growing community of dads and moms who are trying to be the parents God called and created them to be. It's hard, it's dirty, but it's glorious and beautiful because if we have kids, it's

01:37

God's will for our lives to parent. Now, before we talk about some of the ugly of parenting kids with wrath issues,

01:45

I'd like to thank Lisa and Kara for making this episode possible. Without the faithful support of our patrons, we wouldn't be able to create this free parenting content to deal with things like anger and tantrums.

01:55

Now, every show I mention that you too should take a moment to click on the five ways to support TLP link in the description of this episode.

02:02

But today I'm also going to encourage you to check out truthloveparent .com and plan to do so repeatedly throughout the month.

02:08

We've been expanding the site to include more and more resources for Christian parents, and I'm super happy to announce that we're working on a whole new page called

02:17

Family Fun. You'll find it under the resources tab. There we're going to start highlighting attractions, games, and activities your family can use to have fun, grow closer together, and glorify

02:27

God. One of the things we're doing is compiling a list of amazing family games. I'm not talking about the video game kind.

02:34

In episode 146, we did a show called It's Time to Play where I introduced some of my favorite family games.

02:39

And in episode 254, we discussed what your children's toys are teaching them and mentioned some classic enduring games there as well.

02:46

Well, now we're working on a complete list for you to peruse. And here's something else really awesome to consider.

02:52

If, after scanning through the list and reading my family anecdotes, if you decide you'd like to add one of those games to your family game cabinet, you can just click on a link to be taken to Amazon.

03:02

And now this is a really cool part. If you purchase the game, Truth Love Parent will receive a commission off the sale.

03:09

Your family gets a new game, TLP receives money from Amazon. Now, we're adding to the list slowly.

03:14

It takes work to populate a page of Amazon affiliate links, so check back often. And not only are we planning to do this with games, we're also planning to do the same thing for our suggested books, and we want to use it on any page that makes sense to provide a helpful link.

03:28

All of this to say, there are a lot of ways you can be a blessing to TLP and support the work we're doing with families all over the world.

03:35

Okay, let's talk about how to parent a wrathful child. And as always, don't forget we have free episode notes and a complete transcript available for you at our blog,

03:44

Taking Back the Family. Not all angry people yell all the time, but the vast majority of them do most of the time.

03:52

But which yelling is wrathful, which is clamorous, and what does it matter? Two episodes ago, we talked about helping your child with their clamor, and we're reminded that clamor grows out of anger, and anger is the thought -out result of continued smoldering.

04:07

This is different than wrathful responses because the wrath we're discussing doesn't grow out of purposed, reasoned thought.

04:13

It's more of a mindless, emotional response. It's kind of instinctual. And this is what makes parenting a wrathful child different than a clamorous child.

04:21

Parenting the clamorous child requires you to pick apart how they're thinking, and what they're thinking, and why they're thinking what they're thinking, but there are practically no answers to those questions when we're dealing with a wrathful child.

04:32

And yet we still need to deal with the issue. So number one, discern whether your child is unreasoned or reasoned.

04:39

Now that may sound confusing. Originally, I actually wrote this, discern whether your child is emotional or angry.

04:45

The problem is that your angry and clamorous and slanderous and malicious children are clearly very emotional as well.

04:51

Wrath doesn't have the market cornered on emotion. That's just all wrath has. So whether your kid is malicious or slanderous or clamorous or just downright angry all the time, you're going to have to deal with the emotion because it's all part of the same angry onion.

05:04

It's not happenstance that wrath was the second on the list. Bitterness is wrong thinking, but the moment your thinking goes astray, your emotions are tanked.

05:13

So we need to discern if our child's emotional response has reasoning behind it or not. How does one go about doing this?

05:20

Well, you know your child better than I do. It should be easier for you to be able to tell when your child is simply being emotional and when their emotion is being motivated by a perpetual anger that rehearses the issues over and over.

05:31

I think the main hurdle we need to jump is this. If your angry child is a teenager, they're probably not wrathful.

05:40

Infants and toddlers and perhaps kindergartners and first graders will likely be more wrathful and less clamorous, but the nature of growing up, the thing we love most about our kids as they mature is their ability to reason.

05:52

This means that their addition gets better too. Their memories are longer and more complex. It's easier to add up all the grievances they've borne.

06:00

As children in the nursery, they probably didn't remember that the child with whom they're now playing was the same kid to bop them on the head last week, and if they get bopped again, their emotional response will not be motivated by last week's bopping.

06:12

But your third grader remembers that unkind fourth grader who occasionally knocked your child's lunch to the floor in the cafeteria last year.

06:18

And when your child hears that the third and fourth graders will be having recess together this year, your third grader may likely start to imagine the horrors this situation will create.

06:28

And as they age, it's so much easier for them to remember how every time your child told the lunch monitor, the bully lied and said your child was blaming him for his own clumsiness.

06:37

On top of that, now that school has started, your child has noticed the fourth grade bully and his friends watching him during recess.

06:44

So, when the first unkind act finally occurs, will your child be emotional? Well, yes, but will the manifestation of his anger be wrath or clamor?

06:53

I'm saying that nine times out of ten, it's going to be clamor, and that's been growing from a year's worth of pondering and contemplation.

07:01

And the older the child gets, the more likely their angry outburst is clamorous and not wrathful.

07:07

Unless your kids are never angry and you're listening to these episodes because they just so happen to be the next ones on the list,

07:14

I bet you've been listening because you see the anger in your kids. It's a consistent issue with them.

07:20

Some of you may never have even heard of Truth Love Parent before, but when you googled Help For My Angry Child, you found these podcasts.

07:27

And if that's the case, you know as well as I do that you're not having trouble with a child who always thinks correctly about life, but constantly blows up out of sheer emotional upheaval.

07:36

That's not how it works. Now, I don't really want to discuss things like being bipolar and manic -depressive and all of that right now.

07:44

I'll talk about it later. I work with those kids all of the time, and I'd love to discuss those issues with you.

07:49

And if you have a child who's been labeled thus, please reach out to me. But for now, for this particular episode, I want to simplify this issue as much as I can.

07:57

If your child needs help and you're searching the internet and reading books because their explosive tempers have become such a problem that you just can't handle it anymore, your child is not a level -headed individual with a loose hinge on their emotions.

08:10

Your child is angry. They're thinking wrong about life, and they're thinking that way all the time.

08:16

So when their comfort gets trampled, clamor breaks through. So, who are the wrathful kids?

08:24

I'd say that genuinely wrathful kids who haven't progressed to the angry or clamorous or slanderous or malicious stages are generally very young children and kids who have infrequent explosions of temper.

08:36

You likely wouldn't even categorize these kids as being angry because it happens so infrequently during high -intensity times.

08:42

In fact, you'd probably be tempted to give them a pass because it happens so infrequently and because the situation seemed quote -unquote justifiable given the circumstance.

08:51

However, we need to understand the emotion. We need to understand what that reveals about our kids, whether they're angry all the time or they're just angry sometimes.

09:01

So, if your child is emotional, regardless of why, number two, wrathful children need to understand their emotions.

09:10

Let's be honest, I don't believe the vast majority of people alive today have any idea what emotions are, and they definitely don't have a biblical idea of what they are.

09:19

This is why we did three episodes back -to -back all about our emotions. Episodes 32 and 33 are entitled

09:24

Emotions and Parenting, and episode 34 asks the question, should Christian parents participate in emotion coaching?

09:32

There's also episode 97 called Why Do Your Children Feel What They Feel? And we don't have time to get into any of the details of what emotions are and why we feel the way we do and why

09:41

God created our emotions, but we talk about all of those and so much more on the episodes I just named. You can access any of them from the description of this episode.

09:49

They also discuss the common misperceptions concerning emotion, and this is a huge deal.

09:55

The current belief concerning the centrality of emotion is devastating our nation.

10:01

We're being told that we have no control over emotion, but that our emotion has complete control over us.

10:08

For so many reasons. I love the movie Inside Out, but if that were how people actually function, it would be so scary.

10:17

We need to start by teaching our kids what emotions are and what place they should have in our lives.

10:22

And I highly recommend you teach them before they get all emotional. In the same way you want to talk to your child about their anger before they're angry, you want to teach your kids about their feelings before they're in the throes of a meltdown.

10:36

When you're in the practice of training your kids about emotions, when they start to lose their control over them, you can use the touchstones you've already placed to help draw their minds back to truth.

10:45

Because once they know and understand those truths, your child will be responsible to actually put that knowledge into practice.

10:51

And that leads us to number three. Wrathful children need to control their emotions. In Luke 12, 48,

10:58

Jesus said, Everyone to whom much was given, of him much will be required. And from him to whom they entrusted much, they will demand the more.

11:07

This is how the circle of learning works. You learn, you understand, and then you put it into practice.

11:13

That's what we call wisdom. We should not simply tolerate our kids' melts down, patiently waiting for them to cool off on their own.

11:21

We don't need to be afraid of their feelings. Our only recourse isn't to take cover until the explosion has subsided.

11:28

Once we and our children know what emotions are, why God created them, how they're to be used, and how to control them, we need to help our kids put that into practice.

11:39

And the only time to practice reigning in our emotions will be when they start to get away from us. We all know

11:44

Ecclesiastes 3, For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under the heaven, a time to weep, and a time to laugh, a time to mourn, and a time to dance.

11:54

This teaches us that in the same way there are times we should be sad and angry and afraid, there are also times we shouldn't be.

12:01

We need to help our children interpret the situation and come to the right conclusion about how they're going to feel about it.

12:08

It's interesting that I've been answering questions like this for weeks now. It came up on Facebook, some of you have emailed me about your kids, and it seems that a lot of people have questions about whether or not there's ever a situation where you should just let your child calm down on their own with no influence from you.

12:24

What if they have a disorder, or an illness, or a disability? What if they're very young? So I think instead of ending on episode 9,

12:32

I'm going to do one more episode that directly deals with these questions. They're big ideas, they're weighty matters, and I don't want to speed over it if there's a legitimate discussion that needs to happen.

12:43

So by way of review, number one, discern whether your child is unreasoned or reasoned.

12:49

You need to figure out if this explosion is a clamorous product of anger or a wrathful product of emotion. Number two, wrathful children need to understand their emotions.

12:59

Please, please, please, for the sake of the Lord, your family, your kids, and the world, teach your children what

13:05

God has to say about emotions. Don't let them buy into the world's lies. Number three, wrathful children need to control their emotions.

13:14

This can be done. Even very young children can learn to control their emotions. You should definitely listen to the previous episodes

13:22

I mentioned, but I'm going to give some very practical advice for this next time when we talk about bitterness. And that leads to number four, wrathful children need

13:30

Bible, not pragmatism. You should have seen that one coming. Now, I'm not going to share a bunch of passages with you because you really need to listen to the emotion episodes.

13:39

You'll find plenty of scripture there, but I will share this. A number of episodes ago, I mentioned Genesis 4, 2 through 16.

13:45

This passage doesn't specifically talk about emotions and feelings, but it illustrates a man enslaved to them.

13:51

It also gives us an example of how you parent an emotional person. It's unfortunate that this guy didn't submit to the parenting he received, and I think that makes it a really powerful illustration as well.

14:02

If we're not giving our emotional child truth, our opinion carries no more weight than their feelings.

14:08

They have no real reason to settle down or try to control their emotions in the future. Now I admit that today we talked about things that had the potential of being very practical, but weren't.

14:18

I said that we need to teach our kids about emotions, but I didn't explain it because there are other episodes for that.

14:23

And I said that we can help our kids work out of their emotional explosions, but I didn't give any practical help in doing so.

14:29

Neither of these facts are lost on me. Here's why I did this. Number one, on this particular episode,

14:36

I want to address philosophy. We need to believe that God speaks on this matter and that what he says needs to be the foundation of our family's lives.

14:44

Number two, our next episode is going to be the most practical one yet. We're going to see exactly how to parent violent, gossiping, screaming, angry, emotional kids.

14:54

Addressing the bitterness is the key to it all. So, Lord willing. Next time, we're going to put all the pieces together so we can help our kids work through their anger to a

15:04

Christ -honoring response. Or better yet, head off their anger in the first place. I'm excited to be doing this with you, and I'm really looking forward to our next two episodes.

15:13

So, I'll see you next time. Truth. Love. Parents. Is part of the

15:19

Evermind Ministries family and is dedicated to helping you become an intentional premeditated parent.

15:26

Join us next time as we search God's Word for the truth your family needs today.