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Helping Children With Aggression
by Patty Wipfler
Has your child ever lashed out and hurt someone? Has she ever been
attacked by another aggressive child? If your answer is "Yes," join the
crowd! Almost all of us struggle with understanding and helping our children
when they hurt others, and when they are hurt by other children. It's
a shock to us the first time our sweet sons and daughters suddenly begin
biting others, or begin throwing things at the new baby in the family.
Here are some guiding principles for understanding our children's aggression,
helping them relax again, and for helping the child who is hurt by another
child.
First, it's important to understand that children don't want to
attack others. They'd much rather play, experiment, and feel close
and loved. They'd much rather be pleased with other children and feel
a sense of belonging at home or at school or day care. When children do
feel connected, relaxed, and loved, they are open to friendships and flexible
in their play with other children.
It's when children have lost their sense of connection that they
feel tense, frightened, or isolated. These are the times when they
may lash out at other children, even children they are close to. The
aggressive acts aren't premeditated, in fact, they aren't under the
child's control at all. When a child loses her sense of connection, strong
feelings overtake her behavior. On an ordinary three-year-old's morning,
with typically loving and typically harried parents, the child's inner
train of thought might go like this:
"Mommy's gone. She doesn't love me--she rushed me out of bed,
ordered me around, and rushed me to school. She cooed at the baby, but
she got mad at me. What am I going to do? I can't stand myself--my Mommy
doesn't like me. Here comes Joey. He looks happy. I can't play! I feel
desperate!" At this point, the child may lash out.
When children who are feeling connected are overtaken by feelings
of isolation or desperation, they run for the nearest safe person and
begin to cry or shriek in fear. They immediately begin to release
the terrible feelings, trusting that they are safe from danger, and safe
from criticism for expressing their feelings. At these times, children
don't hurt anyone. They feel trusting enough to run for help. The crying
and trembling and perspiring they do unties the knots of tension and restores
their sense that they are OK. The adult who listens and allows the
child to "fall apart" without becoming alarmed helps the child remember
that there are people who care and can be trusted.
Children will lash out when they can't think, and can't run for
help. What's confusing to parents, who are trying to show love and
to guide them well, is that children don't seem tolook desperate
when they are about to bite, push, or hit. They look like it's what they
wanted to do. But children do give subtle signals that they feel
too alone to function. If you watch carefully, you may see that a child's
face goes impassive--acquiring a blank, passionless look--in the seconds
before she lashes out. Fear and isolation take the life out of a child's
expression. They don't look mad or frightened because they feel too far
away to show anything on their faces. Fear robs children of their abilty
to feel compassion, warmth, or trust. Their trusting nature isn't gone.
It is covered by a crust of "no one knows me, no one cares about me."
Children get these feelings of isolation, no matter how loving
and close we parents are. Some children have an abiding sense of fear
and desperation that comes from circumstances beyond anyone's control.
Fears are left by early medical crises that terrified the child about
her own survival, by being given up for adoption by birth parents, by
frightening experiences like parents fighting or a loved one going away.
The day-to-day comings and goings of parents and caregivers, which a child
can't understand in infancy, can also set in fears. These experiences
leave a residue of feelings that can be erased by listening patiently
to laughter, crying, trembling, perspiring, and struggling. They can't
be erased by logic or facing "natural consequences," because the difficulty
lies in a knot of intense feelings that defy logic and are out of the
child's control.
So, to help a child who is sometimes aggressive, here are some simple
steps you can follow that will, time by time, drain the upset that causes
the aggression.
- Observe. Under what conditions do the child's feelings overtake
her? Is it when Mommy has been at a meeting the night before? After
Mommy and Daddy have had an argument? During her little sister's time
to nurse? When other children are crowding close to her? When playing
with just one child? After being left to play with a sibling for 3 minutes?
5 minutes? 10 minutes? When wrestling and cuddling with Daddy or Mommy?
Generally, you can come up with a good guess as to when your child might
go "off track" and try to hurt.
- Get someone to listen to you. In order to help your child,
you need to reach for her--she's far away. Your heart will need to be
warm. But our children's aggression kicks up lots of feelings--fears,
angers, guilt--that freeze our warmth and make us likely to react in
ways that frighten our child further. So find an understanding person
who can listen to you talk at some length about how you feel about your
child. Talk, and let your feelings show, until you can find your caring
and hope that things can get better. It's good common sense to clear
our own emotional decks before trying to help with anyone else's emotional
clutter.
- Give up the hope that, "this time it might not happen"! Mental
preparation is important. If your child often bites you when you're
doing rough and tumble play, then every time you play this way, expect
biting to come up!
- When the situation is ripe for an aggressive act, get close, and
offer warmth and attention. Your child needs you close by to help
her tackle her store of upset.
- Intervene quickly and calmly to prevent her hand from landing
in someone's hair, or her teeth from fastening onto you, or her fist
from landing on her friend. Because she's not in control of her behavior,
she needs you to keep her from hurting someone. You can say something
like, "I can't let you hurt Jamal," or, "Oh, no, I don't think I want
those teeth any closer," while holding her forehead a few inches above
your shoulder.
- Reach for her with eye contact, a warm voice, and physical contact.
She is far away, trapped in a knot of feelings, and she needs some sign
that it's safe to show you what those feelings are. It's better not
to move her away, or to get busy talking to her. The busier you are
"fixing" the scene, the less safety she can feel. You can say things
like, "I know you don't feel good," "I'm right here and I'll keep things
safe for you," "Something's not right. Can you tell me about it?" "No
one's mad at you. Can you look over here to see that I love you?"
- Don't expect your child to be reasonable. She is feeling badly,
you're telling her it's OK to feel, so she probably won't explain anything
or use words to tell you how she feels. It's a mistake to expect children
to verbalize their feelings while they're releasing them. Just let her
writhe with upset, cry, and struggle. If she tries to hurt you, gently
keep yourself safe by parrying her blows or using gentle restraint.
Keep trying to let her know you care about her. The combination of you
keeping things safe and you caring will let her cry long and hard about
how awful she feels. When she's finished, she will feel reasonable,
close to you, and relaxed.
- Don't lecture or explain. Children know right from wrong.
And they can't process your logic while they are wild with feelings.
When they've blasted the feelings away, their own inner logic will be
operating again, and they won't need you to tell them that you don't
hit babies, or that biting hurts. Hitting or hurting will be the farthest
thing from their minds.
What if you get there too late, and your child has already
hurt someone?
- Make things safe immediately. Take away the toys being thrown,
or get the child's hand to release her sister's hair.
- Don't blame, shame, or punish. These actions further frighten
children, and further isolate them. They add to the load of hurt that
makes children aggressive.
- Decide who you are going to listen to first. Both the aggressor
and the victim need your help. If you always spend your warm attention
on the victim, the aggressor's problems don't get addressed, so it might
make sense to decide to go to the aggressor as often as you go to the
victim. Of course, the victim needs someone to check the damage done,
and some warmth and caring. If it's the aggressor you are going to put
first, you can tell the child who was hurt, "I'm sorry, love. I know
that hurt. I'm going to spend a minute here with you, and that won't
be enough, but I need to see Molly and help her--she must be pretty
upset to do this to you. I'll be back." You also can keep the crying
child close to you while you attend to the aggressor child, although
it's harder to keep thinking straight.
- Remember that children who hurt others didn't want to do
it. They feel guilty and even more separate than before. Guilt erases
people's ability to look like they care--no one looks more impassive
than a child who has just hurt someone. The "I don't care" look is acutally
a cover--underneath, the child is heartbroken that she was left so alone
and got so desperate.
- Make generous contact. It helps children's guilt lift if you
apologize for not having kept things safe. You can say, "I'm sorry I
didn't see that you were upset with Ginger. It's my job to make sure
things are safe. I know you didn't want to hurt her." It also helps
to let the child know that the child she hurt will be OK. "Ginger is
crying hard--her head hurts--but she'll be OK."
- If you child can cry or tantrum at this point, healing has begun.
Listen. Sometimes, your presence breaks the crust of isolation and
the bad feelings can release. The feelings that pour out are the root
cause of the problem, and your child is unburdening herself, with your
help. Let her feel intensely for as long as it takes. She'll decide
when she's done enough.
- Often, a child who has hurt someone can't feel anything.
The feelings of guilt button a child up tight. She doesn't feel safe
at all. Your best course of action is to make contact with her by spending
some moments--perhaps five or ten--paying attention and doing what she
wants to do. This isn't rewarding your child for "bad" behavior. It's
"thawing her out," helping your child recover her sense that you care.
Without that sense, she can't function reasonably. But playtime with
her won't heal the wounds she carries that drive her nuts. You'll need
to wait for a little upset she brings up, like not being able to find
her favorite toy, or you cutting her toast into squares instead of triangles.
This little upset provides a back door into the tensions that have been
dogging her. Listen. This is the crying she couldn't do earlier, when
she was too afraid she was "bad."
- Encourage her to come to you when she's upset. Children don't
do this easily when they carry a big knot of tension, but offering the
idea that you want her to ask for help indicates the direction things
will go in over time, after many cries have released some of her fears.
- Spend playtime with her and elicit laughter when you can.
Connecting with a warm adult in play can be a powerful means of keeping
her sense of closeness alive. It's that sense that will keep her on
a good track with her friends and siblings.
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