To help your child manage his or her anger, teach your child how to express him or herself appropriately, control their feelings and think about how their behavior will make others feel. For example: reading your child a book that show situations or scenarios when a child feels angry, sad, etc., shows them that other people also have times when they that way - and possible ways that they can handle that.

• Feelings are difficult for must of us - adults and kids
• Stay in the adult role - respond vs. react
• You can't reason with a child having a tantrum
• Allow you and your child some cool down time
• Label feelings so that you can better manage them
• Sometimes anger masks another feeling - such as hurt or fear
• Be cautious about assigning a motive to your child's behavior. Instead, HALT and asses whether your child is H - hungry, A - angry, L - lonely or T - tired.

Activity ideas

• Ask your child to use art supplies to make pictures of different feelings
• Play a game with your child - try to guess what I'm feeling by the face I make
• Role-play with your child possible situations that make them angry, and how they can try on a new behavior.
• Get a poster that asks "How are you feeling today?" and ask your child to point to faces that show how they're feeling

Book suggestions
You can find most of these books at your local library or bookstore.

• When You’re Mad and You Know It by Elizabeth Crary & Shari Steelsmith
• The Feelings Book by Todd Parr
• Sad Isn’t Bad: a Good-Grief Guidebook for Kids Dealing With Loss by Michaelene Mundy
• A Volcano in my Tummy by Éliane Whitehouse & Warwick Pudney
• The Feelings Books: The Care & Keeping of Your Emotions from the AmericanGirl Library
• Josh's Smiley Faces: A Story About Anger by Gina Ditta-Donahue
• Your Child's Self Esteem by Dorothy Corkville Briggs
• The Friendly Classroom for a Small Planet: A Handbook on Creative Approaches to Living and Problem Solving for Children by the Children's Creative Response to Conflict Program
• Keeping the Peace: Practicing Cooperation and Conflict Resolution With Preschoolers by Susanne Wichert
• Who's Calling the Shots? How to Respond Effectively to Children's Fascination with War Toys and Violent TV by Nancy Carlsson-Paige and Diane E. Levin

The influence of parenting styles on children's behavior
Following are four parenting styles, which affect a child's behavior:

• Authoritative Style: In this style the parents are nurturing, responsive and supportive - yet they set firm limits for their children. Parents attempt to control their children's behavior by explaining rules, discussing and reasoning. They listen to the child's viewpoint, but don't always accept it. Children raised with this parenting style tend to be friendly, energetic, cheerful, self-reliant, self-controlled, curious, cooperative and achievement-oriented.

• Permissive Style: In this style parents are warm, but lax; fail to set firm limits, monitor children's activities closely or require appropriately mature behavior of their children. Children raised with this parenting style tend to be impulsive, rebellious, aimless, domineering, aggressive and low in self-reliance, self-control and achievement.

• Authoritarian Style: In this style parents are unresponsive, inflexible, demanding and harsh in controlling behavior. They set many rules, require obedience to authority, and favor punishment to control children's behavior. Children raised with this parenting style tend to be irritable, apprehensive, fearful, moody, unhappy, easily annoyed, unfriendly, sulky, vulnerable to stress and aimless.

• Uninvolved Style: In this parenting style parents are unresponsive, unavailable and rejecting. Children raised with this parenting style tend to have low self-esteem, little self-confidence and lack ambition. They seek other, sometimes inappropriate, role models to substitute for the neglectful parent.

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