When Kids Go Through An Aggressive Phase
Remember this? And this? And, well, most of you won’t remember THIS, because it was posted years ago on a blog that is currently a pile of cyber-ashes, but I republished it here because it records the first time one of my kids went through an aggressive phase, and the surprising answer I found.
Well, so yes, we’ve had our share of seemingly inexplicable, persistent aggression, and Jane had just started doing little things to hurt Mary again. As usual, I forgot the solution that always ends up working for us, and started responding with the whole, “Why are you doing this? You should know better! Aagh, this is so frustrating!” attitude.
Then a friend called to tell me her new plan for dealing with the same type of behavior. She would simply stop the hurtful behavior if she could, and then — give the aggressive child a hug.
Yes! That’s it, I realized. That is exactly the one and only thing that has ever gotten us out of the hurting ruts we go through occasionally. It may not be a hug, per se (Sariah often doesn’t want to be touched when she’s angry), but it has to be a general attitude of understanding and compassion for the aggressor.
It always amazes me how well this works, and it worked this time again. Jane’s little attempts to get Mary crying whenever I looked away for a minute were escalating, and as soon as I stopped with the whole, “Don’t do that to her, honey, that hurts!” along with a “WHY are you doing this?” attitude, and started just protecting Mary and offering loves and quiet, understanding words to Jane, the hurting stopped. Whatever need she was trying to fulfill by hurting Mary was met, and she didn’t need to do it anymore.
Now, if only I can get to the point where love and understanding are my natural first response to hurtful behavior, I will really be getting somewhere.
Meanwhile, I found this article from handinhandparenting.org really, really helpful in explaining the why’s and how’s of this approach. It’s an inspiring read, I want to come back to it whenever this comes up again.
Biting, Pushing, Pulling Hair: Helping Children With Aggression
Filed in: parenting | November 17, 2009
Nat2
Now we need to figure out what to do when the agressor was not successfully prevented and you have TWO kids who need hugs at the same time.
Jane Needs Touch. Re: Love Languages. : Simply Mother
[…] That’s sweet of course. Not so sweet is that she expresses anger, frustration, and sadness physically too, as I’ve blogged about on a few occasions. […]