Mid-Meltdown Management in the class/therapy room: How to cope ourselves and how to respond to a child
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One of the most powerful ways to help children act more calmly, more often – and to reduce their angry behavior – is to coach them to develop frustration management skills.
These skills include the following:
Using (appropriate) language to express their feelings and desires
Asking for help or support
Using strategies to lower physiological arousal,
Switching their attention away from difficult situations,
Noticing “angry” (blaming, non-empathic, catastrophic) thinking
Using calm sentences to remind themselves that frustrating situations and behaviours from others are not terrible, not always intentional, often understandable and can be managed.
Identifying potentially frustrating situations ahead of time (and planning for them);
For us as professionals to help children learn these skills we need to first have a sufficiently warm and trusted relationship with them, provide age appropriate rationale and explanation, model the skills, rehearse with them and ensure they have enough motivation for practicing and using the skills.
However, all of this coaching work can only be done when children are calm.
So, what do we do when children are not calm? How do we cope when we have to manage intense frustration, overwhelm and anger in a child in a professional situation? How do we keep ourselves, other people and the angry child safe, protect property, support the child and take steps towards a positive outcome?
I’ve had extremely overwhelmed and angry children in my therapy room often – and I know it can be very challenging.
Here are some strategies I've found helpful in these situations.
1. Connecting with the child
When children are angry and upset, they are often anxious and overwhelmed. From their perspective, the world appears to be a scary and threatening place. They are most like to be able to calm themselves if we can help them feel supported and understood during that time - in other words if we are able to "connect" with them.
Here are some options for connecting with an angry child (whether all of these are appropriate of course will depend on the situation and the child):
Showing care and concern on our face or in our tone of voice (angry children are often watching and hearing a tone of voice more than the exact words we say).
Making a statement which expresses care and concern: “I’m sorry you are feeling so cross”, “This is a tough situation”
Expressing their feelings when they are unable to: “It seems you feel pretty disappointed about that”, “You feel like this is really unfair”
Staying nearby - and telling them we are doing this to support them “I’ll stay here for a bit; I know this is tough for you”, "I'm not going to leave you right now because I want to help"
(If it seems safe), making ourselves smaller (crouching or sitting down) to be at or below their eye level to help them feel less threatened or powerless.
Connecting with children in this way is not easy to do if we are also feeling frustrated or upset ourselves (very understandable in this situation), so we might need to take a moment to look after ourselves first (breathing deeply, reminding ourselves “I’m okay”, “I can be here for this child”, “this child is having a problem, not being a problem”.
2. Use Move and Remove Strategies to keep everyone safe
Angry and upset children are sometimes physically aggressive - toward themselves, others or towards property. To prevent this and keep them and others safe, it might be appropriate to use our MOVE or REMOVE strategies.
For example, using a firm, confident and friendly voice (and facial expression) we might do the following (again depending on the child and situation):
Move other children away from them: “I am going to get (other child) to sit over there for a minute so we can all stay safe”
Move other objects in the room: “I know you don’t want to break this, so I will put it up here for now”
Remove objects the child is using to hurt others or damage property, first asking “May I have that so we don’t hurt anything?” and then if the child refuses, try to take it from them (if safe to do so): “I am going to take this and put it away for now, we will get it back out when things are calmer”
Move ourselves: “I know you don’t really want to hurt me, and you doing that hurts, so I am going to step away for a minute”
Sometimes we might have to move even further away or put something between ourselves and the child: “It is dangerous for me here while you are hurting me, so I am going to stand over here/go over here/stand behind this wall –I will move back closer to you to help you soon” and then “I would like to come back and help you – can you keep your hands to your side so I can be with you?”
3. Use Take Charge Skills to help the child calm their body, communicate or shift attention
We can also use our kind “take charge” skills to help children takes steps towards calming their body, communicating constructively or shifting their attention when they are very angry or upset.
For example, using a firm, confident and friendly voice (and facial expression), we might:
Help a child to relax their bodies (slow breathing, relaxed muscles) in a variety of ways: “Let’s take a deep breath and make our body floppy” OR “Let’s see if we can list some things we can see or hear right now”.
Coaching a child to take a small step to communication. For example, we might say: Can you please tell me calmly what you want/what you are upset about? I’ll help - You can say please say “I want ….…” or “I am mad because……” "Would you like to write or draw something for me which tells me how you think or feel about this?"
Asking the child to start another (physical or mental) activity to help switch their attention: “Before we can solve this we need to make your brain busy on something else for a minute – this will help you feel better. Would you like to do X or Y?” Or, “Let’s go and look at the XX together for a minute before we talk about this”
Sometimes moving to an entirely different room or space can increase the chance the child can successfully redirect their attention. “Let’s go outside for a few minutes” or “I’d really like to see who is in the next room, would you like to come with me?”
If a child doesn’t respond to suggestions about starting another activity/moving to another space, we might start moving/doing this ourselves first, e.g.: “I’m going to start playing X, I’d love it if you could play with me” or “Hmm, I am just going to poke my head out to see what is out here – you can look too if you like” Or “I’m going to look at this book/ video) – you can join me if you like”.
Four important points about helping children calm their body, communicate or shift their attention
1.It can sometimes help to tell children about the benefits of what we are asking them to do – or even provide a small incentive: For example, we might say: “If you stop yelling and come outside with me now, we can talk about that game you are interested in”, “If you make your body floppy with me for a minute, we will go and talk to that person and see if we can understand what went wrong” or If you tell me what you are most upset about, I will tell you my plan to help you feel better“
2.As soon as children start communicating, calming their body or shifting their attention, it is sometimes helpful to quickly praise and thank them for any steps towards this behaviour: “you are doing a great job of managing your frustration, thankyou” or “Thank you for being able to calmly tell me what happened, that’s very helpful for us both”
3.When we are using our kind take charge skills with children who are angry, it’s important to give short and specific instructions rather than long and complicated lectures (e.g. “let’s go to the next room” rather than a sentence like “lets finish this game and think about moving to another space where we can be calmer and be apart from people which might help you calm down because being angry is not helpful). Remember this is not the moment for teaching and explaining – this comes later.
4.If we are providing choices to children rather than giving instructions, it’s often more helpful to provide simple choices rather than ask open ended questions. (i.e. say Would you like to do X or Y? rather than “what do you think and what would you like to do?”)
What about afterwards?
Take care of yourself
If a child has acted in overwhelmed and angry ways towards us, we may have a range of emotions and reactions.
We might feel angry ourselves and frustrated about the child’s behavior. We might even feel like we want to “push back” or retaliate. We might feel shocked or frightened. Our primitive brain doesn’t fully recognize the age or stage of a child – only the “attack” - so feeling frightened or angry is a normal, understandable reaction. Small children also can be surprisingly destructive - I recall once having a 5 year old throw a heavy stapler at close range towards my face – it was only a last minute duck on my behalf (amazingly my normally slow reflexes actually saved me for a change!) which prevented me from getting a nasty injury.
We might also question our professional ability/skills - or wonder how others (professionals or parents) are evaluating how we have reacted or managed this situation. We might wonder if we did something to cause it.
This questioning can be unsettling. Most of us so deeply want to be seen as competent – and children acting in angry or aggressive ways can make us doubt ourselves.
We might feel deeply worried for or hopeless about the child. Sometimes we feel at a loss or wonder whether there will ever be any improvement for the child.
It’s important therefore to acknowledge – even just briefly – that managing anger in children is a difficult and emotionally tiring experience for professionals.
This means we should use our self-care skills after it occurs.
This might mean talking to a colleague, taking a minute to switch our attention to non-work activities, use (appropriate) humour (an activity recognized in the literature for managing burnout) or reminding ourselves of our strengths and the important work we are doing.
Spend some time reviewing the situation with the child
As outlined at the beginning of this article, what makes the most difference to children being able to manage their difficult feelings is not what we do in the moment – but having the opportunity to practice frustration management skills. This means, after children have become angry about a situation – and then calmed down - it is vital to reflect on the challenging situation with them. We might ask them to think about – and even rehearse - alternative ways to have managed that situation, ask them to think about how they could have expressed themselves differently and provide encouragement about the helpful behaviours they did use (if any) in the situation.
Of course, even with all of this conversation, rehearsal and practice – learning to manage frustration and anger is a lifelong journey. It’s something many adults struggle with – it’s not surprising the children we work with (some of whom have many challenges) find it tough.
But it is a task we can help them manage much more effectively.
If you would like the 5-11 year old children you work with to access a course on managing frustration, you might like to consider Calm Kid Pro. It includes videos for children on managing frustration, activity and homework sheets to use with them and discussion guides to help know how to talk with them. Click below for more information.
PS, thanks to one of our wise and experienced psychologists, Michelle Alexander this week for some extra ideas and thoughts about this article.
