My Son Has an Anger Problem

Dear Yisroel Wahl,

Thank you so much for doing these articles. I have gained tremendously from each one of them and look forward to continue learning from your insight and expertise.

I have a question that I was hoping you can address. I don't think I'm alone with this struggle and it may be something your general audience will gain from as well. I would love for you to feature this in a future column.

My eleven-year-old son (Chaim) is generally well-behaved. He does relatively well both at home and in school. Although he does have his moments, things are usually okay. Everything is well and good until it comes to his younger brother, Dovid. He can't stand his brother, who is two years his junior. Anything and everything Dovid does will set him off. These things often seem trivial, and if it were anyone other than Dovid, Chaim would have ignored them. With Dovid though, Chaim will regularly fly into a rage. I would love to gain some insight into how I can best address this and restore peace and harmony to my home.

An Appreciative but Frustrated Mother

Dear Caring Mother,

Thank you for your kind words. 

I won't be able to address your specific circumstance without better getting to know you and your child's situation. Still, this is something that many parents struggle with, and therefore, without getting into your specific circumstances, I will share a powerful tip with you. By following this technique, you will b’ezras Hashem turn things around and regain stability in your home.

The first thing to realize is that anger is a secondary emotion. What this means is that there are more primary emotions, such as  fear and sadness, that hide underneath the anger that's being expressed. Anger is like an iceberg, where what we see is just the tip while the feelings that lead up to the anger are hidden beneath the surface. The causes and situations that lead to anger are innumerable, and it's not always simple to figure out what those causes are.

Even so, there is one theme that is true across the board. Losing control of ourselves in anger is always predicated by a feeling of being threatened. We lose control when we feel that we don't have the emotional strength and can't deal with the situation in front of us. If we would instead somehow feel that "it's okay," we would generally be able to control ourselves and not lose our cool.

On the surface, the situation setting us off doesn't have to be tremendously difficult. It can be something as simple as tripping over shoes left on the floor, another car cutting us off on the highway, or a flippant comment that our spouse said. Whatever the specific situation may be, on some deeper level we feel threatened and therefore lose control. We get a feeling along the lines of "I just can't deal with this" and subsequently lose control.

So when your eleven-year-old son is continuously getting angry at his younger brother and isn't a child who usually loses his cool, we know something specific regarding his brother is making him feel threatened.

What we want to do is to change the narrative. Instead of having him feel threatened, we want to cause him to feel empowered. We want to make him feel positive about this interaction. We can do this by using the powerful technique we discussed in the past: Indirect Explanation.

Indirect Explanation works by switching from direct compliments to indirectly explaining what the child accomplished. An example would be a child who cleans up their toys. Instead of saying things such as "great job" or even "you're amazing," we will describe what he accomplished but do so indirectly. Direct compliments are often shrugged off whereas indirect explanation causes the children themselves to see what it was that they accomplished. We can say things such as, "It was such a mess in here, and now it's all clean. I love seeing a clean room." or "It was so messy in here. I don't know how you cleaned it all by yourself!” or, "How did you figure out where everything went?!? I never could've figured it out at your age."

In the situation with your son, we can use Indirect Explanation by looking out for situations where he interacts with his brother and doesn't immediately lose his cool. These examples can be small. Focus on finding these little moments and then immediately compliment him, but do so indirectly. For example, "I don't know how you did that! How did you stay calm when he was chewing so loudly? It must have been so hard." Or, "He touched your things, and you didn't even retaliate?!? I don't know if I could've stayed calm like you."

What we're doing here is we're changing the child's view of the interaction with his brother. Instead of his feeling threatened by his brother, he feels empowered and positive.

By following this technique, you will lower the tension and threat posed by his brother. Even better than this, is that with time—it may not happen after one or two tries—you can completely change your child's feelings towards his brother.

Take away the threat and remove the anger.

(Readers can submit comments and questions to [email protected]. I look forward to addressing as many topics as possible, whether in letter form or by integrating the questions into future columns.)