Balanced Life Skills Martial Arts

The world we live in is constantly changing and as parents it can be challenging to know what our children are facing and trying to deal with on an everyday basis.  The way we were raised may have been good for the time that we lived in, but now is a different age and era with a whole new set of issues, ideas and challenges.  Unfortunately our children are facing these challenges everyday and they may not have the words or the courage to tell us what is going on in their minds and hearts.

This may not be the lists that ends all lists, but I believe it gets to the root of many of the issues that our children are having to deal with.  So what are the trends that our children are dealing with?  Not in any particular order I have placed these.  You may think your child is not dealing with some of them.  That may be true and then again maybe not.  As you consider each of these and look at the references and further reading I encourage you to stay close to your child, talk to them without judging, build a community around them, help them feel like they belong to something that is bigger than them.

Here is the list of our 6 Most Dangerous Trends Facing Our Children Today. Read the rest of this entry →

Depending on the age of the child, understanding the feelings of others may be difficult, if only due to developmental reasons.  A five year old has one emotional ability and a 12 year old another.  One thing though that does happen is that when they are angry no matter there age or training – they will be blinded to someone else’s feelings. 

Developing this empathy will help them to understand that all of us have feelings and just as we react to how others treat us, we too can react to how others feel.  Some children though who have had painful lives, may defend themselves by shutting down their sensitivity to others.  Or they may use intimidation and fear as a part of their defense.

Teaching empathy is a two fold.  First every child needs to understand feelings and they need adults around them whom they can trust.  With our younger children, increasing their “feelings vocabulary”, is very important to them identifying both their own and others feelings.

If we find older children are having difficulty with understanding the feelings of others, encourage them to write down stories in a journal.  If they have a problem get them to write or or talk about what happened – from the other persons point a view.

Finally as a parent or teacher, describing our own experiences and the emotions that we feel can be very helpful.  They can identify that you have faced difficult situations or may still be dealing with them, and they will learn to empathize.  

As I speak to children about different scenarios that they could see themselves in I continually hear the same one word answers, good, bad, mad.  These are the labels that many children know and understand.  So when asked about different situations they will use these as their answers many times.  Yet we know that anger does not exist in a vacuum.  There is always another emotion at work when there is an outburst.  We recognize that in ourselves too.

With children though they may not have the words to identify the other emotions and so they are only, mad!  When the child feels only the anger, they act on the anger and the impulses of the anger.  So what can we do as parents?  If we can put a label on the feelings for them by saying, “You must be feeling…..”  this would be a good start.  Some would say that we could say, ” You must be feeling angry.”, but we must be careful not to reinforce the feelings of being mad – and careful to watch to see if recognition of feelings of anger is used to redirect the energy to solving the problem.  Our children may protest that they are not frustrated, jealous, or whatever the feeling might be that we name, but what we are trying to do is to build their vocabulary so they can start using the correct feelings words and finding ways of dealing with them.

As we make these attempts we will make mistakes and mis-characterize the emotion.  Do not give up and just keep working at building everyone’s awareness of feelings.

This is an activity that has worked for me also.  If I am feeling angry I try to stop and think, what am I really feeling?  Am I scared, intimidated, frustrated, hungry or a whole list of other emotions and feelings.  If those can be identified we many times can draw the attention to an emotion of feeling that we can control.  That is very powerful.

We have all seen the child or the adult that sees others as the cause of their anger.  Someone, or something provokes them, and their anger is the “reasonable response”, from their point of view.  Its not their fault if they loss their temper because…  This is a way of sidestepping the responsibility for their feelings and reactions and the damage that they may cause. 

One of the reasons they take this position is because of feeling out of control over their lives.  They may feel like their is very little they can do about a situation and in fact the pain that they are feeling and they are upset at those they they believe caused that pain.  They feel like they cannot stop what is happening and so they go into the fight or flight mode – and they choose to fight.  This lack of power they are feeling is brought on by not knowing that there may be a solution to the issue.  The more they blame others the more they believe it and the more angry they become.

Some of the favorite methods they might use, actually brings more trouble to them and you will probably recognize some of these.  They may speak in a sarcastic manner, criticize others, get in your face because of not knowing when to back off, or nag until the other persons patience is gone. Here is what we want to remember though:  Even if there is a reason for the reaction and the anger, it does not absolve one of the responsibility.  There is a difference from explanation and excuses, but that is hard for a child or an adult to see, especially if they have used these tactics for a period of time.

Even when children or adults continue to find a way of not taking responsibility and blaming others, we must recognize they are still feeling the pain and would very much like to get rid of the pain.  One nine year old said, “One part of my brain tells me to stay calm and another part tells me to by angry.  I can’t help it if the angry side wins.”  What you hear in this is a cry for help, a desire for understanding from others and to feel like they are in control of their feelings.  They don’t want to feel powerless.

What can we do to help a child or an adult who feels like this?  We must teach them to recognize the causes of the anger and suggest alternative resolutions to the problems.   This takes time and patience.  My personal example I think is a good one for that.  Every year at the beginning of November I became a bear to be around.  I was short with everyone and took nothing from nobody.  After looking at this deeply I realized that this was the time of the year that my father passed away when I was very young and subconciously I was still reacting to this.  I was 32 years old when I figured that out.  It takes patience.  But please remember that patience is part of the lesson of problem solving. 

Like in most things you will not solve problems by using the same thing against the problem.  Do not shout, blame or have pointless discussions that the person deserved what they got.  It solves nothing.  Find a way to suggest that even if someone else is to blame that we need to find a solution to handle this that benefits you.  This will be very helpful to the angry child or adult.

There are ten characteristics that create how one views the world and handles adversity.  Number two on the list that we will discuss today is when you are angry you are not able to analyze and think logically about the problem at hand.  Not thinking clearly comes in three different ways.

First it may show up by not wanting to talk about the problem or the situation.  The reason the angry child or adult does not want to have a discussion is that this would mean acknowledging the role they play in the situation.  Unwilling to admit to their weaknesses and being uncomfortable with answering questions they would prefer to stick to the blame game.  It is easier to blame the other person than talking about it and having to bear some of the responsibility.  As they use these avoidance tactics they continue the cycle and never have a chance to learn from their mistakes. In line with our earlier discussion of the 4 steps of anger it goes like this.  (a) the angry person cannot solve the problem so their failures and frustrations grow , buildup.  (b) the spark can be anything that leads the person to an explosion where they blame anyone or everyone around them.  (c) those that are blamed do not like to be around the angry person and so they are pushed away and the angry person feels a victory and justified. (d) if anyone tries to talk about the situation the attempts are rebuffed  (e) since there was no resolution the problem serves as the buildup for the next explosion.  We can help our children out of this cycle by helping them to see the rewards of discussing problems in a calm and upbeat manner.  Trying to do this though with a particular angry event will probably not work, but doing so using other examples will be the stepping stone to better conversations.

Second it may show up with weak thinking or circular thinking.  Have you ever found someone who is angry that could only remember in detail what the other person did but very little about how they contributed to the situation?  The reason is that they are focused on their defense and attack and are otherwise blind to everything else going on around them.  Even if they do remember they will magnify the details in a manner to support their own viewpoint. So when we hear the account from their point of view it does not even sound like we saw the same situation.  How do we solve this?  We must teach our children problem solving skills.  Here are three steps to take with your child or the angry person.  (a) gather all the facts  (b) show them another point of view  (c) and then help them to see how their actions had affect on their actions and or the solutions.  Problem solving skills need to be taught though on a daily basis with things that they are not intimately involved with.  Using movies or TV shows and asking them to anticipate what is going to happen next and then follow through with the results.  Or a board game that you can demonstrate how if you move here or there this will happen.  Some children have problems solving problems because their parents do too.  So work on it together and use the resources available to you including social workers and psychologists to learn problem solving skills and then you will be able to help your children too. 

Third it may show up due to confusing feelings with facts.  Emotions have a powerful influence on our thinking.  Have you ever noticed that if someone is in love the person they are in love with can do no wrong – but later the same person who could do no wrong can do nothing right if the original party is angry or upset with them.  This is the idea of confusing feelings with facts.  While this is tough enough for adults this is very difficult for children.  There is a difference though between feelings and thinking.  You may have a feeling based on a partial truth that could easily lead you to a wrong conclusion.  Children need to learn as do all of us that people can fiew the same situation in differnt ways and have different feelings about them and neither person be more right than the other person. Teaching our children about feelings and all the different ways we can feel and how they are different for every person is very important in overcoming this confusion of feelings and facts.

Setting a good example and showing our children how it works is the best way to learn to think things through and not react in strong angry ways.



There are ten characteristics that create how one views the world and handles adversity.  If we can see that, it will help us to understand how a child or even ourself is thinking, which in turn helps us to find ways of dealing with our anger.  Over the next few weeks I will talk about all ten of them and let’s see if we can identify ways of managing this in our own house.

The first way we will discuss is the child that seems to create their own situations that lead to angry outbursts.  Many times they are unaware that the actions they are taking will provoke angry reactions.  For instance they may take a toy away from another child and not give it back, or they may pick on someone to the point of annoyance and get a reaction.  On the other had they may go about it more passively.  Let’s say that a child has been called out on his behavior and then decides in his mind that he can do no right and so decides to go silent and not interact.  This could cause a bad reaction and create and battle with they think they are avoiding trouble.

Anger can many times be building up over a long period of time, weeks or months, never forgetting and then using this to justify their actions.  So how can we overcome these self-fulfilling prophesies? 

 1.  Do not put a label on your child of any kind.  Take every instance and situation as a stand alone situation. I know how difficult this is, because we will find it hard not to connect all the other things that they have done together, which really only raises our own frustration.  Labeling a child though puts us in situation where we will find ourselves ‘looking for the anger’  and we know that when we are looking for something that we will find it.

 
 2. Expect the best of each child in each circumstance.  What we expect is what we will get, if our expectation is made in the proper manner.  If we expect our child to speak kindly to us and we model that for them, they will get it eventually and meet our expectation.  If we go into every interaction expecting an argument we will get that too.

 3.  Be fair.  It is amazing as hard as we might try not to do this, every parent has their favorite child. If you want to believe it or not it shows and though you may not see it or believe it, all of us must work on treating every one of our children or students the same.  In fact it is important for us to be fair for another reason. All of our children and students are watching how we deal with the child that is giving us the most trouble at the time and determining in their own mind how they will be dealt with at the time that they do something that is not in the parents favor.  This one fact will have an affect on them too. 

 4.  Hold no grudges.  If we are not willing to forget the past it will be difficult to break the cycle and does not allow them to have the room to change.  When we hold on to the past it will be harder for us to let them know that we believe in them and their ability to do better at managing their actions.

 5.  Let them know they can change.  If we focus on positive we will get better results.   If we use negative comments, insults, or demeaning phrases like, “I don’t know why I bother.”, it reinforces bad behavior.  When we are positive it lets them know that we believe in them and sets a positive direction for your relationship. 

Following these steps and setting an example for our children who create their own messes will let them see how you keep working on things that you may be struggling with and that you understand them.  Empathize with your child and see the positive results.

Now while the explosion, large or small is the event that gets most of the attention, it is what happens after that really has the larger impact on parents, children and anyone that was affected.  It is the time that we can confront the original problem and any new ones that may have come up from the ‘explosion’.  We have talked many times in our discussions that trying to have a teaching moment when emotions are high just does not work.  We must have a time when emotions on both sides of the equation are lower and everyone is calm.

Recognizing that even small problems can teach big lessons that can be looked back on when larger issues occur.  Here is an example of what we are talking about.  Lets say we have a 5 year old who is playing with their blocks.  As they try to build this large tower it falls over and our  year old is getting very frustrated (the buildup).  Eventually the blocks topple (the spark).  When this happened our 5 year old kicks the blocks and lets out a scream (the explosion).  Soon though he back to playing with the blocks (the aftermath).

As a parent I may be looking at this and be willing to let him continue to play since it ended as quickly as it started, no one else was involved, and we were use to seeing this kind of minor outburst on their part.  But in fact this sort of acting out may be the perfect teachable moment.  Teaching anger management on small scale problems may be easier and serve as a foundation for teaching on larger problems as you have success with the smaller ones.

In this stage of the aftermath our goal is to solve the problem and more importantly give our child the tools they need to solve the problems.
Here are 5 steps to coming to resolution with a problem similar to what we described above.  After praising the efforts made to build the tower recognize that he has some strong feeling, but then:
    1. Relabel feeling from anger to ‘frustration’ or whatever the feeling may be.  In our example the child was feeling frustrated that the blocks would not stay in the position he was hoping for.  Frustration is not anger, but a 5 year old may not have that emotion identified yet and certainly may not have the word for it.  In lieu of asking why he is feeling angry, make a statement – “That’s frustrating when the blocks fall down .”
    2. How to solve the problem;  Yes it is difficult but lets try together to build the blocks.  Allow them to fall down and then model what you would like to see. “Whoops they fell down.  Maybe we should try another way.” 
    3.  About your feelings;  If he kicks your blocks you may say that it makes you sad when he kicks the blocks since you do not want to see the blocks broken. 
    4. The rule;  You then tell him the rule “if you kick the blocks they will be put away.” 
    5. The consequence of course is the blocks would be put away.
Then come back to a positive mood by saying how much fun it is to play with him. 

In our teaching moments we would like to stay calm and bracket our correction with praise.  We have a simple formula in our school that we try very hard to stick to, PCP.  Praise, Correct, Praise.  Try this at home and see how it works for you. 

The next time I am going to discuss the 5 needs of every human no matter their age and you will see how this will help you in teaching your children anger management.



When it comes to solving the situation that faces us, we know that using our words in effective ways is key to calming down any of our responses.  We have learned from others that expressing our feelings and why we feel that way to the other person is the first step.  We will want to use “I” messages, no matter what age they are.  None of us want to hear someone blame us for something or tell us don’t do this or that.  It does not matter if we are a youngster or an adult.  What touches us is when we know how our action affected the feelings of another person. Recognizing those feelings is practicing empathy.

So if I am a child I may say, ” I feel angry when you kick my blocks down”, and if we are talking to our parents we want to say, “I feel frustrated (angry, disappointed or whatever the feeling is) when I do not get to have a play date.”  Then the conversation begins with more control and less emotions of the moment. 

When parents set the example by doing the same in return to their children, it models to the child anger management.  None of us want to or set out to hurt each other. Learning to calm ourselves down before we make a choice that we regret later is one of the most important self defense we will ever practice.

I have heard of therapist and psychologist suggest to individuals that it is a good idea if you are angry to go and take it out on your pillow.  One person in fact bought a soft object from me that was made for swinging to be used by her client to hit objects in her room – just to get the anger out.  So what do you think about this?  I believe that if we take to hitting things when we are angry that we are practicing what we would really like to do.  In fact we may one day when we are really angry not be able to control ourselves and actually do what we have practiced for all of those years, except this time it may be a real person. 

We see this sometimes when someone, usually a man, who cannot control themselves, puts their fist through the wall.  Eventually they will hit someone and create some very difficult situations for themselves.  So what is the answer?  We need to check in with our feelings and recognize that we are feeling anger.  When we check in we may recognize that the feeling is not anger as much as it is frustration, jealousy, embarrassment or some other feeling.  Once we recognize this we can ask ourselves, How can I calm down?  It may be one of the four ways we suggested in an earlier post, or it may be another way that works for us.   Then the question is, how do I solve this problem? 

How to solve the problem is always interesting because we have an entire list of ways of doing this.  Next time we will examine solving the problem.

The other day when I was teaching I mentioned to the students that anger management may very well be one of the most important self defenses that we could ever learn.  Think about it for a minute.  Most of us will never be kicked or punched in a violent attack that takes place in the street.  But everyone of us will be angry about something at some point and depending on if we know how to calm down and think about the choices we have, may decide how much difficulty we make for ourselves.

Here are 4 ways that we can practice calming down.
1. Take 3 deep breaths. In fact take more if that is what is needed.
2. Count to ten or count down from ten to one. 
3. Allow ourselves to listen to a friend say “calm down’, or we can practice saying it to ourselves.
4. Visualize in your mind a very peaceful place that you enjoy being.

In all 4 of these examples the idea is to get your self to a place in your head to think about all of your choices and the consequences of each one.  We need oxygen in our brain to think and when we are angry, most people’s breathing gets very shallow and quick and does not get to the brain in sufficient quantities. 

So which technique works for you? Or do you have another method that you use?  some of the kids told me that they go to their room and hit their pillow.  In my next post I will comment on that technique.