Huge demand for talk on child anger management

A BIGGER venue had to be found for a public lecture on managing anger in children in Dublin tomorrow night because of the huge demand from parents wanting expert advice.

To accommodate more than 200 parents wanting to attend the free talk, the Lucenda Foundation moved the event from their offices in Rathgar to St John of God Hospital in Stillorgan.

The main speaker will be Dr Michael Sweeney, assistant professor of clinical psychology at Columbia University in New York.

An expert in cognitive behaviour therapy that examines the link between thoughts, emotional feelings, behaviours and physical body reactions, he has lectured widely on its use.

Prof Fiona McNicholas, a consultant child and adolescent psychiatrist at the Lucena Clinic and Our Lady’s Children Hospital in Crumlin, Dublin, will chair the meeting.

Prof McNicholas said parents had to change the way they dealt with children as they grow older. Instead of being dictatorial and setting limits, they had to learn to renegotiate a more cordial relationship.

“If parents do not learn to do that it can lead to huge anger outbursts when they went to set limits for their children,” she warned.

Prof McNicholas said managing anger became a problem when children started directing the emotion at themselves or others.

“It becomes a problem if children are habitually unable to deal in an appropriate fashion with their anger,” she said.

The challenge was getting children to recognise what was making them angry and getting them to think of the options they could choose in responding to it.

Children could simply learn to count to 10 as a way of calming down; they could leave the situation or preempt the situation and avoid it.

Children should also be encouraged to think through their response and consider whether it could have been different.

Prof McNicholas said she was not surprised by the huge response to the talk.

“I am a parent myself of adolescent children and it is very difficult to know how to deal with adolescents,” she said.

With children becoming more adult-like at a earlier age parents had to reflect on how they negotiated with them.

Prof McNicholas said parents must learn to respect their adolescent children and realise they were becoming autonomous individuals.

“You have to realise that they are able to make decisions even if you do not like them, and the best you can do is help them shape their decisions and get them to reflect on what are appropriate ones and what might be the harm associated with some of the negative ones.”