Is it bad to be mad?
Yesterday I just couldn't stop crying and my little man (nine months) saw it all. At first he was curious and seemed a little concerned - then he laughed! But it got me thinking. How much barely controlled emotion should I be exposing him to? With sadness, I'm inclined to share it with him so that he knows it's okay and normal and mama cries too. But what I'm really confused about is anger. I really don't like him seeing this, but aren't I just teaching him that anger is bad and should be repressed? The more I think about it, I'm not even sure whether it IS okay to be angry. Any comments?
I think Gigi is right; anger is an honest emotion. As long as you don't let your anger get out of control and start taking over your life and the lives of those around you, I think it is natural to be angry at times. But to discuss it and explain what it means can be part of the learning process for kids.
"You need to be in touch with your own feelings, and you need to know that it is not wrong to feel anger, frustration, rage, sadness or overwhelming joy or excitement. Think back to when you were small and try to remember if any of these feelings were discouraged because your caregivers were uncomfortable with them. You need to discover, as I am, that EVERYTHING you feel is okay. And then you need to find healthy ways to _deal_ with the feelings so they don't rule you life."
There is a difference between feeling a feeling, and expressing a feeling. I think everything you feel (including anger) is okay, just some of the ways we express it are not okay. We have rules in our house--no name calling, yelling, throwing, no saying things to hurt each other, etc.
I wonder about this too. How much of a brave front should we put up in front of our kids? I don't want my daughter to feel that things are out of control. But I do want to model healthy ways to express feelings, and handle conflict.
your kid will know it's there whether you think you're hiding it or not. repression causes some strange behavior, that is silent treatments, avoiding people in the house, etc... i think this is more scary to a kid than an honest expression of anger. because the kid can relate to frustration and anger, not so much to coldness or hostility. so my feeling is: show it freely, just try to explain as much of it as possible and of course, try to keep it proportionate to the stressor. i think it's actually good for the kid, particularly when you talk afterward and the kid sees that you recovered just fine and it's just an emotion that passes. that's an empowering lesson.
"I've done a lot of things in my life I ain't too proud of, and the things I am proud of are disgusting." - Mo Szyslak
show your feelings, if you can.
I agree with jmoon, it isn't feeling anger that could be of concern, it is how one expresses anger.
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