Question:
What do I do when my five-year-old gets angry? He becomes
furious and aggressive when he doesn’t get what he wants. His face turns red and
he shakes his little fist at us! He tells us he’s
going to burn down the house (with us in it!) Does he need to see a specialist?
Will this pass? What are we doing wrong?
Answer:
Every
child gets angry, or at least frustrated, when he doesn’t get what he wants –
and most adults do too. The only question is - how the feeling is dealt with,
and that changes with each stage of life.
Very young children are
generally unable to control their feelings of frustration and anger. They
express them immediately, loudly, and usually dramatically.
As they
become older, however, children slowly learn to develop self-control. They might
still feel just as angry and frustrated as they did when they were younger, but
they have usually learned by age five to exert some control over their
behavioral response to the feelings.
That’s not to say they don’t lose
their temper, however. A normal five year-old will still be brash and
aggressive, and can even be violently emotional at times. Don’t be surprised if
"Mommy’s to blame" for most of the problems either!
However, this is
also the age where a little boy mimics attachment and separation behaviors that
he sees modeled by his parents and other adults around him. If a new baby has
just entered the family, your five year-old might insist this is "his" baby. He
might tell you that he is going to "marry Mommy" when he grows up. He might also
ask for a baby doll – and yet, he will also turn anything else into a projectile
weapon which he might then point at anyone.
All of this is
normal.
Little boys, as do little girls, wrestle with their
transformation from infancy to toddlers to preschoolers and then to growing
children. While doing so, they are also struggling with their attachment to
their parents, both with the parent of the opposite gender as well as the
"competing" parent of the same gender, who they both admire and yet with whom
they also feel a sense of rivalry.
Ultimately, your young man will
shake his little fist in anger, but will most likely want to grow up to be like
his father, even if he expresses anger at him.
However, you might want
to find out exactly what your little boy is so very angry about, that he feels
he has to "burn the house down" with all of the family in it.
Many
different things can set off anger in a small child, even extreme anger, but it
is unusual for such anger to last for very long. It is also really important to
pay attention when a child talks about fire, because occasionally their
impulsivity gets the better of them and they actually do hunt down a box of
matches and light a blaze.
This would be stepping outside the range of
"normal", and is the point at which you would be well advised to seek
professional help. Under those circumstances, a child therapist can help you
teach your child healthy, appropriate ways to express his anger and his
frustration.
In the vast majority of cases, the "angry young man"
becomes a sterling young scholar who will someday chuckle when his own little
boy shakes his fist at Mommy in a rage about something.
Rare indeed is
anger in a five-year-old that would merit more than the normal concern any
parent would devote to such behavior. Wise is the parent who knows to be on the
lookout for it anyway.
Very young children are generally unable to control their feelings of frustration and anger.