Some days it seems just about anything is enough to make the boy mad. It could be a project that he’d been quietly working on. He’ll come to a point where something will go wrong and he can’t solve it. His frustration quickly boils over to anger and it’s all he can do not to completely destroy the project.
It can be his homework. Lo be the problem that he doesn’t quite get and causes him to begin erupting in fits of furious erasing and a willingness to throw his homework into the fire.
It can be a request to help. If he feels like it’s unfair (usually because he thinks he’s being asked more than his sister, or some variation thereof) he quickly turns into an angry little hornet. The request could even be something that is regularly asked of him, but for some reason he’s deemed it an unsuitable moment to be asked this particular time.
His temper is one of the white-hot varieties. He makes no bones about the fact that he’s mad. It’s not uncommon for him to be willing to destroy something that he’ll likely regret doing so. Sometimes his anger is directed at himself and he becomes his own worst critic, thinking he should have dealt with something better or solved something quicker.
More and more, I try to respond to his anger with rationale and logic, or just a calmness to offset his own boiling emotions. That balance can be tricky though, since he’s not the only one in the house with a temper. I’ve, regretfully, let it slip on a number of occasions where we’ve ended up going head-to-head. I say regretfully because I don’t think it’s a good example to set for him and, unfortunately, I think those are the moments that leave a bigger footprint.
I suspect this is one of those traits he’ll have to spend time working on to curb as he gets older. For now though, he doesn’t have the resources to reign himself in and the Wife and I have to figure out ways to defuse him. Time will tell how big a problem it becomes for him.
One reply on “The Angry Boy”
Sounds familiar. Must run in the family.