My seven year old son is prone to anger episodes. Thankfully they are occurring less and less since we eliminated the angry “problem” from our lives two years ago now - Daddy. But the residual damage is still there and it is a work in progress dealing with it and helping him overcome it.
I blame myself for staying with my ex-husband as long as I did. But my heart yearned for the fairy-tale with him, the fairy-tale which sadly could never be. I worked so hard to help him see all the good in life and to embrace the positive. But he could never find it, not even in the smiles from our children.
So it is what it is and I try to focus on all the good that came from our union and the awareness that my intentions were pure and my focus was to have a happy family. I hung on as long as I possibly could. But I had to admit defeat once my firstborn son began showing clear signs of imitating his father’s angry behaviour. That was when I knew my fairy tale would have a different ending. This Metal Queen had to leave her Punk King to be swallowed whole by his angry dragons, to ensure the young princes and princess were free from that same fate. My son would have followed his father straight into the belly of the dragon, no question. He loves his Daddy so fiercely and deeply, but with his presence a mere memory now, we are free to embrace positivity, happiness and dance in the rain.
Every so often though, a dark thundercloud settles over my son’s head and he becomes his father’s young prodigy in anger once again. His body language and his words eerily echo his fathers and I am taken back in time. I could not help my ex-husband. But I sure as hell am determined to help my son.
My ex-sister-in-law even had the ignorance to say to me, “How can you blame my brother for any of the anger and bad behaviour in your kids since he has barely seen them in the past couple of years!” I think that misguided statement speaks for itself. She has her own anger issues though so of course she would be unable to understand the complexity and depth of child psychology.
Many of the people I cast out of my life this past year are afflicted with the same anger my ex-husband carried around. My son came up with the ideal term for classifying this condition in people: Angeritis. He can now see this problem in people so clearly and often will ask me, after a bus driver or another parent has been unjustly rude to us, “Do they have the angeritis?” For him to recognize this issue at such a young age will only serve to help him overcome his own struggles with angeritis.
One of the exercises I use to help my son dispel his bouts of angeritis is a little game called, “come on, get happy!” As soon as I see those dark thunderclouds rolling in and blotting out his smile, I initiate the game. The “angry” person has to stop, take a deep breath, and then list off five things that they are grateful for and happy about. When someone is consumed with anger, this is a really hard task to complete. But I have been blessed with endless patience when it comes to my children, and I just wait him out, however long it takes. Life cannot resume until the game has been played, even if it takes hours to get started. Well, thankfully, it has never taken hours…I think the longest start-up time for my son was about 20 minutes.
As the grumbly grateful list gets started, it usually contains obvious things…like being grateful the sun is shining, or happy about not being sick. As the theme progresses and more “happy” points are brought forward, it never fails to have the anger dissipate and fall away. Slowly but surely, we turn that frown upside down and it simply becomes impossible to stay in that anger zone once the game is well underway.
When you are thinking about everything in your life that you are happy about and grateful for, it truly does make a difference to your mood. It sure does for my little boy…and for that, I am happy and grateful, each and every day.
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