Rage management combines prevention, negotiating, cooling off and reward. Additional help may be obtained with either individual or group play therapy and medication. Try, where possible, to avoid any known causes of your child’s outburst. Explain to him; “if you do this then this will happen.”
There should be, after warnings, a cooling-off period in the sin bin. This should be a place without distractions – one where your child cannot see or make contact with the family, and there are no games or TV. After an appropriate period – usually about five to 10 minutes – let your child out with the warning that should he misbehave again, he will be sent back there.
Experts say try to avoid the bedroom as a place to cool off, as this room and also bedtime may become associated with punishment. Nevertheless, it is very important to reward your child for good behavior, and doing so should be spontaneous and given when he is asked to do something. This often neutralizes a looming negative attitude and rage episode. Consistency is important. If a child is sent to the sin bin for whatever reason, repeating the behavior means he must be punished again. Likewise, siblings who are guilty of the same crime must suffer the same fate.
Punishment must be fair and administered immediately. Sometimes these measures are insufficient and parents must then seek psychological counseling. Finally, if the child has rage attacks due to ODD, these must be differentiated from those related to episodic dyscontrol syndrome. This is a rare condition in which the child develops unprovoked sudden and recurrent attacks of violent physical behavior as shown by a Child Psychologist Caloundra in Sunshine Coast, Queensland.
The child is unable to control this, but the episodes are self-limiting and associated with remorse. There is a post-episode period of lethargy, not unlike that which occurs after a seizure. This condition must be differentiated from complex epileptic episodes.
A simple act of bringing your life into greater balance could have a positive knock-on effect for generations to come. Threads of behavior can be seen to perpetuate throughout generations until resolved as shown by a Child Psychologist Caloundra.
Often these threads may swing from one aspect to its opposite as they go down through history, both in individual families and in larger groups of people. Characteristics such as being a miser and spendthrift, bully and coward, victim and tyrant, or strictness and control versus no rules and no control, may repeat themselves alternately, over and over through generations.
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