How to Help Kids Manage Anger

We recently interviewed a dialectical behavioral therapist named Jordan Harmon on the Uplift Kids podcast after he attended our 3-day parenting retreat in Scholls Valley, Oregon.

We started the discussion by talking about his experience at the parenting retreat, and then we asked him to share a story he told about how he and his wife helped their son manage the angry outbursts he’d been expressing from ages two to eight. Jordan’s insights fit perfectly with our work at Uplift Kids. 

Here’s a transcript (lightly edited for length and clarity) of his story, as told to Uplift cofounder, Jon Ogden. If you’ve ever struggled to know how to help your kid manage their anger, Jordan’s story and insights here will help.

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Jordan: My son, who’s now 19 years old, experienced a lot of aggression when he was young. He got really angry, rigid, and upset, which was so different from our first child who was easygoing.

So there was this narrative that built up over time of, “Wow, our second child is just angry all the time. What do we do?” We couldn’t distract him from his anger. It was the kind of thing where if you said, “It’s time for us to go to the library,” and he was in the middle of something, he had a meltdown that didn’t go away until he’d fall asleep hours later.

When it happened, we’d developed a practice of having him go to a “time alone” — basically a timeout. We’d tell him, “It’s time for a time alone. If you’re yelling, you can’t yell in this space. You can go to your room and do that. And then you can come out when you’re ready.” That was our way of saying there’s a punishment — we’re going to have you go do this and then you can be in charge of coming back out.

So we did that from the age two to eight. And the only thing it worked for really was he’d be in his room yelling and then he’d finally come out, but you’d still see his anger on his face. So it didn’t really change at a more fundamental level.

Then when he was about eight or nine, I was at a training — my first intensive dialectical behavioral therapy (DBT) training. And I loved DBT. I loved it because of the mindfulness component, which is a core of DBT, and because of dialectics, or people familiar with your podcast might use the term polarities. Those are the things I loved. However, I didn’t love the behavioral part cause I didn’t really understand it. And I always thought behaviorism was just a way that you program and manipulate people to do what you want and you don’t really respect agency.

Still, I was open at this training. The trainer presented behavioral shaping in a simple and profound way. She basically said, “This is operant conditioning: Pay less attention to the behavior you want to see less of. Pay more reinforcing attention to the behavior you want to see more of.” She said, “Write it down. Think about it with your clients. Think about it with your children, your spouse, your friends, your parents, and yourself. This is a true principle, just like an equation for gravity. You might not understand gravity, but it exists whether or not we understand it similar to, we might not understand behavioral shaping or even like it, but we are being trained by our environment and we are training our environment.”

When she shared this, I immediately thought of my son. I thought, “When do I pay attention to him and when do I not?” And it was immediately clear. It hit me so hard. I am emotionally present when he’s misbehaving, and when he’s playing peacefully, I walk right by him, and I’m not present. I was like, “Finally, I get some time for myself. Finally, my kids are playing nicely.” And I realized, “Oh, if I’m going to give this behavioral shaping thing a try, I’m doing the exact opposite. I’m doing what’s called inadvertent reinforcement. I’m fueling the very thing I want to decrease and I’m decreasing the very thing I want to fuel.” So my wife and I collaborated and said, “Let’s try it. Let’s do this differently. Let’s not send him to a time alone. If he’s yelling let’s just act like it’s not affecting us” (which isn’t easy). That’s called extinction, when you remove reinforcers that might be reinforcing the wrong thing.

More importantly, we said, “Let’s reinforce him being peaceful and playing and being chill.” But how could we do that? We didn’t really know. So we tried a few different things, and we found pretty early that he was starving for physical affection, which surprised us because he hadn’t really been a physically affectionate baby.

And so we started doing more — just walking up to him and giving him a hug or putting our arms around him or tussling his hair or just wrestling with him. And this is the part where it felt like a conversion experience because it was literally like two weeks of giving physical affection intentionally every day. And then when he was angry, we didn’t really fuel it.

And his anger outbursts totally went away. After two weeks they were gone. Six years of timeouts didn’t do it. Behavioral shaping did.

That’s the story. I was converted to that reality.

Jon: It’s such a powerful story. I’m curious: You said that you eventually settled on physical affection, but what other things did you try when you were looking to reinforce the behavior you wanted that didn’t work as well as physical affection ultimately worked?

Jordan: Yeah, at first I thought I needed to connect his wanted behavior in a logical way. So the first time I went up to him and said, “Hey, good job. You didn’t yell at your brother. I’m proud of you.” That did not work. He didn’t yell at me, but he just looked at me kind of like, “You think I’m just mean all the time?” So it wasn’t that it was a totally negative experience. I could just tell that it wasn’t reinforcing.

And that’s one of the insights of behavioral science or learning theory: You can’t assume what’s going to be reinforcing for another person. We’re much more complex than other animals. What is reinforcing to one person might not be reinforcing to another.

So I thought of love languages. I thought, “Okay, maybe not verbal praise, at least in that way — that felt condescending to him.” I just went down the list of love languages and said, “I’m going to try physical affection.”

Jon: Remind us of the five love languages.

Jordan: It’s a way of thinking about different ways that people feel connected and loved. There’s verbal phrases, quality time, sacrifice or service, gifts, and physical touch. And I will be honest, I don’t know all the research on love languages. I like it more just as a conceptual framework to think about varied ways of connecting with people.

Jon: Yeah, that’s great — it’s a framework that helped you try some possibilities. You thought, “Let’s try this. Okay, that didn’t seem to work. Let’s try this. Okay, that seemed to get a better response.” And so it’s a way to just explore.

And what would you say to a parent who says, “I like that in theory, but my situation is different.” They might say, “My kid didn’t respond well to any of those things,” or, “I just feel like I’m wired differently than other parents or that my kid is wired differently than other kids.” What would you say in terms of these concepts being universally applicable or just applicable in certain circumstances? Have you had any thoughts about that as you’ve worked with parents and seen other people take this story into their own lives?

Jordan: Yeah, I would say I am pretty convinced that it’s universally applicable in terms of operant conditioning, which is B. F. Skinner’s term. He also called it selection by consequences. I would say, though, that it’s so easy to misunderstand these concepts. Usually, when we think of consequences, whether you’re an educator or parent, you think of something you as a parent have to do to intervene.

If I were working with a parent who’s having a hard time with it, I would try to find out what happens immediately after the unwanted behavior. I’d ask: What happens immediately after in the environment, around the child, and inside of the child — in their nervous system — right after the unwanted behavior?

And whatever that thing is, that’s what the child is moving towards. It’s rewarding. It doesn’t mean the child is purposely manipulating anyone. It’s just that what comes after a behavior makes it more or less likely to happen again.

The idea here is that the more you become more flexible with your choices, once you are aware — to use mindfulness language — of what these dynamics are, of what your child is actually needing in that moment, the more you can help.

Jon: This reminds me of something we explored at our recent parenting retreat, which is to first bring awareness to a situation — be present, be attuned, and notice what’s happening.

Then we talked about the next step, which is to do something or do nothing. Sometimes we think as parents, “Okay, I need to do something. I need to take initiative. I need to do X, Y, and Z.” But one thing that we explored at the parenting retreat is that a lot of times, the best approach is to do nothing, which I hear you saying when you say, “My son is acting out, and I’m going to not give as much attention there.” That might be akin to saying, “In this instance, I’m going to do nothing. He’s in outburst mode. He’s looking for a response, and I’m not gonna add fuel to that. I’m going to back off and do nothing.”

Is that an accurate interpretation of what you’re saying?

Jordan: Yes, absolutely. Though in behavioral science, we get all geeky with terms and get very technical and precise, so we’d say that doing nothing is still doing something. It’s still behavior, but it’s allowing the natural consequences to be present rather than arbitrarily saying, “Because I’m the adult, I should do ______,” which is stuff we’ve learned from our culture and society. We feel like we have to tell kids, “You have to learn your lesson!” and enforce it logically.

But behavioral science is a learning theory, and the reality of learning is that it’s bone deep. It’s experiential. We might think we’re teaching one thing and we might be actually teaching the opposite. A classic case is the kid in elementary school who keeps misbehaving and keeps getting sent to the principal’s office. You might be thinking, “We have to be consistent with this consequence!” But it might be that he really is craving one-on-one time with an authority figure since negative attention is better than none. And a lot of kids who end up in the principal’s office a lot also often end up having problems with law enforcement later — oppositional defiant disorder stuff. We can instead intervene earlier and say, “I’m going to give a lot of one-on-one time to this child who acts out a lot, but I’m going to do it before they act.”

The hardest thing for a parent is that a lot of times you’re so tired with parenting that you’re overwhelmed. The last thing you want to do is go towards your child when you have a moment of peace. But this is where I want to testify — I’m converted — that these principles are like gravity. If you learn to work with them, you will have more choicefulness compared to if you let them act upon you and keep doing the same things that are exhausting you and your child.

Jon: What about a kid who’s not necessarily seeking attention from adults? Because I think that attention is one motivating factor in a situation like this, but I think that’s not the only possible motivating factor. What are some other reasons that a kid might be acting out that aren’t necessarily related to attention?

Jordan: It’s true. Attention is not always reinforcing. In the workshop I do, we call it compassionate behavioral parenting, and we tend to assume that all people — parents and kids — need and want compassion. That might not require a lot of attention, but everyone wants to feel understood.

This is where attunement as a reinforcing behavior is so important. So if a kid is saying, “I want some alone time,” but you’re like, “No, I really want to ask you about how you’re doing and if you’re depressed,” and they’re like, “I want to be alone,” that would not be attuned, and that would be invalidating because you’re not really listening to them.

Of course, there are different developmental stages of this principle. You’re not going to trust your three year old to play in the street just because they want to. But as kids get older, it’s like you’re nurturing this choicefulness, this agency in them, and you’re trusting them more.

And like you said, there is such a diversity of what kids are needing and wanting in a moment. So it’s case by case, asking them and figuring out what works together.

Sometimes people will use say, “Oh, this person is attention seeking.” But I tend to think we all want attunement. If you get the quality of attention that’s really present and attuned, a little bit goes a long way. And this is why it’s so important what you guys are doing teaching parents mindfulness, because if we’re more emotionally regulated — if we’re more present with ourselves, with our own body — then we’ll see that sometimes the thing that we’re trying to give our kids may be something we need. It might not be something they need. We might think, “Oh, they need all this attention!” but they actually just want to hang out with their friends. Maybe they really just need a five-second hug, but we’re thinking, “No, they need so much more than that!” And that just might be something we’re needing. And our own presence is going to help us realize that.

Jon: That’s powerful — the notion that by being aware of the patterns in our own lives, we can adjust ourselves to meet the needs of our kids and really listen to them. So in those instances our kids might sense that they feel seen, that they feel felt and understood.

Jordan: Yeah, I’m thinking of our own family situation right now. My 19-year-old son, the one I talked about before, is absolutely one of my best friends now. He’s one of the most relaxed and chill persons that I know, and he’s doing really well in school.

It’s almost like trusting yourself and trusting your child leads to more and more healthiness and more and more goodness.

Jon: I’m curious, you said that years ago when you did the two week experiment where you focused less on your son’s outbursts and focused more on the times when he was doing well, you said that the behavior shifted. It sounded like that was a pretty permanent shift. Is that accurate?

Jordan: It has been, yeah. And so you could worry whether that just means he suppressed it or something. But I’ve talked to him about it, and he’s like, “Yeah, I still get angry sometimes, but I just deal with it differently. I’ll go to my room. I’ll listen to music. I’ll go play basketball.”

So the thing I like about a behavioral approach is it takes away judgment and blame of self or other. Instead of looking to assign blame as a parent — saying, “I did something I shouldn’t have done!” or, “My son or daughter or child did something they shouldn’t have done!”

Instead you say, “Something is happening that is less preferable. Something caused it, but cause is not the same as blame.” If we can understand some of the causal factors, we can tweak them a little bit and see if we get a different outcome.

It’s not as flowery as some other frameworks, but it’s very potent and very nonjudgmental and empowering in that way.