Warning: If you are a parent who believes your kids need to be punished or feel natural consequences to become respectful and control their angry misbehavior, this book is not for you.
For the rest of us parents, who struggle daily with raising kids with anger challenges, When Hurting Turns to Anger: How Parents Can Help Their Kids is the book for you.
Dr. Nick Long (Anstine Templeton's mentor) taught his graduate students that forewarned is forearmed. That is what using the anger reducing techniques (ART) shared in When Hurting Turns to Anger does for parents-it forearms them from becoming reactive to their kids' anger.
What is ART? It is a seven-step process that helps kids talk about their anger and learn ways to handle strong emotions effectively before they reach the anger stage. The theory is kids can learn skills to handle their anger productively at home rather than becoming overwhelmed, losing control, and cycling into crises.
Using anger-reducing techniques, parents learn to:
• control their own anger,
• look beyond their kids' inappropriate behaviors,
• calm out-of-control kids,
• get kids to talk about their problems,
• show kids how to create plans of success,
• show kids how to make amends for misbehavior, and
• hold kids accountable for following their success plans.
Internalizing the anger-reducing techniques, kids learn that:
• kids have a right to feel respected within their family,
• kids may not be disrespectful (hurtful) to other family members,
• it's okay to feel angry,
• it's not okay to act out anger inappropriately,
• there are many ways to deal with anger productively,
• parents can help kids to problem-solve,
• it's a must to have a plan of success,
• kids must make amends for any hurt they have caused, and
• kids will be held responsible for following their success plans.
In an easy-to-learn process, Dr. Anstine Templeton shows how to master anger that frees parents to teach kids self-control, how to use anger effectively to succeed, and ways to make amends.
