Penny Williams [00:00:03]: If you help them process emotion, there will not be a need to try to control behavior. They will be so much better at processing emotion, processing how they're feeling, getting through hard things so that they don't have such big attempts at emotions so often. Welcome to the Beautifully Complex podcast where I share insights and strategies on parenting neurodivergent kids straight from the trenches. I'm your host, Penny Williams. I'm a parenting coach, author, and mindset mama, honored to guide you on the journey of raising your atypical kid. Let's get started. Welcome back to Beautifully Complex. Today, I wanna talk to you about anger and my inspiration from mister Rogers and why I was inspired to talk to you about this right now and really how we can go about helping our kids with anger in a compassionate way, and how we can help them to understand that anger is a natural emotion, and they are safe when they feel angry, which sometimes kids don't feel.

Penny Williams [00:01:25]: So we're going to talk about this quote that I remember from mister Rogers because I'm old enough to have grown up watching mister Rogers. He was one of my absolute favorite shows as a kid. I really felt a connection with him. I really felt like he was talking to me, and he was, but it felt so personal and so accepting and loving, and it just made me feel really good to watch mister Rogers. And I was relistening to a podcast about Fred Rogers called Finding Fred this week, and I listened to it a few years ago when it came out. It is wonderful. I highly recommend it. It is an amazing podcast all about the time in which he was teaching these things, how and why he was teaching kids, and just about the wonderfulness, really, that is mister Rogers.

Penny Williams [00:02:28]: But he reminded me of this thing that mister Rogers said, which was, what do you do with the mad that you feel? What do you do with the mad that you feel? We don't even think about this normally. Right? We don't even consider what we do with anger. We don't get intentional with that emotion, but we really need to. Because if we can sit back and say, okay, I'm angry. This is why. This is what's happening. What can I do? That's so much more of a healthy way to go forward than to be angry and then be shameful about it. So often in our culture, we have this bucket of negative emotions and a bucket of positive emotions, and there are no such buckets.

Penny Williams [00:03:26]: All emotions are human and natural. It is okay to be angry. It's not okay to hurt somebody when you're angry, but it is okay to be angry. It is okay to be sad. These are natural emotions, and they are part of life for everyone. So we have to start reframing it from don't be mad, don't be angry, to what can you do when you feel mad? What can you do when you feel angry? For neurodivergent kids, they often feel emotions more intensely, and they're struggling with that impulse control. And so really getting clear on being mindful about what you do with the feeling is so important because often it will just run away with them and from them if we don't teach them how to sit with it. And so often our neurodivergent kids are avoiders.

Penny Williams [00:04:29]: They avoid discomfort at all costs. And when we do that, we are not dealing with the feeling. We're not dealing with the emotion. We are just trying to put it away and hope that we don't have to feel it or deal with it, and that is not useful. So when he asked, what do you do with the mad that you feel? It's bringing that up for them. It's making them aware that they can choose to do something with it and that there are other things that it is okay to be mad. We can understand anger better when we think about the nervous system. Anger is really a fight response in our autonomic nervous system.

Penny Williams [00:05:14]: You know, we have fight, flight, freeze, and then we have calm and regulated. Right? And that fight response sometimes comes out as anger. If I am pushing at you with all of this volatile anger, you might back up. You might not keep coming at me. You might stop. I might be able to stop this thing that I don't like if that happens, but it's not really a thought process like that. Right? Because it's our autonomic nervous system. Autonomic.

Penny Williams [00:05:49]: It's automatic, instinctual, primal. It's just happening as a self protective biological response, And it's important to understand that both you as the adult and our kids need to understand it. It's not bad. It's not wrong. It's happening because their body feels like it is not safe. We have different ways of processing our emotions in different parts of our brain. Right? That survival brain might really be taking over when that anger comes out as a fight response. Or the emotional brain, or sometimes it's the emotional and the survival brain together that are getting really flooded.

Penny Williams [00:06:32]: But what happens when that comes about is that the thinking brain, the access to to that thinking brain is either dim or completely offline altogether. So when we have, say, this mad that we're feeling and it's coming from that survival brain because our nervous system has been triggered and we don't feel safe, then our instinctual primal responses are happening. We're maybe fighting, right, because we're mad. We're sending that anger out in the world, and it feels like it's protective, but we can't reason in that moment. We can't process language and be logical because the survival brain, the emotional brain have taken over, and we can't get to the thinking brain. That is so monumentally important when you're dealing with an angry kid. You have to understand that you can't talk them out of it. And if you try, you're only going to escalate it.

Penny Williams [00:07:34]: Remember, we want to co regulate, not co escalate. Regulation is not about control. Let me say that again. Regulation is not about control. It's about supporting the nervous system to get restored and recovered back to a sense of safety. It has to feel safe again. Not, you know, logically knowing that I'm safe, but my body and my system have to feel safe again. That is crucial.

Penny Williams [00:08:13]: So regulation isn't about saying, don't be mad. That's not a good emotion. It's about helping our kids recognize it, recognizing the signals from their body and showing up in a way that is going to help them to regulate, not increase their dysregulation. How we respond to mad feelings teaches kids what to do with their mad feelings. Folks, did you hear that? How we respond to our kids mad, to their anger, teaches them how to respond to their own mad and their own anger. So I want you to make some pivots in the language that you're using and the way you're reacting when your kid is mad or angry. So instead of saying calm down, which, let's face it, is invalidating and patronizing when someone is going through something, We don't wanna say calm down. We definitely don't wanna say that's not a big deal.

Penny Williams [00:09:25]: You're making too big of a deal out of this. You're acting like a baby. You need to stop yelling. All of those things are trying to control the kid's behavior and emotions. It's not helpful. Instead, I want you to try saying things like, I see how big that feels. That mad that you're feeling, it feels really big. I'm here with you.

Penny Williams [00:09:51]: Let's figure this out together. Or maybe your body's showing me how upset you are. I can see it. We want to regulate, not reprimand. We want connection, not control. Connection over correction. Always, always, always. Unless your kid is in physical danger, like running out into traffic, I want you to prioritize connection, not correction.

Penny Williams [00:10:32]: There are so many ways to teach our kids how to manage their feelings and emotions in healthy ways, how to deal with them instead of trying to put them away or stuff them down. We can do different activities with them, like a body scan, breathing, and mindfulness exercise. We can talk to them about their emotional thermometer and what they can do to bring their temperature down. And we can also really lean into some radical acceptance because all feelings are natural. Your kid is going to get mad sometimes. They're going to get angry sometimes. They're going to act it out. They are going to spew it all over you and others until they have the self regulation and these skills to be able to get through that mad that they feel, to be purposeful about what they're going to do with the mad that they feel.

Penny Williams [00:11:37]: You can do some practices around interoception, which is that sense of how our body feels, the sense when we're hungry, when we're tired, when we're nervous or anxious, when we're fearful, when, you know, we're overexcited or underexcited. All of those things come from that sense of interoception, and it's really important to help our kids build that sense. And a lot of kids, especially kids on the spectrum, have a really hard time with either noticing those body sensations or interpreting them. So there are so many activities that you can do, like drawing what anger feels like inside. Have your kid just sit down and draw what it feels like to them when they're mad. Working on different textures, like guessing textures, blindfold them, and have them do a feeling sensory game. Check-in on how their body feels. Say, when they get up in the morning, ask them, how is your body feeling this morning? Maybe your stomach's growling and you're hungry.

Penny Williams [00:12:46]: Maybe you didn't get enough rest and your eyelids still feel really heavy and they really wanna close. Having conversations about this builds awareness, and then you're building skills by doing different exercises and activities with your kid. I have many, many more in the Regulated Kids Project because the Regulated Kids Project membership is all about helping to build regulation and emotional intelligence in our kids. It's full of exercises, activities, reflections, parent worksheets that help you to help your kids build these skills, the emotional literacy and the self awareness that are crucial for success and happiness as an adult. And speaking of success, I want to make sure that we are redefining what success looks like around anger, around the feeling of mad. Success isn't that your kids stopped yelling. It isn't that your kids stopped being mad. It isn't that they stopped throwing things or stopped breaking things or stopped saying ugly things and calling you names.

Penny Williams [00:14:01]: Success is that they named their emotion, that they took a break and got themselves some quiet time for regulating, that they let you help them, that they stayed in the room for some coregulation, that they felt safe enough with you to feel their anger, to sit in the fire and get through it. That is what success looks like around anger. It is not that your kids stop being angry, that your kids stopped acting out their anger. It is that they were able to process it and manage it in a way that was healthy for them and those around them and in a way that was affirming to how they felt. It validated how they felt because that anger is real for them. It is very real for them. Whether you feel like it was justified or, you know, appropriate for the situation doesn't matter here. Success is how they work through it and how they manage it and how they communicate it, and that is super important.

Penny Williams [00:15:21]: Celebrate small wins and really build a family culture where mad is being human, where sad is being human, where all emotions are part of natural human experience. I also want you to know that when your kid gets angry, you're not failing them. Again, this is a natural human emotion. It is a thing that happens for all of us. An angry child, a sad child, is not a failed parent. You're growing a skill set that adults don't learn until much later, if at all. I wasn't taught how to be a parent. I wasn't taught how to manage my emotions.

Penny Williams [00:16:07]: I wasn't taught about regulation. I didn't learn about regulation until my kids were young teens. Like, this is something that we are going to be able to change the trajectory for our kids by focusing on regulation and emotional intelligence, focusing on how real the human experience is and not trying to control what success looks like, what happiness looks like, what behavior your kid has. If you help them process emotion, there will not be a need to try to control behavior. They will be so much better at processing emotion, processing how they're feeling, getting through hard things so that they don't have such big attempts emotions so often. So think about asking your kid this question. You can be the adult in their life without mister Rogers, and ask them, what can you do with the bad that you feel? What do you do with the mad that you feel? Help them learn how to process the emotion and how to be kind to themselves when they do get angry because that is a really key piece of this too. When we have shame and blame, we have deteriorating mental health, and that is not what we want for our kids.

Penny Williams [00:17:44]: So have this conversation. Not when your kid's angry, people. Do not have this conversation when your kid's mad. Have this conversation when everybody's feeling great. Just one day when you're hanging out, what do you do with the mad that you feel? And be willing and open to answer that question honestly for your kid as well. Let them ask you what you do with the mad that you feel because we are still learning how to process our emotions, how to get regulated, how to manage the ups and downs of life with resilience. I encourage you to check out the regulated kids project if you have any interest there. Every month, I add more and more activities and exercises to help your kids build emotional intelligence, regulation, awareness of how they are feeling so that they can have that self regulation.

Penny Williams [00:18:42]: It is the key to challenging behavior, challenging big emotions, struggles that our neurodivergent kids are going through. This is how we set them up for success. We build a solid foundation of regulation and emotional intelligence. So next time you or your kid feels like you've got the fire building up in you. Right? The rage is building. Take a breath and ask them to remember what they said when you asked them. What do we do with the mad that you feel? What are you gonna do with the mad that you feel? And when you have a plan before things spiral like that, it is so much easier to be in control of what you actually do with it. I hope that this has really helped you to think more about guiding our kids through the emotions that they're having and how all emotions are part of the human experience.

Penny Williams [00:19:49]: I will see you next time. Take really good care. Thanks for joining me on the Beautifully Complex podcast. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe and share. And don't forget to check out my online courses and parent coaching at parentingADHDandautism.com and at thebehaviorrevolution.com.