Tame Your Angry Child With This Power Tool! By Jean Tracy

Do you have an angry child? Does he growl like a pit-bull to get his way? Look inside for 5 parenting tips. They'll give you a power tool for turning your angry kid into a rational child.

To get what they want, kids learn to holler at an early age. Babies cry. Toddlers scream, bite, and kick. Older children use these behaviors and add pouts, sarcasm, and arguments to get their way.

As parents, our job is to tame them for the real world. But how do you get your angry kid to become a rational child?

Imagine a ruler that measures anger. This ruler numbers from zero to twelve. Zero is never angry. Twelve is pistol-ready to fire at any moment.

To help your child become rational you need to use your parenting skills. You need to show him pull how to remove his finger from the trigger, lay down his anger, and use his head.

To become rational he'll need to move his anger from 12 on the ruler to the frustration zone between 4 and 8. In this area he can begin to act rationally. Here's how:

5 Parenting Tips for Taming Your Angry Child ~

1. Use or draw a ruler with numbers from zero to twelve. Color the area between 4 and 8 to make it special. That's the frustration zone.

2. Talk about the ruler with your child. Discuss how twelve is ready to explode at any moment like a pit bull protecting his bone. We're not dogs. We're humans. As human beings we have the power to think before we act. To do this we need to use our power tools, a thinking mind with thoughtful choices.

3. Show Zero on the ruler. Discuss how zero represents no feelings. Rocks are at zero because they don't have feelings. People do. Our task is to bring our anger down from 12 to the frustration zone, the area between 4 and 8.

4. Ask your child to pick a time in the past when he exploded with anger. Tell him to close his eyes and feel the emotion he had at the time. Then tell him not to open his eyes until he brings his emotion down to the frustration zone between 4 and 8. When he opens his eyes, ask him how he did it. If he says, "I don't know," tell him to guess.

Listen to his answers. I know they'll be fascinating. Tell him to practice this technique whenever he's upset. This is his power tool.

5. Practice the technique above. Pick out several more situations when he acted with anger. With each situation tell him to feel the anger he had at the time. Then work with him to bring his emotion down to the frustration zone.

Discuss how he can use this power tool any time he needs it. It's within his mind. It's his gift of reason.

Conclusion for Taming Your Angry Child:

Use the above parenting tips. Display the ruler on the refrigerator. Discuss it often.

Be your child's model. Tell your child how you used your power tool to bring your emotion into the frustration zone.

Praise your child when he tells you how he used his power tool to control his anger. If you do, you'll be taming your angry child and you'll be building his rational character too.

Jean Tracy, MSS, invites you to subscribe to her FREE top-rated Parenting Newsletter, "Tips and Tools for Character Builders" at http://www.KidsDiscuss.com and receive 80 fun activities to share with your kids.

Subscribe to Jean's Parenting Skills Blog at http://parentingskillsblog.typepad.com and discover a new parenting skill with each blog post. Use it today!

Let the Poor Say I Am Rich By Evelyn Higginbotham

When my mom and dad knew that they were to be sent to work as missionaries in South Korea in the mid 1950's, the first thing they did was go to school. They studied Korean language, history and church growth classes. For two years before they even set foot on Korean soil, they were immersed in the preparations of a lifetime of service to the church in Korea. It was exciting and dangerous and challenging for them to arrive with two little children (I wasn't born yet), to adjust to that war-torn land.

As years went by and I came along, their Korean language skills improved tremendously, my dad could navigate through the most treacherous streets in his Land Rover, negotiate out of a traffic ticket with any Korean policeman, and befriend practically anyone he met. They were constantly going to church meetings, grand openings of Christian schools, or new churches out in the countryside, making long speeches surrounded with Korean church officials. The church, the country, the service to those people was their life...but not mine.

I learned to love some of the food and parts of the culture, but every time we'd see an American TV show on the US military channel, I would long for that far distant country that was supposedly my own. The Korean toys and dolls of 1968 were so poor and uninteresting, and the clothes were so odd when I compared them to the Sears catalog my grandmother would send us every six months. My siblings and I would dream of chocolate ice cream, American hamburgers, real pizza with real cheese, everything American. In the process, I began to resent the fact that I was stuck in a third world country while my cousins got to have what I thought, was the best of everything.

Only years later did I come to realize how shameful my attitude had been, how much of a blessing it was to experience another country, to have the opportunity to learn another language and to have the honor of being a part of the work of God. I had a rich and extraordinary childhood, but in the cold winters with the air thick with the smell of rotten fish from the open markets, with roads full of frozen mud puddles and lined with beggars, I just couldn't see it.

Now I am so thankful that God gave me that past, and I feel a sense of grief when I see others who have come to the US, whose hearts and minds still cling to their countries and refuse to learn the beautiful lessons that God has for them here. I was a selfish child who wanted what I couldn't have, and I've tried my best to make sure my children never hold those attitudes no matter where we've lived. I just wish others who have it so easy could understand.

Evelyn Higginbotham was born into an American missionary family serving in South Korea in the early 60's. She attended Seoul Foreign School and graduated from Rutgers University having studied Soviet and East Euopean Studies with the plan of serving as a missionary in what was then, Soviet bloc countries. But her plans changed when she married her husband David who eventually entered the ministry as an evangelical pastor. They and their two children have lived in Brooklyn NY, South Africa, the Philippines, Los Angeles, London, England and now in Houston, Texas where they continue their work of counseling and church ministry.

Evelyn has been editor of the church Succeed in Life newsletter, supplies articles for the succeedinlife.org website, and regularly blogs on http://www.thehappymisfit.blogspot.com She has co-written the book "Possessed Believers" with her husband, David, and wrote the short biography of the ultra-marathon runner, Argentina Senda, entitled, "Why I Run", published for distribution in South Africa.