7 Games for Anger Management in Toddlers

Are you worried about your child’s anger?
Does your child get angry easily?
Is your child always angry?
Are you afraid of your child’s anger issues?
 
Help your child control their anger with PLAY
 
Play is magical.

1. Play reduces your child’s anxiety and stress. This reduces your child’s anger.
2. Play calms your child down and helps them to think and find solutions. This helps your child to respond instead of reacting.
3. Play gives your child a chance to express their emotions through movement and speech. Once they express themselves in words and actions they don’t have to hit and shout.

Use the 7 games that I have described below to reduce your child’s angry outbursts.
 

1. EMOSILLY

Make a bunch of paper chits.
Draw faces that are happy, sad, angry, embarrassed, scared, loving etc on them
Place the chits in a box.
Hold up a soft toy in front of your face.
Ask your child to do the same.
Pick a chit – act out the emotion drawn as if you are the monkey or dog or teddy bear that you are holding in front of your face.
Ask your child to name the emotion.
Then let your child do the same.
Be as silly and fun as you can.
Have lots of laughs.
You can expand the game to explore what can be done when each emotion emerges.
Purpose –
This game builds your child’ emotion vocabulary. Your child learns to identify and name the emotion they are feeling when they feel it the next time. They can then ask for your help to manage the emotion.
 
2. FINGER CHAT
Make cones by rolling up paper.
Draw an angry face on one cone and a smiling face on the other cone.
Place one cone on your index finger and the other one on your child’s index finger
If you have the angry cone – say things that your child says when they are angry.
Let your child suggest ways to calm you down.
Then exchange roles.
Be funny and even absurd with what can be done to feel better when someone is angry.
You can do this for other emotions as well.
Purpose - 
This game helps your child to think up things that can be done when they are angry the next time.
 
3. BALL BUMP
Take a football and write questions in each section of the ball.
The questions can be -
What makes you angry?
What do you do when you are angry?
Instead of shouting what else can you do when you are angry?
What makes you scared?
Where do you feel anger in your body?
What do you need when you ae angry?
Throw the ball between the players.
The player who catches the ball has to answer the question under their thumb.
Purpose - 
It gives your child a chance to think and express themselves.
 
4. ANGER FREEZE
Play music.
When the music stops all the players have to freeze with angry expressions on their faces
To melt from their freeze they must say what makes them angry and what they can do to feel less angry.
Purpose - 
This game helps your child think back to times when they were angry and build acceptable new strategies to manage anger in the future.
 
5. POOL PLAY
Give your child lots of time to splash around and play with water.
You don’t have to go to the pool for this. It can be done with a tub of water at home.
Purpose –
This game uses the immense sensory power of water to keep your child in the moment. It reduces their anxiety and stress and calms them down.
 
6. CRUSH AND THROW
Give your child several sheets of old newspaper.
Let them crush each sheet in their hands and make a ball.
Have a competition and see who can throw the paper balls the farthest.
Talk about how thinking and throwing is more effective than throwing hurriedly.
Purpose -
This game helps your child to think and act while spending their energy and having fun.
 
7. MAKE A TENT
Help your child to make a tent.
Place three chairs in a triangle.
Drape them with a bed sheet.
Let your child crawl under the bed sheet and live in the ‘tent’.
Purpose -
A tent gives your child a space of their own where they can go to calm down, feel in control, feel safe and think.
Never underestimate the power of play and playfulness in overcoming the challenges that you face in parenting.

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