How to Prevent Violent and Aggressive Behaviors From Your Child

Hitting, kicking, slapping, throwing things, breaking furniture, threatening, and swearing are just a few examples of aggressive behaviors that many children might exhibit. Often, these behaviors stem from communication difficulties, intense emotions that are hard to express, or attempts to gain attention from parents and caregivers. Witnessing outbursts with any of these things can be both shocking and exhausting. It can also be difficult to keep you and your child safe when they are trying to hurt you or themselves.

Sometimes these outbursts can last for hours and feel like they will never end. In this blog post, I will be giving some tips to help prevent violent behaviors before they start. Keep in mind that these tips are general and may need to be tailored more specifically to your child based on age, diagnoses, and nature of the behaviors.

Before the outburst:

Being proactive is key. This can prevent potentially unsafe situations from happening in the first place. Here are some tips for preventing major outbursts from happening:

1.)   Set specific expectations:

It is important to communicate your expectations to your child BEFORE the outburst happens. When children are highly escalated, they usually can’t understand complex instructions or reasoning. Explaining what behaviors are expected (and why) can help them to succeed. Depending on the age of your child, it could be helpful to have a visual aid demonstrating what the expected and unexpected behaviors are. Here are some examples of different expectations:

-        Being ready for school at a certain time

-        Keeping a safe body

-        Utilizing coping skills

-        Communicating without cussing

2.)   Offer choices:

Offering choices helps kids feel like they have some control over their daily lives, which reduces the likelihood of a meltdown. Choices can be used for anything. Be creative and have fun with it! It is also important to stay firm with your expectations. Here are a few examples of different choices that you could offer.

-        “It’s time to get dressed for school (setting the expectation!). Do you want to wear your pink shirt or your green shirt?”

-        “We need to finish our breakfast. Should we take dinosaur bites or baby bird bites?”

-        “It’s time to leave to go to the doctor. Should we skip to the car or would you like a piggy back ride?”

-        “Would you like to brush your teeth first or get into your pj’s first?”

3.)   Offer reinforcements:

Being rewarded for doing good things is a great way to ensure that good things happen more often. Offering some rewards for continually engaging in expected behaviors can increase the likelihood of your child following rules more often. It also gives motivation to stop potentially aggressive behaviors from happening. Here are a few examples of how reinforcements can be used in real life:

-        Offer to buy your child a preferred toy if they do not engage in aggressive behaviors for X amount of days

-        Make a sticker chart and let your child earn a sticker for each day without aggression

-        Give your child verbal praise for using positive coping skills instead of turning to aggression

4.)   Consequences:

Similarly, consequences may be necessary to stop aggressive behaviors. I included this in the “before” section of this series because it is important to set consequences BEFORE the outbursts. As I said before, if your child is too escalated, they will not listen to you if you tell them that you are taking away their ipad. By having a conversation about the consequences beforehand, you are letting them know what to expect in the future. Here are some examples of consequences:

-        Taking away screen time for a certain amount of time

-        Extra chores

-        Paying for damaged property

-        Needing to write apology letters to people who may have been hurt

Example Scenario:

Here is an example of how this may play out in real life:

Sarah is a 10 year old girl who struggles with anxiety and ADHD. Sarah has difficulty paying attention in school, and when prompted to do her homework, she will scream, yell, and threaten her parents. If her parents push her any further, she will start to throw things at them and try to kick them. Luckily, Sarah’s parents recently read Jordan’s blog post and know exactly what to do.

First, they sit down with Sarah and explain the difference between safe and unsafe behaviors. They make it clear that it is okay to feel frustrated… but it is not okay to hurt others or damage things. They also introduce a rewards system. For each day that Sarah refrains from hitting, kicking, or throwing, she can earn a sticker. If she earns 7 stickers, she can get a toy that she has been wanting! They also explain that if she breaks something, she will need to do extra chores to help “pay” for it.

Sarah’s parents set clean expectations for her regarding her homework: Sarah needs to have her homework done by 7pm each night. She typically only have 15 minutes of homework, so this is definitely doable. It help Sarah, they offer to create a schedule to structure her after school time. When it becomes time for homework, they offer her choices like “would you like an apple or fruit snacks while you work?” or “Would you like to sit at the table, couch, or floor while you start your work?”. Sarah chooses to eat fruit snacks on the floor while she finishes her homework and earns a sticker!

Conclusion:

These are just some helpful guidelines for avoiding aggressive behaviors. As always, it is helpful to have the recommendations of a therapist to help you through these tough times and offer personalized suggestions. They can also help to work on emotion regulation skills and deeper understanding of consequences (among many other things!). Look to the next part of this series where I will discuss how to react when your child IS engaging in aggressive behaviors. I will be giving tips on how to keep you and your child safe.

Written By,

Jordan Adamson, LPC

www.cuttingedge-therapy.com