What should I do if I can’t help but get angry at my child?

There is a type of message that appears very frequently in the parenting section of our official account: I yelled at/hit my child on impulse, and now I regret it. How can I control my emotions? Including friends around me, they often have this problem: every time they want to talk to their children properly, they always end up losing control of their emotions. As an adult, I feel deeply frustrated. Facing the frightened and resentful eyes of the children, I felt even more guilty. How to raise a driven child? \”I feel like I\’m not a good mother\” after using this golden formula, many people say in frustration. Everyone hopes that I can give some advice, preferably some panacea that can help them suppress their anger at critical moments. Someone has raised this question again recently, so I thought I’d better write about it. I don’t have a panacea that can reduce fire in one second, but this matter is not unsolvable. At least I can help you sort through your thoughts and see if you can find a solution. When it comes to beating and scolding children, many people will have a certain scenario in their minds: the child is messing around with homework and making lots of mistakes/being addicted to games and refusing to change despite repeated admonitions/being a monster late at night and refusing to sleep/only quibbling over things he does wrong/letting him go east Wanting to go west/talking back to him even after saying a few words… The conclusion is: the child is too naughty and refuses to listen at all when he talks nicely. The adult\’s patience will be exhausted before he finally explodes. Is this really the case? Is a parent-child war really just a parent-child war? If we zoom out further and further, the complete story we see is likely to be like this: the alarm goes off in the morning, you struggle to get up because you stayed up late and didn’t sleep well, and race against time to send your child to school, like in a war. Rush to work; the recent project is not going well, and the boss\’s face is not very good; Party A\’s father is picky, and you communicate repeatedly with a smile, and your mouth is dry; you are so busy that you miss meals, and you are so hungry that you feel dizzy and eat a few bites in a hurry You continued working on the delivery; you rushed to pick up your children after work, leaving your colleague who was working overtime to say something. You pretended not to hear and ran away with your computer on your back; when you took the elevator downstairs, you looked in the mirror as usual. You find that the bags under your eyes are becoming more and more obvious, and your nasolabial folds seem to be getting deeper. After picking up the children, you come home and you are a little annoyed when you see the messy room and have no time to clean it up. What should you do? You want to order takeout to save trouble, but you don’t trust your children to eat. In the end, you still cook dinner for your child; while your child is doing homework, the work group keeps flashing around, and you are dealing with both ends, and you are unable to do anything at all; you want to push forward the work at hand, but you can no longer put it off, and at this time, the computer is inexplicable It started to crash, and you wanted to call the science man at home to come and have a look, but he didn’t know what time he would be back when he was having dinner with a client today; the class group started to clock in, and you took a look at your naughty child and told yourself that you should Be patient and be patient; you open your WeChat Moments to take a breath, catch a glimpse of a few people showing off their babies, envy \”other people\’s children\” for a second, and then close your WeChat Moments silently; it\’s so easy to wait for your children to finish their homework, and then check for errors You explain a lot of things patiently, but the child hesitates and says that he understands, and then he does something wrong again. You can\’t help but reprimand the child for a few words, and the child cries. When you see the child crying, you are upset, and it is already late. The child is sleepy. YouYou are sleepy, but the matter is not over yet; at this time, the work group disappears again, and the boss personally urges you to work; you suddenly feel like dying. But the child is still fussing. So you collapsed and roared like a ferocious lion. You thought you were being driven crazy by your children. You think the crux of the problem is your lack of patience with education. You think that as long as you learn to \”control your emotions\” you will have a better parent-child relationship and a better life. However, when such a complete story is placed in front of you, the truth has actually emerged. Our emotional stress is not caused by any one person at all, but is accumulated in the little things of daily life. The naughty child is just the last straw that breaks our back. We always have emotional outbursts in front of our children, just because they are the most vulnerable. When bosses, clients, colleagues, and friends create pressure for us, we usually don\’t get angry easily, but choose to tolerate, ignore, and understand. It\’s better to do less than to do more. When work and life itself create all kinds of difficulties for us, we can only accept it silently, because it is \”bad luck\”. After all, we can\’t challenge God, can we? Negative energy will not disappear out of thin air, but will continue to accumulate until we find the exit of the naughty child. Weak as they are, they end up taking on all our emotions. Every time we yell at our children and then regret it, strictly speaking, it is no longer an educational issue, nor even a parent-child issue. It is essentially a psychological issue that requires our introspection. Understanding ourselves, facing up to stress, and peeling off all the factors that affect our emotions are the prerequisites for solving this problem. Let’s first summarize all the possible factors: 1. Physiological factors. Whenever a parent tells me that he has a bad temper and loses control easily in front of his children, the first thing I usually ask is: do you get enough sleep? ? If a person cannot sleep well for three days in a row, he is a walking dynamite, impatient and ready to ignite at any time. It has nothing to do with character cultivation, knowledge and demeanor. Especially for mothers, the experience of caring for a newborn is likely to completely change their sleep patterns. Any slight sound will wake them up, making it difficult to fall asleep again. However, sleep problems are often ignored. When many people blame themselves, \”I am not a good mother,\” they never think about how long it has been since they had a good night\’s sleep. At the same time, the physiological impact caused by some chronic diseases will also be directly projected onto the psychology. One of the most intuitive examples is allergies. Whether in China or Germany, I have some friends with allergies. When the pollen season comes, they will burst into tears, sneeze constantly during the day, and cannot breathe at night. Recommended scientific parenting books. I really hope my parents have read this book and download the electronic version. Continuous physical pain will subtly affect a person\’s mood. Moodiness can only be said to be normal. 2. Time pressure There is a word in German called Zeitstress, which literally means time pressure. This is the kind of pressure that has the most extensive impact on our emotions and behavior. I have lived in different cities in Germany. Whenever my friends in China tell me \”the quality of German people\”\”It\’s just high\” made me smile without saying a word. If you have a lot of time every day, of course you can nod and smile to everyone while walking on the road, let others check out first when queuing up at the supermarket, and wait a few more seconds when there are too many people on the bus. When the red light comes on, even if there is no car, just wait obediently… As long as there is no time pressure, you can carry it out gracefully and calmly to the end. This is how life is in a small German city. Sometimes two cars meet on a narrow road and they can give way for a long time, and the drivers greet each other. I can\’t stop gesturing and thanking you. But if you go to a central city like Munich, the cars are driving faster than the other. When there is a traffic jam, they rush to get in the way, honk their horns, raise their middle fingers, roll down the windows and curse in the street. , are not used to it. Is it because the quality of people in big cities is lower? No, it is because they are in a hurry! Time pressure can force people from gentlemen to angry people in minutes, and of course it can also change people from loving mothers to naughty people. I have become a shrew. I have to clock in at work, I am afraid of being late for school, I have to pick up and drop off interest classes, I have to schedule online classes, and I have a deadline at work. Even going to bed is full of urgency. I am afraid that my children will sleep too late and will affect their development. Can\’t sleep. When we shout to our children to hurry up, hurry up, and feel unbearable and helpless when they are dragging their feet, the anger in our hearts rises. This is the anger at ourselves for becoming slaves to time, and the anger at losing control of our lives. . 3. Uncertainty factors My daughter has a German teacher whose catchphrase is only four words, simple, crude and unique: “I hate technology! \”Whenever something goes wrong with the computer or projector and the carefully prepared courseware cannot be used properly, she will explode on the spot and shout this hysterically. At this time, even if the student just bends down to pick up a pen, she will criticize him and give him a demerit, and the atmosphere It’s so scary. It has to be said that while various high technologies have brought convenience to our lives, they have also brought more uncertainties and more emotional explosion points. The printer suddenly failed to connect, and important documents I can\’t type; the network suddenly goes out of control and important emails can\’t be sent; online banking suddenly crashes, and there are still a few accounts that I need to transfer urgently; the system suddenly gets stuck, and I can no longer enter the classroom halfway through the online class… …There are also people like me who are coding. Just when they are about to finish coding, suddenly everything goes dark and the computer freezes…it only takes less than a second to get crazy. In addition, many random things happen in our daily lives. Bug, the so-called \”Mercury retrograde\”: courier delivery is lost, takeout delivery is late, the subway is late, the store is closed… It is a trivial matter when viewed alone, it is simply insignificant, but we must not underestimate the impact they have on our emotions. The wear and tear. Life is already so difficult, how can we withstand all kinds of chaos?! When we yell at our children, these seemingly irrelevant little things are the invisible driving force behind the scenes. There is a kind of anger, It’s called “transmitting anger”. 4. Interpersonal stress According to my observation, Eastern-style interpersonal relationships are more likely to cause stress. This is because our interpersonal relationships are mainly “vertical”, with elders and younger ones in order, and distinctions between superior and inferior. At work occasions, especially within the system, there is a lack of equality and respect in the way superiors and subordinates get along, and the subordinate is often forced to bear the emotional garbage of the superior; in families, the elders generally interfere too much in the lives of the younger ones, lacking a sense of boundaries, and the younger generations suffer Trapped in the word \”filial piety\”, you often need to suppress your emotions. As a result, many ordinary adults have to be educated by their leaders in the workplace and their parents and elders at home. Their negative emotions have no way to resolve them, and in the end they can only dump them on the children who are at the bottom of the vertical relationship. Ironically, this outpouring of bullying is also often called \”education.\” When this vertical relationship is passed down from generation to generation, the resulting emotional stress is naturally passed down from generation to generation. 5. Deep Anxiety Deep in our hearts, there are many anxieties that are controlled by the environment. The survival pressure and competitive pressure brought about by involution often put us in a state of stress, and we dare not slack off at all. The arrival of the epidemic and the outbreak of war have further undermined our sense of security and shaken our worldview. Economic downturn, energy shortage, inflation… a series of practical problems are weighing us down. Will the world be okay? Where will our lives go? How can our children be happy? In addition to these, as middle-aged people, we must also face our own increasingly visible aging and death that is becoming more and more common around us. Overlapping anxieties hang over our hearts like shadows, and eventually they are inevitably projected onto parenting issues, deepening educational anxiety. We are all adults whose edges have been sharpened by life. We work diligently, treat others with humility and courtesy, and put on armor and masks when we go out. This is our basic cultivation as adults. We have nowhere to express our fatigue, and we have to bear our grievances ourselves. In the midst of the trivial, complex and cold reality, negative emotions fall silently like snowflakes. And our children often, unfortunately, witness the final avalanche. Am I still a good mother if I regret it after yelling at my child? If you are suffering in your heart, then I want to hug you and tell you that the answer is yes. People who are aware of problems and try to solve them are sober and great. Here, I would like to provide some problem-solving ideas for your reference: 1. Treat every emotional outburst as a signal for help. There is no right or wrong in any emotion, it is a true reflection of our own state. Accepting them, analyzing them, and understanding the help signals they release can help us relax and adjust to our state as quickly as possible. Is there something wrong with your body? Is life too fast and overloaded? Too much bad luck lately? Who did you have trouble with? Or is there too much anxiety inside? Even if these problems may not be solved immediately, at least we have a direction for adjustment. Getting a good night\’s sleep, planning our time more rationally, complaining about troubles, and going out to eat with friends can all help us regain health in time and resurrect where we are. There are no \”emotionally stable\” people in this world, there are only people who can quickly adjust themselves! Similarly, as long as we have figured this out, we can accept it calmlyEmotional storms in intimate relationships. We will no longer just complain about our partners being \”grumpy,\” complaining about our children being \”unreasonable,\” or complaining about our parents being \”unreasonable,\” but we will analyze the \”complete stories\” behind them just like we analyze ourselves. For example, behind a child\’s crying, it is likely that he was criticized by the teacher at school, ridiculed by his classmates, self-doubt because he could not understand in class, and his confidence was undermined by failing to do well in the exam…many inconspicuous little things piled up together. , weighing heavily on their hearts. And one or two accusations from us may be the last straw that breaks their backs. Their crying is also a signal to us for help. Only by accepting them, understanding them, and helping them can the problem be solved. 2. Find an outlet for your emotions and set boundaries. Negative emotions will not disappear for no reason. When they accumulate to a certain level, they need to be \”discharged\”. What should we do at this time? Human instinct is to \”find a soft persimmon to pinch\” and bully someone who won\’t resist. But in an intimate relationship, the person who won\’t resist is often the person who loves us the most, either our parents who are infinitely tolerant of us, or the children who are infinitely dependent on us. As for the elderly and children, their own energy is very weak. Not only can they not be able to handle our negative emotions, they will also internalize them and turn them into their own pressure. Therefore, venting emotions to the elderly and children is a very cruel thing. My approach to this is to resolve middle-aged people’s affairs within themselves. My teammates and I have already reached a tacit understanding in our many years of living together: the weather takes turns, and the tempers take turns. You will be patient with me, and I will be patient with you. But before you get angry, you must set the boundaries in advance: don\’t insult your personality, don\’t involve your parents, don\’t settle old scores, don\’t mention breaking up, have civilized quarrels, and refuse the cold war. I also allow and even encourage my children to vent their emotions at home. When my children were very young, I told them that everyone has a temper and wants to quarrel when they are angry, but we all have to behave decently and well-educated outside, so we all like to save the fights and come back to quarrel. It doesn\’t matter, your family is the one who still loves you after you have an argument. At home, you can feel free to be yourself. But you also need to know that losing your temper can hurt others, so you must find ways to minimize the damage and think clearly about what you must never say and what you must never do. Moreover, every time you calm down after losing your temper, don’t forget to take the initiative to hug the other person, because she/he shares your bad mood. 3. Understand the underlying logic of parenting. No matter how you analyze it, the trigger for getting angry at your child is, after all, the child\’s own behavioral problems. The reason why our children\’s behavior ultimately triggers our emotions has something to do with the parenting anxiety deep within us. According to my observation, this anxiety essentially comes from the superstition of \”standard models\” of parenting. In other words, most people believe that there is a standard for education. As long as you work hard enough and your children work hard enough, you will be able to reach that standard. I remember a friend once showed me a table in a domestic parenting book. The date was accurate to the day of birth, corresponding to the child\’s age.A skill that “should” be mastered. She was very anxious at the time because the child was already xxx days old and still couldn\’t open the bottle cap. Was there something wrong? I laughed when I heard this. Why should you worry about a child with sound limbs that she can\’t open a bottle cap? Will she never learn to open bottle caps? Maybe you think this example is ridiculous, but then look at how many parents around you are worried about their children\’s literacy, vocabulary, and calculation ability, worried about their children\’s procrastination in homework and being unable to finish it in one go, and worried about their children\’s playfulness and inability to finish homework in one go. You will take the initiative to learn to be anxious…and you will understand where parenting anxiety comes from. Other children can do it, but my child can\’t. Is it because I don\’t work hard enough or my child doesn\’t work hard enough? Can we just use more force and push our children harder? In fact, just one sentence can get rid of this anxiety, that is: every child is different. Unfortunately, there are very few people who can truly understand and accept this sentence from the bottom of their hearts. A friend told me that she was extremely anxious and strict when raising her eldest son. She was always worried that due to her own negligence, her eldest son\’s growth would \”go off track\” and he would miss something important. But when she had her second child, it suddenly dawned on her: the \”right track\” she imagined didn\’t exist at all! Even children born to the same parents have completely different personalities, hobbies, and talents, let alone children from other people\’s families. Every child has his own pace of growth, and all the worries he once had were just blind worries. As long as we understand this problem, the direction of our education will no longer be to cultivate \”standard products\” and worry about children \”not meeting the standards\” all the time. Instead, we will adjust the goal to: let children become their best. look. Children grow up day by day, make progress day by day, mature day by day, and become better and better. That is successful education. Once individual differences are acknowledged and comparisons are given up, most of the anxiety in parenting will disappear. 4. Develop the parent-child relationship into a \”horizontal relationship.\” Having lived in Germany for many years, I obviously feel that their interpersonal relationships are much easier than ours. If our relationships between people are mainly vertical, then they are mainly horizontal. For example, in the workplace, although there are hierarchical distinctions and the relationship between leaders and being led, the main differences are in work responsibilities and cooperation methods. Different positions are equal in terms of personality and respect each other in terms of communication. I have almost never heard of a leader arrogant and arrogant to his subordinates. In the private sphere, including intimate relationships, there is a clear sense of boundaries and mutual independence between people, and it is rare to see one party interfering with the other. We can also learn from this \”horizontal relationship\” in our parent-child relationship. We can guide children to correct values, provide them with mature life experiences, and provide timely support when they encounter difficulties and need help. But don’t forget that they also have private spaces that they don’t want us to enter, and don’t forget that they are equal to us in terms of personality and are not parties we can manipulate or trample on at will. Some people may worry that this \”horizontal relationship\” will cause parents to lose theirPrestige, causing children to disrespect their parents? I don\’t think so. If anyone wants to gain the respect of others, he must rely on his character and ability, not his temper and voice. If you don’t believe it, think about your leaders. Do you respect the more fierce they are? 5. Exercise, read, travel, and occasionally escape with your children. Worldliness is the source of all troubles. Mothers who are struggling with daily necessities and children who are busy with exams and grades are most likely to form an incompatible relationship because their worlds are too cramped. The most direct way to improve your mood is exercise, because exercise secretes dopamine, and dopamine makes people happy, which is equivalent to taking medicine directly. It is not a dream that the medicine cures the disease. Reading is also a good medicine for the soul. The slogan of Hugendubel, a famous German bookstore chain, is \”Reading for six minutes a day can reduce stress by 68%.\” I also watched a German TV program about insomnia, which conducted a comparative study on all non-drug hypnosis methods, and finally concluded that reading has the best sleep-promoting effect. Putting a book next to your pillow and temporarily saying goodbye to the mortal world and hiding in another world before going to bed is the lowest-cost way to repair your body and mind. If possible, you can also take your children to travel together and see the bigger world. It is a very wise choice to occasionally escape from the familiar living environment, temporarily forget about the chicken feathers in the place, and completely clean up the emotional garbage. Just like Germany, Germany is a country with a high incidence of depression (but a very low suicide rate). You may not know that Germans are also the most fond of traveling in the world. When I first came to Germany, I simply couldn’t understand their enthusiasm for traveling and their willingness to spend so much of their savings on vacations. Later I understood that this was an instinctive self-rescue. When you feel that the winter is unbearably long, when your mood is at a low point and you cannot see the beauty, you must go out and find the sunshine. The moment you see Sunny Beach, you may be saved. Suddenly I remembered a piece of news I had seen. A 14-year-old boy in Wuhan, Hubei Province was called his parents by his class teacher because he was playing poker with his classmates in the classroom. The mother came to school, got furious, scolded her son in the corridor, and slapped her son twice in a rage. No one expected that after his mother left, the boy stood in silence for two minutes and then suddenly climbed up the railing and jumped off… I don\’t know how this mother will spend the rest of her life. Perhaps when others talk about it, this is a tragedy between a \”mother who loses her temper and kills her child\” and a \”psychologically fragile child who will jump off a building if he says a few words.\” How many people will care about the \”complete story\” behind this mother and this child? How many people will think about the unprecedented pressure and challenges that this era has brought to each of us? Involution, epidemics, city closures, online classes… our parents have never encountered it, and our parents\’ parents have never encountered it. But when we became parents, we encountered it. Our children also had the misfortune of being children for the first time. We cannot punish the weaker children, so we can only force ourselves to grow and adapt more quickly. Just like when an airplane encounters severe turbulence in the airflow, we must first wear oxygenOnly with an air mask can you protect your child. And this oxygen mask is called \”emotion management.\”