It can be frightening if your child gets angry. You feel like he or she is going to lose control. How many tantrums and anger fits can you handle? Some children can be irritable frequently and this is upsetting. A parent might think, “What’s wrong with me that my child is not happy.” So in considering anger management for kids, there are two stages in dealing with the problem, 1) preventing them from being generated in the first place, and 2) resolving the angry feelings once they have arisen.

Decision making for kids is a difficult skill that takes practice to master. Many adults have trouble making decisions, so one can imagine how challenging it is for children. How do we help our child learn how to make good choices? The answer is we allow him to struggle to a certain extent with an age-appropriate decision, but when it gets to a point that it is beyond his ability, it may be healthier to make the decision for him in a way that is supportive of the child’s desires. In other words, it is sometimes necessary to help the child make the decision that he really wants to make. 

Are you frustrated by your child's breaking rules? Is there a constant power struggle between you and him or her? Do you feel powerless and that things sometimes get out of control? Does she just not seem to listen? Learning how to set limits for your child can be extremely challenging but keeping a few pointers in mind can make things go much more smoothly. Please bear in mind that the principles expressed here represent an ideal parenting goal, and one should not expect to achieve these ideals perfectly.

When a child is upset, when a child has a problem, when a child has conflict, try to reflect his feelings back to him. Always deal with the feelings first before you do anything else. Reflecting means verbalizing and labelling the feelings he is experiencing and showing the child that you are aware that he has those feelings. Let's say a child comes home and reports a conflict with someone else. Before you give advice, criticize, or blame, say, “What he said must've really hurt your feelings,” or, “That must've been very frustrating,” or “That must have made you angry.” 

One good piece of parenting advice is to try to avoid reprimanding kids for being energetic in a public place. For healthy children, being active and making noise is normal behavior and should be tolerated to a certain extent. Try to ignore people who might look disapprovingly at you.

A very important parenting principle to remember is that it is the parents’ job to fulfill the child's physical, emotional and intellectual needs, but it is not the job of the child to fulfill the needs of his parents. In this sense the parent child relationship is truly unidirectional. It is the parents’ job to give to the child as selflessly as possible, and the child is not expected to give back until he's relatively mature.

Another concept from famed psychologist Haim Ginott involves giving your child ‘in fantasy’ what he can’t have in reality. Again, I’ve synthesized his work and my own ideas. It is the perfect solution to the question of “How to tell my child I can’t but him what he wants.”

Some parents engage in what’s called “Helicopter parenting”, where they swoop in to do everything for their children, and never let them struggle with tasks or do anything for themselves. When taken to an extreme, this certainly doesn’t seem to be advisable as it prevents children from developing a healthy sense of autonomy, independence and self-determination. However on the other hand, we know that being a parent means performing endless acts of kindness towards our children, to give selflessly. This is good for the parents, as they learn to become noble givers, and good for the children, who become filled up to overflowing with those acts of kindness, and in turn by example learn to be kind to others as well. So if I pour a glass of milk for a 6 year old am I doing him a kindness, since he may be too tired, frustrated or immature to pour it for himself, or if I let him pour it, am I doing him the greater kindness of letting him learn responsibility and autonomy?

We all want to promote moral development in our children. This means, for example, that they should think, “I don't want to do ‘X’ because it will hurt my friend’s feelings, and that is wrong.” we shouldn’t want them to think that the only thing wrong with doing ‘X’ is that “My parents will disapprove get angry or punish me”, because that teaches them that if it weren’t for the punishment, doing wrong is just fine. Disapproval and punishment is an extrinsic effect of misbehavior, whereas hurting someone else's feelings is an intrinsic effect. We want to promote this intrinsic awareness of what's right and wrong as a guide for our child. We do this by description. When a child takes away another child's toy unfairly, don’t say, “Bad boy, no grabbing!” which expresses anger and disapproval and provides an external reason to refrain from the behavior.

Remember, as parents we intervene in sibling fights not to be the judge but to open channels of communication that have been blocked. Dealing with fighting kids isn’t easy, but it presents an opportunity to help your children grow and learn.

Equal doesn’t always have to be equal. You don’t have to always give equal treats, equal attention, equal time and equal toys to your children. You need to only give these things in the approximate amount that each child needs, and your children will perceive that as equal and fair.