KIDS AND ANGER
HOW TO HELP YOUR KIDS UNDERSTAND ANGER Have you ever heard the term “flipping your lid” and wondered where this term came from? The Urban Dictionary describes is as: To suddenly go crazy or become angry. Origin was based on the observation that water boiling in a pot could bubble so violently as to “flip the lid” off the pot, leading to the analogy of a human becoming so angry as to “flip their lid”. It was later generalized to mean any sudden change in emotional state. If you have a toddler, heck, if you have kids of any age, I bet you are very familiar with flipping your lid…not only them, but sometimes you too! Sometimes our ability to control our emotions is very difficult, but I have found that having the knowledge of what is going on in our brain, helps identify and control the times that we want to ‘flip our lid’. To help our kids understand their emotions better, check out how Dr. Siegel describes it using the palm of your hand.
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STEP 1
Hold up your hand with your palm open
The palm of your hand to your wrist represents your brain stem. This is the fight/flight/ freeze part of your brain.
STEP 2
Move your thumb into the palm of your hand.
Your thumb represents the mid-brain (amygdala)—where old memories that created feelings of inadequacy and mistaken decisions about how to find belonging and significance are stored.
STEP 3
Now fold your fingers over your thumb to make a fist. Your fist represents the cortex. The pre-frontal cortex is the only place where rational thinking and emotional control takes place— regulation of emotions, regulation of interpersonal relationships, response flexibility, intuition, social cognition, self-awareness, letting go of fears, morality, and much more.
