Helping your child or teenager manage their anger

Children and teenagers may struggle to manage their emotions, this can lead them to express anger in different ways. When they are calm, you can teach them tools to help them understand and manage their anger.

If your child becomes violent when they are angry, it’s important to make sure you and others are safe. Read our advice on dealing with violent behaviour.

When people are angry, they can react without thinking. When something makes your child angry, pausing before reacting can help them.

Teach your child that when something makes them angry, they can:

• take time to process their feelings, they don’t need to react right away
• count to ten before saying or doing anything
• walk away and spend some time alone if they need to
• try a breathing exercise, like breathing in 3s

Help your child to understand that it’s OK to feel angry, but it’s not OK to hurt anyone or damage anything. Teach them other ways to release their feelings. This could be:

• doing physical exercise like running or dancing
• going for a walk
• writing their feelings in a diary
• using comfort items like a soothing box

You can help your child to understand what is happening in their mind and body when they feel anger. This can help them to respond differently next time something makes them angry. It is also good for you to understand what makes them angry and what they need from you in the moment.

When they are feeling calm, ask them about situations that have made them angry. It’s important to let them speak without arguing or interrupting them. You can try active listening.

Talk to them about what they need from you and others around them when they are angry. For example, they might want to talk to you or they might want to be left alone. They might just need to know you are there when they are ready to talk. It’s important that siblings and other people in the house know what they need too.

You and your child can talk about how you both naturally respond to feelings of anger. When people feel angry, their brain often goes into fight, flight, or freeze mode. Your child or teenager might:

• fight, by shouting or becoming aggressive
• flight, by going to their room or leaving the house
• freeze, by doing nothing or stopping talking

You can talk about how your reactions might be different or the same. So, if you both go into ‘fight’ mode, you can talk about how you can avoid arguments. If your child goes into flight or freezes, they might need you to give them space when they’re angry.

Ask your child about anything else they might be feeling. Often when people feel angry, it’s because they feel:

• hurt
• frustrated
• anxious
• afraid
• embarrassed
• ashamed

Get your child to imagine or draw this like an iceberg. The tip of the iceberg is the anger that people can see and the other feelings are below the surface.

You could try ‘body mapping’ with them. This is where they pay attention to what anger feels like in their body and where they feel it. They might feel:

• that their heart is beating faster
• tension in their chest
• their stomach tighten

It’s likely in the moments your child is angry you will have your own stress response. This can make it harder to respond to them in a calm way. You can read our advice on how to stay calm with your child when you argue or disagree.

When your child has calmed down, you can help them move on. Talk to them about what happened from your perspective and name the feelings you felt. You can encourage them to do the same.

Help them to understand the impact of their actions. For example, if they expressed their anger by shouting, this might have upset or scared people around them.

After you have talked about it, try and move on and do something you both enjoy together. Let them know they can talk to you about their feelings whenever they need to.

Page last reviewed: July 2025
Next review due: July 2028