Anger Management for Three-Year Olds—and Thirty-Eight-Year-Olds

07/29/2009

It's a recent week night, and we're slogging through what my cousin calls “the suicide hour”—AKA parental stress test, AKA kid pre-bed assembly-line. I'm referring, here, to that window of time between six and eight when you're cooking, feeding, bathing, toothbrushing, and generally going cross-eyed.

This night's dinner feeding has been relatively smooth—low on the scale of projectile yogurt and “I don’t like that’s,” whew—and we're actually on schedule for bathing. This is about the time Punk goes ballistic. He insists on having a second chocolate-chip cookie, but he’s already had his post-fruit ration, so I say, “No.”

You’d think I confiscated his pistachio-green stuffed hippo, “Bappo.” He launches into paroxysms, sobbing, mouth gaping and downturned, screaming, “Cooooooookeeeeeee!”

And then, as I'm racking my brain for three-year-old anger-management techniques, he starts doing something odd: “One, two, three, aaaaaaahhhhh,” I hear him repeating through the tears.
“My God!” I say to my husband, going right into cyberchondriac mode. “What is he doing?” Naturally, with the repeated counting, I’m instantly fearing autism or OCD.

My husband snorts. “No, you goob! He’s trying to calm himself down! He’s counting and breathing.”
O.  M.  G. What a smart kid. What a great idea. But where did he learn this? Because he certainly didn’t learn it from me.

No, I am not a breather. I am a venter. When I get upset, I’m doing the adult equivalent of a three-year-old temper tantrum: I’m all steamed and complaining, venting my righteous indignation at a friend, parent, boss, spouse, whatever poor victim happens to be in the line of fire.

I’m all, “How dare he do that? He must be trying to torture me.” On and on, with conversations recounted word for word and hands flailing wildly. I stop just short of the finger snap and the “Mmm, mmm, mmm!” My mother has a name for it. She calls it “getting my Irish up.”

And all this time, I’ve thought getting my Irish up is good because it means I get it all out. After all, some really clever, dead white dudes thought that anger expression is the way to go. Aristotle advocated for expressing negative emotions, and Sigmund Freud believed that pent-up anger causes psychological harm and should be released.

But the other day, shortly after Punk's cookie meltdown, I stumbled on a Slate.com article that turned my pro-venting theory on its head. According to this article, the psychiatrists drafting the next edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders are considering including a new malady: post-traumatic embitterment disorder. Apparently, if you’re dwelling too long on the negative aftermath of a problem or event, you could qualify for this disorder.

This is definitely cause for cyberchondriac alarm. Because all this time I've been feeling quite smug about all the good returns I'm getting from complaining. But now, with these new criteria, it's all too clear that I have an advanced case of post-traumatic embitterment disorder. Just to verify my affliction, I Google "venting," and, sure enough, it now appears to be a "no no."  Why? Because it can get you more riled up about your issue than you already are, the theory goes.

Here's some recent evidence:

• Teenage girls who ranted to each other about boy problems, social troubles, and the like were more prone to anxiety and depression than non-ranting peers, found a study by Amanda Rose, an associate professor of psychology at the University of Missouri, Columbia.

• People who vented their anger about work, other people—no matter the subject—ended up more resentful than people who hadn't vented, according to review of research by University of Arkansas psychology professor Jeffrey M. Lohr.

The same review notes that relaxation exercises like taking deep breaths or going for a walk have the opposite effect: They help anger dissipate. Which brings me back to Punk, and his "one, two, three, aaaahhh" routine. The kid, it turns out, is on the cutting edge of new psychological theorizing about anger management.

 And his technique really seems to be working for him. Because on cookie-meltdown night, I went a few rounds of breathing and counting with him, and, "poof," he forgot all about his former state of severe cookie deprivation. (For more on anger management, see this Discovery Health article by Dr. Oz.)

Not that I'm, ahem, learning anything from my three-year-old, but maybe I'll give this breathing thing a shot.  It's time to give post-traumatic embitterment disorder the boot.

Comments

[Susan Birk]

Your son may be on to something. I've learned that "venting" isn't really venting at all. Venting implies a release or a dissipation. But the act of venting actually just seems to exacerbate and prolong the anger. By venting, you're giving in to the anger rather than taking control of it. So there! :)

[sng]

So who taught Punk his anger management tehnique? His dad? His daycare teacher? What a good idea. And learning it so young means he'll have a really useful tool at hand for the rest of his life. I mean, how many times have I heard advice like "Stop and count to 10 before you react" and how often have I tried doing it? Never. Maybe if I'd started at 3 years old and just counted to 3, I might have formed a useful habit.

[penny]

We should probably all have shrinks to do our venting on. Otherwise I believe we harm other people with it - especially if we're letting out our anger at the person who caused it. And then we feel really bad afterwards. I've also seen how venting among work-mates creates a negative atmosphere in the workplace. Don't you just love the people who seem to be able to rise above all the difficulties and crack a joke in the midst of them all?

[cyberchondriacmom]

Seriously, being a parent, and having been a supervisor at work, I have only increased respect for counselors. The amount of anger and ranting they have to deal with. Ugh.
I remember a former supervisor of mine had a sign on her computer: "breathe!" I think she and Punk must be kindred spirits.

[Jomamma]

But I like venting. Sigh. I guess I'm doomed to PTED.

[Martin Hogg]

I enjoyed the article and the 'venting' thing. As an anger management counselor in the UK I work with hundreds of people every year. I think that ventors are much more likely to seek help then others due to the destruction they cause. Those who keep it in need the help more but are ;less likely to seek it until it really does get to explosion point.