Parental Anger: Mindfulness and Letting Go

By Alisa J. Holleron
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Several years ago, Ricky Byrdsong, Sr., was killed only a few blocks from my house, while taking an evening stroll with his children. He was shot down by a young man who clearly had hatred for Africans-Americans, Jews, and Asians, as his shooting spree was directed at people belonging to these groups. My then-10-year-old son, whose best friend lives on that block, had spent many hours playing with the children there, including Ricky's son. He was overcome with grief.

Not long before that, my family was glued to the television and newspapers, watching news about the shootings at Columbine High School . After reading so much about the students and teacher who were killed, we felt as though we knew them personally. Like many other Americans, we became so involved that we could easily imagine it happening at our own school.

These explosions of hatred and anger are puzzling and disturbing to every parent I know. How do people, especially young people, come to feel so much rage and desire to kill? What can we do as parents to prevent this? How do we explain these things to our children?

As a facilitator of parenting workshops, I work with parents on understanding their emotional reactions to their children. Without question, the issue that is raised more than any other is parental anger. One day, listening to a woman talk about how angry she gets with her children, a light bulb clicked on in my head: I realized that the best way to understand the anger in our society is to understand the anger inside of us. The best way to teach our children is to be role models, by looking at and understanding our own anger.

Working with the anger that we feel toward our children is a good place to begin. We love our children deeply, yet we have the capacity to get extremely angry with them. Many parents report being surprised by, and ashamed of, the intensity of this anger. They promise themselves they won't get angry, and then they do. They worry about the effect this has on their children.

In exploring our anger toward our children, the most important thing to understand is that anger and fear are closely related. Although we are often unaware of feeling fear, it is always just below the surface when we are angry. Because we are unaware of it, we focus on the situation that is causing us anger.

For instance, if children are defiant, we assume we become angry because they are not going along with the program. What we often don't realize is that our angry reaction is coming from the fear that is created by their behavior. We may be afraid that defiant children will not learn the things they need to learn in order to be successful adults. Or we might be afraid that a child's defiance is the result of incorrect parenting--that we are failures as parents. The underlying fear creates the intensity of the emotion.

Fear often comes from the high expectations we have for ourselves or our children. We live in a high-stress, fast-paced society in which we are expected to cope with difficult jobs, be available emotionally to our children, maintain a home, balance work and home effectively, love and support our families, provide educational and enhancing activities for our children, and provide fun family time. If we think we are not living up to those expectations, fear is created.

When we decide to have children, we do so believing that we can be good parents and raise good children. When those beliefs are threatened, fear can result. It is natural then to want to change things, to make everything right so that we do not feel the fear. Fear can cause us to be controlling. When children behave in a worrisome way, we want to make them behave correctly because the fear is too uncomfortable for us. We expect them to change their behavior; if they don't, it is natural to push harder, and for emotions to intensify. We are desperately trying to make things the way we need them to be, so that we can feel okay.

Fear is a driving force within us, and yet we are often unaware of it. Bringing awareness to fear can be very effective in shifting anger. By facing our fears, we can see more clearly that we are trying to control something that may be beyond our control. Facing that can help us "let go." But how is that done?