Get on top of your kids’ mood swings: essential strategies from an expert clinical psychologist

“My child is having mood swings and nothing I do seems to work? I really can’t cope any more and things are getting worse”.

Does this sound familiar to you? Does your child struggle to manage their emotions? Do they experience regular spirals of anger or rage, sometimes followed by sadness? As a Clinical Psychologist, I can tell you that you are definitely not alone.

Anger, or the more technical term of ‘emotional dysregulation’ is one of the many reasons why parents can struggle with parenting. Rage or anger are defined as ‘anger episodes or “mood swings”, which are explosive outbursts, typically out of proportion in both intensity and duration’ to whatever has triggered them, Carlson, (2007). Despite anger being a frightening emotion for us to witness in our children it is one of the most common negative emotions that they might display.

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Where does anger come from?

Anger can often be a response to our children feeling frustrated by something that has happened or might happen (for example feeling annoyed that they cannot play with a friend at the park as it is home-time). Furthermore, anger can also occur when children feel that they have little control over what is distressing them. Perhaps your child has been told that they cannot have that amazing new magazine that they have just spotted on the supermarket shelf. As parents we sometimes forget that children simply have not yet developed the complex skills for managing their array of intense emotions, and often struggle to engage in what we might call ‘self-soothing’ when their immediate needs are not met (more on this later)!

Anger and aggression can also occur in schools where children may be faced with multiple pressures such as teasing, bullying, sensory overload, or struggling with work that might be too challenging.

If your child is experiencing anger and emotional dysregulation, it is one of the most challenging things to manage as a parent. Typically, parents will try to manage the anger outburst in the heat of the moment, and whilst sometimes this might work, on other occasions the outbursts can escalate completely out of control and the mood swings might become regular occurrences. This can lead us as parents to feel absolutely exhausted and helpless, and sometimes even unloved and not respected.

I find that anger that is left untreated can spiral out of control, sometimes with children being unable to effectively regulate their own emotions, and being stuck in a state of anger and aggression for heightened amounts of time. Anger can impact upon a child’s ability to attend school, take part in hobbies and take part in social situations. But what actually causes dysregulated emotions, and how can we help children to find other coping strategies?

Is anyone familiar with the brilliant Disney film ‘Inside Out’ (2024)? This ingenious animated film characterises five different emotions that are experienced by the main character – Riley Anderson. One of the main emotions depicted is a character called is ANGER, and trust me – as a parent as well as a Psychologist – this is one emotion that we are all likely to have seen in our children at some point! Anger is very quick to lose their temper, and is described as ‘strict and closed when expressing sadness or happiness’. But what happens when our children are stuck in anger mode – on repeat!

What really is anger?

Let’s think about this in a little more detail. What actually is anger? One visual description that I use a lot in my work is the iceberg analogy. Stick with me here, I promise it is not brain science. Ever seen an iceberg – either a picture or in person? Great – we know that icebergs protrude from the sea and have a sharp and perilous exterior. However, looks can be deceptive, and hidden underneath the surface of the sea rests the larger base of the iceberg. Take a deeper dive into this image for a moment. Imagine that you are on a ship, and anger is the emotion that you can see on the top (the tip of the iceberg).

As psychologists we often call anger a ‘secondary emotion’, this means that it is an emotion that is easily accessible by children for example (however it is likely to be masking other more challenging emotions). Underneath the anger (below the iceberg that you can see) are the more ‘raw, or vulnerable emotions’ – and we might refer to these as the ‘primary emotions’ – these are the emotions that children might find harder to express, either because they might feel embarrassed or ashamed, or they might not have developed the strategies to express these.

Primary emotions could be fear, sadness, or even distress. We need to understand what the ‘hidden causes’ are of anger and to help the child to playfully navigate through this in therapy. It is important to add in here (and not wanting to cause confusion), but sometimes, anger can be a primary emotion. This means that it can be a direct response to something, for example if someone stole a chip off your child’s dinner plate, you might not be surprised if your child was pretty angry in response to this.

Top 5 tips to navigate anger

So, now that we understand a little more about the different types of anger, how can we as parents help our children to navigate these challenging times. I have come up with my Top 5 tips. You might find some are more helpful than others. Don’t forget that every child is different, and there may be different things triggering the anger outbursts.

Time to talk: Firstly, recognise that anger is a problem and take time to talk to your child about their behaviour. It is really important to try to stay calm when you are talking to your children, and to pick a time when they are actually calm (not in a full-blown anger outburst). Whilst our instinct may be to list all of the things that they have done wrong, it might be sensible to start with some things that they have done well (praise your child) to get them to start to open up. For example – “I know that you’ve been finding things really hard, but I am so proud of you for taking time to talk to me about things now. Let’s see if we can make things better for you”. Praise is a highly effective strategy for shaping children’s behaviour (Skinner, 1953), particularly as it can help children to develop problem solving skills in a safe environment and keeps them motivated to change their behaviour. Carefully move on to some of the more challenging behaviour that you have seen and discuss this with your child if you can. Let your child know what the consequences are of their behaviour. Take time to also explain the behaviour that you would like to see more of (calm behaviour, playing nicely etc)!
What comes JUST before anger? Understand your child’s triggers. Once you have opened up the conversation to exploring anger, it is important to understand what might have triggered the anger outburst. Sometimes the trigger might be pretty obvious such as a fight with a sibling or being told ‘no’ to a request. It might even be a feeling of being ‘overwhelmed’, or ‘sensory overload’. However, on other occasions it could be something much less obvious, or perhaps there is no immediate identifiable trigger and you might need to backtrack to a few days ago to unpick what could be causing the problem. Don’t forget that sometimes a negative event that happened a good few days or even months ago could be at the root of the anger. For example, a fall out with a friend or getting told off by a teacher could be upsetting, but those difficult feelings could be triggered by something inadvertently small and inconspicuous that happened more recently. So don’t forget that understanding the triggers to your child’s anger is helpful, but sometimes we might not always know the triggers immediately. If that is the case, we can move to step 3.
What does your anger look like – lets get playful! Talking about anger with children is difficult, as I am sure many of you already realise – children can become defensive – refusing to talk about anger, or they can be overwhelmed with feelings of guilt or shame for their behaviour. One approach that I use is to help to ‘externalise’ the feelings of anger (White and Epson, 1990). What this means is helping your child to find a fun way of exploring the anger that they experience. However, we need to carefully ‘remove’ that angry experience from being a part of them (inside them), to something that is outside them. Sounds complicated – right? Well, remember earlier on I spoke about the film ‘Outside In’ – this is a fantastic framework for helping children to name and describe some of the tricky emotions that they might be feeling. We can sometimes use different ways to explore what anger feels like with children. For example – ask your child to visualise their anger – maybe as a character from a film or a baddie from a TV programme. You might even want to get creative and design your own anger character. What can your child do when they start to feel angry – what other characters can protect them and help them to feel more in control. Some children find it hard to talk about emotions or anger so use colours to explore different feelings – for example – what colour were you at when X / Y or Z happened? Was it red? Or blue? Opening up conversations about your child’s inner experiences can be really helpful to them.
Helping your child to learn to self soothe. It may sound overly simple, but one of the best techniques for helping your child to manage the anger that they experience, is to help them to learn creative, playful and even silly ways to calm down. Simple techniques such as focusing on our breathing, and slowing down our breath can gradually help our body to calm down too. Actually, it is not as magic as it sounds, there is a genuine science behind this. Slowing down our breathing mechanism helps activate the parasympathetic nervous system which counteracts the ‘fight or flight’ response. This is turn allows our heart rate to reduce and helps us to relax and feel less out of control.
Pick an activity to help your child to calm down. Take time to create a ‘zen den’ or chill out zone where you child can go to help themselves to feel more settled. This area needs to appeal to all of the 5 senses that your child has – so prepare to get creative! What do they need to see (bright or relaxing colours, lights, or dark space), books or magazines. Are there any relaxing activities that they could do? Sticker books or Lego? What textures or feelings would be helpful – do they need soft or spiky fabrics. Are there any appealing sounds (playlists or music)? Are any tastes or smells relaxing or soothing. Take time to uncover what things help your child to feel more relaxed as well. Also, don’t forget to find out the things that your child doesn’t like as well, because making sure these things are removed could help them to calm down quicker.

Possibly my most memorable experience of using these kind of techniques was helping a child who was struggling with anger towards their parents. We used a playful approach using a collection of puppets and together we named the anger experience that the child was feeling. The child called their anger ‘the black cloud’. Once we had named this, and drawn a picture of the experience, we were able to talk about what specific events were making the ‘black cloud’ appear, and grow bigger and bigger. Over time we were able to think about how to encourage the black cloud to ‘shrink’ a little, and to create other clouds that could be more supportive to the child. We enabled the child to start having conversations with their parents about the ‘black cloud’ which helped it to feel much less scary. Over time, the ‘black cloud’ grew less and less powerful and slowly drifted away.

Round Up

Often when children are taking it out on their parents, they need someone else to step in between, and may find it easier to talk to a professional psychologists about their difficulties. Even though some of the techniques that I have described above might sound easy in principle, sometimes we need to use lots of different therapeutic methods to help children to open up. If you have tried some of the techniques above and are still struggling then I would encourage you to reach out for help with us at CAYP.

Thank you to Dr Pauline Tapping, Clinical Psychologist, DClin, MSc, BSc for writing our guest blog.

About CAYP

The world can be a tricky place for Children, Adolescents, and Young People. Sometimes, they may need a little extra help. And whilst parents may be trying their hardest, they may also need some support.

CAYP is a specialist psychological healthcare service, led by highly qualified and experienced clinical psychologists. They offer outstanding psychological support and therapies for Children, Adolescents and Young People (hence CAYP), and their families, living with emotional, behavioural, social or psychological difficulties.

CAYP are also very proud to offer their comprehensive assessments for autism and ADHD, as well as developmental assessments for infants, toddlers and pre-schoolers, and assessments of children’s intellectual and learning abilities, including dyslexia, dyscalculia and learning disabilities.

They offer an ADHD medication service too, with opportunities to discuss medication options for your child’s ADHD with the CAYP prescribing pharmacist.

CAYP can offer almost immediate appointments at one their 40 nationwide clinics and online. So if you’re looking for award-winning, independent, clinical psychological healthcare for your child, please do get in touch with the team at CAYP. www.cayp-psychology.com