Helping our child with anger: one picture book at a time

Book cover of  ‘Lunch every day’

Helping our child with anger: one picture book at a time 

By Shoshana Magnet 

 

I’ve been listening to too many parenting podcasts, trying to get through this interminable time with nothing but bad news in it. My obsession lately is getting the children to be competent since, according to psychologist Dr. Becky Kennedy, competence is the opposite of anxiety. (I can attest to the fact that obsessing about competence can be a sign of anxiety, Dr. Becky. So haha on you!)  

I was teaching one of my sons to make his lunch (competence!) and he was excelling at his “job,” which was to complain with aggrieved rage. “What is WRONG with YOU” he yelled at me. “I am a child! This is CHILD LABOUR!” As I dutifully thanked him for sharing his feelings with me while telling him that I “loved him too much” to let him go into adulthood with no life skills, and that I was “working hard” to learn how to help him to be more competent, he told me: “Mom, I can give some free advice – parenting podcasts are the worst!”  

Anger and parenting: such a struggle. “Describe the behaviour” say therapists, including my own brilliant therapist telling me that “observation is the first step of nonviolent communication.” I am trying. “I see chewing gum being thrown on the floor, I see plates sitting on the couch,” I singsong. “I see Tic Tacs being fed to the dog!” I see I see, describe, describe! What I long to say: “I see two wolves dressed up like children, slyly contemplating the best way to eat me alive!” Like their parents, like all of humanity, so too do our children struggle with what Mister Rogers called “the mad that you feel.” We are in such an angry and anxiety-ridden time – it empties our buckets, in preschool language.  

Too much rage, and also too little. I taught a class on feminist approaches to popular culture that children were invited to attend. My children came as did the children of my undergrads. “What are some unfair things to boys?” I asked. “That they can’t cry, and that they get teased for wearing nail polish,” said the children in my class. “And for girls?” I wondered. “That they can’t get mad,” said one of my sons wisely, “although the girls I know sure don’t seem to have gotten the message.”  

And yet for all the times women, girls and nonbinary folks are systemically accused of being angry – the justified rage so often goes unseen and unspoken. I watched a girl pushed out of line by older boys as she waited for the monkey bars. “It’s my turn” she said quietly, firmly and to absolutely no avail. Rather than push forward, she sighed and turned towards the slide. Rage is structural, it is primal, it is a cover emotion for deeper feelings of grief. And here is to facing it with tenderness, with chagrin and with understanding. And to accompany us on that journey are picture books, including the amazing book Lunch Every Day 

Lunch Every Day explains a parenting principle that is counterintuitive, at least to me. Children so often don’t say what they mean, technically called a “miscue” in psychoeducational speak – this book is filled with the miscues of a boy who is a bully. Every day, he acts angry while feeling sad and emotionally lonely. As part of this struggle, he bullies a boy he calls “Skinny Kid” by taking his lunch, every day. The structural piece of bullying becomes clear as the bully child is revealed to have a difficult home life, with parents who fight, a brother who frightens him and no food to bring for lunch. Then one day, Skinny Kid passes out birthday invitations, and everyone gets one, “even me.” Although the child doing the bullying is afraid to go to Skinny Kid’s party since he doesn’t have a gift to bring, at the last minute he decides to attend. When he arrives, he realizes from photos that Skinny Kid’s dad has died. Skinny Kid’s mom sees the bully who takes her son’s lunch and comes to speak to him. For the first time we see the bully’s face as Skinny Kid’s mother says in a real quiet voice: 

I hear you like my lunches. 

Here’s what I’m gonna do. I’m going to make a second lunch. And my son will bring it for you, every day. Okay? 

And do you know something? 

She did. 

And that’s how I got lunch every day. . . 

and a whole lot more. 

Oh, life, art, wonder, grief – all mixed up into every second of every moment of every day. “See, there,” said my youngest son to me, “that puddle is hiding a beautiful home for the fish who live there.” “Yes,” I told him, marvelling at his ability to see worlds within worlds – marvelling at him, marvelling at this beautiful, impossible world, full of kindness, cruelty and puddles for fish. “I do see.” 

 

Dr. Shoshana Magnet is a professor at the University of Ottawa and staff at Child in Mind. She is offering online workshops and one-off parenting seminars, found at childinmind.com/groups, on how to help children with anxiety and grief and other big feelings. 

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