My 5-year old, once he is home from school, behaves exacty like Helena’s child described in the article. I wish I had her wisdom and patience. Where I’m struggling the most is giving him tools to express his emotions in a safe way when he becomes aggressive or rude. I’ve done well with a calm “I will not let you throw things/hit your brother/be rude”, etc but I failed my child in providing safe alternative options.

I’m brand new, and I wonder if you have ever written about pediatric autoimmune neurological disorder after strep, PANDAS? Thank you so much for everything I’ve read, so far.

I’m learning on how to handle my son’s aggressive behaviour… He’s 3.3 and I must say it has been very challenging for me. He becomes very verbal, throws things all over plus punching,pushing, biting and kicking. I often feel literally drained.

Thank you all for sharing your insights

Thank you so much for your insightful comments and corroboration.

Hi John, I am a clinical psychologist, there’s a difference between emotions and behaviour – even though of course they also feed off each other. Anger is absolutely a universal human emotion, along with sadness, joy, fear etc. Anger like other emotions is adaptive, it ensured survival by helping us to defend ourselves and protect ourselves and it’s a normal natural response to many life situations, so we don’t want to eliminate it completely or it’s expression, that would not be healthy. Anger is also a secondary or umbrella emotion which means other emotions (like fear or sadness for example) can quickly flip to anger in an instant – this is because emotions like sadness/hurt make us feel vulnerable so we may quickly flip to a more tolerable emotion like anger, so always ask yourself when you see your child angry – is this anger the likely normal primary response to this situation or could there be how sadness / loneliness / fear underneath this? Either one is ok but worth bearing in mind. When any of us has an intense emotion we usually struggle to control our behavioural response to that, so a young child with a still very much developing brain will definitely struggle to do this – that’s when you might see the aggressive behaviour. I work in settings where I get alot of referrals for “challenging behaviour” and encounter this view in my valued colleagues regarding behaviour a lot – that if we modify the environment sufficiently we can prevent all “challenging behaviour”, however my concern around a total reliance on this view is where is the space for expression of normal and basic emotion? Behaviourists will very much focus on trying to identity the antecedents / triggers etc and on stopping all aggressive behaviours and their approach is often successful. There is certainly value in identifying patterns and triggers but as a psychologist that works with emotions as well as behaviours, my problem with relying totally on that type of approach is it often leaves little space for expression of emotion. We often need to feel and release emotion – in my years doing psychological therapy with adults and children, the avoidance or blocking of emotional expression is the root of many psychological issues that emerge, so there is a fine balance to be struck between setting your child up to succeed but also making sure we don’t inadvertently block or shame their necessary emotional expression . I think the guidance Janet gives around young children is spot on in this respect, and if we can model bring a calm co-regulator, and as kids develop, kids will gradually learn to manage their body more and more during intense emotions.

This is our situation too. I cannot leave my one year old in the same place as the 3.5 year old yet I cannot possibly be between them at all times! Big sister doesn’t do it angrily anymore, rather she’s just casually jumping on top and squashing/squeezing the baby with her full strength. Sometimes she acts like she thinks it’s funny (I recognise that she’s actually expressing her discomfort). She changes the subject when I try to talk to her about it, or she just repeats the things we’ve said. I wonder how I can encourage her to share her own feelings rather than parroting back. Sometimes I sense that the baby is becoming afraid of her.

Research and seek a pediatrician who is well versed in PANS/PANDAS an autoimmune disorder that occurs suddenly in children post strep or other infections. The symptoms (e.g. stuttering (tics), aggression etc.) follow infections. Children so young should always be first checked for any underlying ailment that could be contributing to their sudden behavioral changes.