Creating Anger Management Activities for Teens
Teenagers have a unique time of life that they have to deal with since they are mature in their bodies, mature in their cognitive thinking, but their emotions are lagging far behind, being very immature still. This is the most difficult thing for parents to understand and deal with in helping their teenagers since they are dealing with a child who looks and reasons like an adult but has a melt down emotionally over seemingly little issues. It is important to find anger management activities for teens so that they can start to deconstruct what is really going on in their lives, since there is usually an emotion other than anger that is lying just under the surface for which anger is the defense mechanism to cover it up.
What to Try
Once anger management activity for teens is to use a journal or other piece of paper where they can work on writing out or drawing the entire situation which led to the angry outburst. Usually they will need to start with the words that came out of their mouths at the time (beware, it may be ugly) and then work backwards to the incident that occurred and then work on what really bothered them about the incident. Often they will draw a pain in a certain part of their body or will draw a symbol that represents the deeper issue that is going on below the anger. Often, the core issue is that the teen's feelings were hurt and the only way they knew how to deal with that pain was to become angry and lash out.
Once the core issue can be defined, then the anger management activity for teens can more to the problem solving phase. In this phase, the teen can sort out different solutions to the underlying problem rather than inappropriately acting out in anger. They need to be taught how to express anger and pain appropriately. If they are not taught these anger management activities in teen years, they are likely to either become an angry adult, or they will be belittles so much for becoming angry that they will stuff the anger and turn it inward so that it manifests in self destructive patterns.
Other anger management activities can include exercise, since this can help teens to expend some of their emotions in physical activity before sorting out the core issues. If the teen anger management activity only includes the exercise without including the cognitive part of the process, then the teen may end up using exercise inappropriately which can lead to other issues in the future.
