How to Calm an Angry or Distressed Child

If you’re a parent you’re no stranger to a distressed or angry child and the amount of intense emotions and/or loud negative energy that accompanies this. Have you ever felt rather helpless and perhaps a bit frustrated? Have you ever been sucked into the negative energy of it all and found yourself adding to the intensity from your own reaction to it?

Even more so if your child has been bullied or treated poorly by a friend, classmate or teacher and they come home hurt and angry. As parents, we feel their hurt and anger and often in more directions, because we want to make it right.

So, as good parents, we first talk to our child and ask them to tell us the whole story from beginning to end including the feelings they are experiencing. First and foremost children want to be heard and if we listen, it reinforces that we care. But what if you could take that to a whole other level and not only talk about the emotions but actually release them and prevent future emotional scarring? What if you could affect even the bully or teacher or classmate positively without even them being consciously aware of it?

You CAN with a technique called EFT or Emotional Freedom Technique. EFT is a meridian based technique that involves tapping on a sequence of meridian points while holding a negative thought or emotion in your mind in order to release it. The reason this works, often when nothing else will, is that a negative thought, belief or emotion is nothing more than a disruption in the body’s energy field, according to EFT creator Gary Craig. EFT has been successful in relieving stress, anxiety, limiting beliefs, fears, phobias, addictions, depression, physical pain, emotional trauma, and a host of many other life limiting afflictions. It also works very effectively with kids because in most cases they have less resistance to letting go of their negative stuff than we adults do.

The next time your son or daughter is upset, sit across from them and ask them to tell you all about every detail and while they do, have them follow you through the sequence of EFT tapping points. He or she will hopefully be more preoccupied with their own upset and your undivided attention rather than to argue this, but if they do, just go ahead and tap on yourself as you listen.

While you both tap as the story unfolds, keep encouraging your child to really describe how he or she feels, for example: “And how did that make you feel when Billy said that?” And repeat the emotions as you keep tapping, even if you have to hear about how ‘stupid’ Billy is and that he or she hates him. It’s okay; these feelings are real and should not be denied while being released. This process will often only take 5-10 minutes or less until the most intense emotions are released. If your child will co-operate have them continue tapping until there is no emotional charge left. Take a deep breath together and think of some positive statements around Billy, such as; I think I can forgive Billy, sometimes he gets picked on too, he is really good at sports – I’m a great kid for forgiving Billy, I feel okay now, I have lots of good friends to be thankful for … And tap on the sequence of points as you both come up with positive statements and say them aloud.

This is such a great opportunity to really listen to and help your child. In most cases you will find the real core issue will surface, if it’s not that evident at first, and together you can prevent an incident from becoming rooted in their energy field to possibly be a trigger for future self esteem issues later in life.

But wait, that’s not all, there’s a really amazing side effect that often occurs as the result of you and your child releasing emotions in this way and changing your own energy around the person, in that “Billy” will be different in some way too! So don’t be surprised if your son or daughter comes home to say that Billy didn’t do anything at all today, or did something uncharacteristically nice!