Taming the Dragon in Your Child-Solutions for Breaking the Cycle of Family Anger

Issue- Anger

Author- Meg Eastman and Sydney Craft Rozen

Age Range- 1-16+

Keywords- anger and promoting relationships

This is a book for parents/carers of children of all ages where there are problems with anger in the family and manifested via the child. The main author, a Clinical Psychologist, draws on her own clinical practice to offer an accessible look at patterns of anger in families, using the analogy of taming the dragon to help parents to see how important their role is in helping children to gain behavioural control. By using case examples to illustrate, the authors help parents/carers to normalise, then understand and manage their own anger before being able to help their children do the same. They describe different parenting styles and, using ideas about children's different temperaments and developmental stage, they develop good practical strategies for helping parents/carers to best help their children to learn new ways of preventing and managing anger. Recognising old family patterns before exploring new ones is advised.

Good communication is emphasised and strategies for developing this are explored for all age groups. The authors draw on positive parenting ideas and stress the importance of creating both an accepting and a boundaried enviroment to help children express emotion in acceptable ways.

Criticisms include the fact it is written by American authors although this is easily tolerable. The book categorises parenting styles and types of children, which may feel a little critical. In addition, the book does not address issues of understanding children's anger following adverse experiences such as unresolved grief, loss or trauma.