Nigel's temper

It's become quite a common sight now, especially when Celest deals with him.

Arms folded. Eyes looking stern. Mouth shut tight. Head tilted down. Legs straight after a single stomp on the ground. In a word, the typical body language for "Anger".

It used to get me angry too, watching him express his frustration for what ever reason (e.g. can't eat a sweet, no Wii, having to go to bed early) and I used to threaten to punish him. However, in recent months, I've grown so accustomed to it that I've started ignoring him and tried to reason with him or just talk to him as if I don't even notice his anger.

Yesterday, we went to his school for a Speech and Drama play put up by his classmates and him - a presentation of sorts to sum up almost 20 weeks of lessons (or more like play). I have videos, rather large, which I might upload. In the midst of the show, I notice the children were taught to be as expressive as possible, from anger, to joy, to shock and so on - not called out on their own, but as part of the flow of their song and dance act. I instantly recognised the stance I've seen often at home and now understand where that came from. So it can't be right that we think it's wrong, can it? (Er, am I making sense?)

It dawned on me that the expression of an emotion (anger for example, or sadness) by a child (or anyone) is not wrong - in fact, it's uncontrollable given it's spontaneous nature. So we shouldn't punish him for being and showing that he's angry. But what we can do is try to find out more, help him to understand his own feelings and teach him how to deal with and if possible control it in the future. The path to forming an emotionally-stable person I guess.