My children are what I like to fondly refer to as high maintenance. They are passionate, intelligent, energetic, and not very good at controlling their emotions. This is not something I keep a secret from anyone who knows us – I’m not sure how I could tbh, the noise tends to give us away 😉 So I’m always looking for tools and techniques to assist them, which made giving the Relaxkids Anger Management CD a go a good fit.
Or so you’d hope. Small listened to it once, got a major fit of the giggles, and refused to listen to it again. Not so good for him then. Big, by contrast, listened to it every night for a while, even taking it away with her to a friend’s house, and listening to it there.
She did say that there was one track she didn’t like – it made her sad. (Helpfully, she didn’t tell me which one.) But overall it does seem to give her a more in the way of techniques to apply to manage her emotions, and that can’t be a bad thing. It isn’t a magic wand that solves all anger issues, but I don’t think any of us parents expect that. What we’re hoping for is something to add to the arsenal, something else that might patch a hole, something that might just tip the balance a little.
The 21 day programme is full of ideas that you can give a try to in that kind of way. I do kind of wish though that there was a programme that was based around physical relaxation. The hypnosis that I did when pregnant with Big was based totally around a physical routine of relaxing the whole body and it worked amazingly well – the one I did when pregnant with Small had me visualising coloured clouds to float on and that just doesn’t work for me at all. I suspect the kids are like me, and they’d be much better off with something pragmatic or practically based. But as the 21 day programme is free, either to read online or download, you’ve got nothing to lose in giving it a go, and if your child is happier with pretending to be melting butter to help them relax, then you are well catered for here. (I can see that the melting butter is a great way to think about it. It just doesn’t work for my offspring. But there you go.)
The Relaxkids Anger Management CD was sent to us free for review. The 21 day programme is available free at the Relaxkids website to read online or download.