As parents, we have never understood that anger can be transferred from us to our children. If your children can copy your mannerism/traits as their parent, nothing stops your anger traits from being transferred to them. Anger can be communicated in our conscious or unconscious conversations to our children. Communication is a combination of our behaviour and attitudes which we do everyday but never conscious on the effect of these on the people around us especially our children.
It is true that our aim when communicating is to get others to connect with us, convert them to our ideologies or beliefs while we also give out information. This is usually done through our speech and body language. The cost of anger is extremely heavy, and it is not something we can afford to pay for, and its effect can be very deadly.
One of the costs of communicating anger to our children is resentment. Within the family space, there is an unspoken and unresolved resentment your children have because all your daily communication with them is laced with anger. They avoid you like a plague and unconsciously begin to act irrational, irritable and rude towards you and others.
Anger is transferable, remember it is a behaviour and an attitude, so if your children start acting out do not be surprised or taken aback by their reactions. Anger in itself is not to our benefit when dealing with our children. It is very powerful yet so useless! It is powerful when channelled in the right direction toward something profitable, it is useless because it causes one to be blind which can result in an overactive display of reaction that is destructive, which we always go back to fix and sometimes may not have the opportunity to fix.
The buildup of resentment leads to shattered trust and this might take you years to rebuild. They do not communicate with you anymore first because they resent you for always communicating anger and now their trust for you is broken.
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The home which should be a safe space for your children has become an uncomfortable and awkward environment for the entire family. You can literally slice a chunk of tension in the home which should never be so. With all of these happenings, the chances to raise a very peaceful and soft-spoken individual can be very slim. Your children have been damaged by your actions, as every little thing is escalated like a mine waiting to explode.
Parents can get angry but always think about the prolonged effect this might have on the children. I was in conversations with a 10-year old boy who had a long face and sad eyes, he snapped at the slightest thing done by his siblings, he found their jokes extremely boring and wanted to be left alone all the time. I observed him for a period of time, He screamed out if he requested for something and it was not attended to on time or correctly. This went on for the duration I was around. His mum had said he needed anger management class and I objected to it. I probed further only to realise that he was acting out the character of one of his parents, it was disheartening but this happens to be our current reality.
The parent in question has become the message that he or she communicates. Every time the child comes in contact with the said parent, he /she sees an angry person.
We have to parent ourselves first before we can do same to our children. Self-awareness is a progressive state.
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