I’m temping at an elementary school this week while the secretary is out on Jury Duty. So it might just be today, might be all week, who knows? There was a kid who was acting up in class that got sent down here once, and then yet again and was kept in our office while they waited for his dad to come pick him up. I don’t feel it’s my role as temp to try to exert any discipline over children that I don’t know, but the usual office assistant tried to talk to him a bit. He hit another kid because he was angry. She asked why he was angry, and he said “he made me angry”. And she told him, “no he didn’t. You have control over your emotions and how they come out. If you were angry, it’s because you let yourself be angry.”
This to me is very wise words. I, admittedly, am one who doesn’t feel the anger emotion very often, if at all. I don’t see a point in being consumed by anger, which to me is inherently an all consuming emotion. And it takes effort to be angry. We get angry at other’s actions, other’s feelings, but often anger is the result of unspoken feelings or frustration, or feeling stuck. It’s the emotion of being trapped, I think. Don’t see a way out? Don’t like your options? Get angry.
Anger is easy. It means we get to rage at the world without having to find the courage to change the situation. And raging is fun sometimes. But it eats your soul. At least, I know that it used to eat mine.
The kid’s dad came to pick him up. He talked to the principal. The kid hates his teacher. He thinks he’s mean to him. He wants to be in one of the other fourth grade classes. But they won’t switch him until he calms down and stops being angry.
To me, that’s counter-productive. Wouldn’t it make sense to pull the kid from a less-than-stellar situation and see if it makes the anger stop?
I’m just saying.
1 Comment
March 4, 2008 at 12:49 pm
Can you teach me how you got over anger? Because I am about to check myself into a program. Not really, but, you know.