Good and Angry: Exchanging Frustration for Character

I’m wading into dangerous ground today.  I spent this morning re-reading the first chapter of Good and Angry by Scott Turansky.

I started this book last fall but i didn’t get very far.  I was in a bad place as far as parenting goes, and I was struggling with anger, especially with one particular child…not to name names, but he’s nine.

I asked for and received some great recommendations from friends with boys just a wee bit older than mine.  I promptly ordered up about five books and read through several of them.

I started this book on anger but realized very quickly (about 2 chapters in, I guess, b/c that’s where the bookmark still is) that I was going to need some help getting through this one.  It is the kind of book you want to read with someone, because there are all kinds of probing questions about anger patterns in your own life that I certainly would not go through the emotional digging required to answer unless someone else was asking me for my responses.  so I told the person who recommended this book to me that I needed her to read and work through it with me.  Of course, she is an amazing parent…she has five children (FIVE!!!) and she frequently seems sane, but not insincere.  She is the real deal…full of joy, real joy…the kind that often comes with tears.

Several weeks ago, she mentioned that this summer might be a good time to get around to this, but some of the summer has already passed now, so this week we nailed each other down and here we go.

We’re cramming it in…between swimming and kids and vacation bible school and just life in general.

We put a date and time on the calendar.

Then we moved it around.

Now it’s tomorrow.

So this morning i started the book again.  I spent some time with these questions.

Questions like,

What are things your kids say and do on a regular basis that set you off?

What is your usual response?

How could you respond differently?

All that is just question one!  Out of seven.

I got the first two parts no problem, but i just couldn’t figure out how to respond differently to many of the things I listed.

I mean, what other response is there to eighteen pairs of shoes in the floor than pure, unadulterated rage??

Clearly I have problems.