Anger doesn’t work in parenting. It may seem to work, but it won’t long term. It’s almost impossible to be an explosive or angry parent and not have it lead to negative behaviour in your children. Some are going to live a life of fear, some might even develop what’s close to PTSD or anxiety. Others will get anti-social or self-destructive tendencies in their reactions and so on. The worst part about it is that you absolutely don’t need to get angry or raise your voice to assert yourself as the parent figure in “I’m the adult I decide” situations, you just need patience and assertiveness.

Often it’ll not even be your kids you’re angry at, it’ll be you reacting to stressful situations. If you’re prone to anger under stress, it’ll probably be a good idea for you to simply do things much earlier than you’d otherwise like. I know my wife is bad at handling situations where we have to leave the house for longer trips, so I typically pack everything possible beforehand, sometimes the night before. I’ve also “taught” her to do things like making the children’s lunches the night before instead of during the morning when she has to get the kids out the door in a timely manner.

Another thing we’ve done is to create graphical depictions of the tasks our children have to do each morning. We did this with our children and had them mostly tell us which steps they needed to perform and only helping them with the order and if they forgot something. This way my wife can point to the drawing and sequence of tasks that are their “responsibility”. Which has helped immensely.

Part of being assertive is also sticking to what you say. When I say something it gets done that way. At least 95% of the time. If I can feel a change is extremely important to one of my children, we’ll change it, but usually how I outline things is how they are going to happen. I don’t do this with anger, but with patience, but the magical thing about it is that my kids know and usually don’t fight it because they know it’s useless to fight it.

It is also better to “trick” your kids than to yell at them or enforce strict anger responses. Instead of fighting young children about getting dressed or whatever, you can tell them that you’re going to get your shoes on first. Similar when you’re eating, and they refuse to eat anything, you can tell them that they can’t have any because it’s “adult” food only, or say something like “I really hope noobe eats this delicious food on my fork” and look away and then pretend to be surprised and blame everyone including the pet for taking it.

You’re also going to have to accept that things take time, that they are hard and that your children will go through different phases. It’s often helpful to remember that most of the time they aren’t being “disobedient” on purpose, sometimes they may not even know why they are fighting you or whatever it is that they are fighting. You need to remember that they are learning emotions and that it’s ok for them to feel whatever they feel. You also need to remember that your patience is infinite while theirs isn’t.

My biggest issue is usually not to laugh at their “stupidity”. Like when my daughter gets really, really, angry and trash some of her toys. Like… how is that supposed to hurt me? I do try to disarm the situation by telling her that if her toys break she will be sorry later and that usually helps. If she’s violent toward us I stop it, not in an angry manner by very assertive.

Finally you have to remember that while your children are riled up it’s very hard to talk to them. It’s always better to distract them and then talk about it later when they calm down.

Oh and don’t worry about what other people are thinking about you carrying a screaming child through a store after you refuse to buy them a toy or candy or whatever. Any parent won’t be judging you, they’ll be emphatic with you because we’ve all been there. If you stick your ground and follow through on your denial it’ll eventually stop. If you cave, you’re in for a life of hell.