Punch a pillow
When the anger is already in the arms, telling someone to calm down rarely helps. The body needs a target, and a permitted target is better than a sibling or a door. The pictures below show where the force can go and what happens afterwards.
♀Punch a pillow
A girl punches a light blue pillow, with motion lines around her hand.
About this visual support
Anger is a physical event before it becomes behaviour. Muscles tighten, breathing speeds up and the energy needs a direction. A child told not to hit still has all that force left, and without an alternative it often lands in the wrong place. Pointing out a permitted target is therefore not encouraging violence but giving the force a safe way out.
Visual support makes the alternative concrete in advance. A picture of the pillow, one of where it is kept and one of what happens afterwards means the choice exists before the anger arrives. What has been rehearsed in a calm state is faster to find when the head has no time to think.
A concrete tip is to decide on a place where it is allowed, the bed in your own room for instance. A fixed place makes the rule easy for everyone to remember. In Routined the tool can sit as a picture in the evening routine, and the app can be tried for fourteen days at no cost.
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