Session 1: Let’s Get Forensic
Talking about parent anger can be like joining a secret club. Reveal your latest blowup or tendency to respond in fluent snark to your child, and suddenly, the conversation becomes a confessional. Expressions of “You too?” widen the eyes of the meekest mothers.
Maybe, like so many of us, you had no idea you had anger problems until you had kids. So the problem must be the kids … right?
Not quite.
Author Janel Breitenstein knows the exasperation of mom anger and how unsettling it can feel to find yourself yelling at a 2-year-old. But anger being typical doesn’t mean it’s harmless.
In today’s session, find ideas to uncover what’s at the heart of your anger and how to start healing from the inside out.
Challenge: Look deeper into recent episodes of your anger. Evaluate them with Janel’s suggested questions:
- What was my anger driving at? What did I want?
- What emotion was under my anger?
- What did I care about that felt ignored, disrespected, or threatened??
Session 2: Why We Do Not Never Fight
Do godly women get angry?
It might be easy to think anger and conflict are the enemy in your home. If we could all just smile and nod a little more, maybe your kids wouldn’t be fighting over the remote. Again.
Maybe you’d be able to respond with cloud-like serenity when your child leaves their cleats on the kitchen table.
In today’s session, Janel digs into whether anger can ever be a good thing and what it looks like to be a peacemaker rather than a peacefaker.
Challenge: Spoiler: You will get angry this week. Ask these questions when you’re hot under the collar:
- Is my anger wrapped in the Holy Spirit’s influence of love, peace, patience, kindness, gentleness, self-control (Galatians 5:22–23)?
- What part of this anger is mirroring the anger of God, restoring what’s broken in this world?? What part is really seeking first…myself?
Session 3: I Should Just Keep Driving, Right?
Whining. Sibling rivalry. Backtalk. Blatant disobedience. Lying. Unjustified rudeness. Child’s room looking like they turned it upside down and shook it…
Most parents could fill their version of a “12 Days of Christmas” song with their anger triggers. Who knew a 3-year-old could be so exasperating? (If only they would stop picking their nose at the table and prodding Grandma’s arm dangle!)
Today, Janel gets even more practical. Are there basic solutions that could stop your anger in its tracks?
Challenge: Identify three to five common triggers for your anger and at least one solution to prevent each.
Help Provide More Resources to Overwhelmed Parents:
Session 4: The Fight Beneath the Fight
As we lead these (often ornery, mostly cute) little souls in our homes, there’s something about motherhood—and specifically, anger—that reveals way more than we’d like about what really drives, scares, or even baffles us.
After somehow dumping together two 1000-piece puzzles, your preschooler proceeds to poke the dog in the eye. And you proceed to lose it.
Or your teen waltzes in the door to announce he has a girlfriend. You find yourself suppressing the desire to shout, “Oh, no, you don’t!” Then lock him in his room and call a private investigator to run a background check on the girl (but which one first?).
Leading others puts our hearts on the megaphone. Today, Janel explores how to deal with the real desires fueling your anger.
Challenge: Following your next conflict, start by admitting your contribution to the problem, even if you’re sure it’s only 5% of the conflict. We still need to own 100% of our portion, right?
Pro tip: We all deeply underestimate how much our sin affects others. Set an example by confessing the “log in your eye” to your kids (Matthew 7:5).
Session 5: Love Can’t Look Like This
You know what they don’t tell moms at baby showers?
“Welcome to a season where you will love someone more than you ever thought possible, and won’t even be able to get a shower when you want it. Have a piece of cake!” From the very beginning, so much of parenting is outside our control.
Conflict has this way of exposing what we want—what we really, really want. And like the rest of parenting, so often it’s way out of our grasp.
In this final video, Janel digs further beneath anger and into the beautiful opportunities we can find there.
Challenge: Right in the middle of your next conflict with your kids, tell them you need to step away for one minute. Take that minute for deep belly breathing, and ask God to show you what it could look like to respond as He would to your kids in this moment.