How Come My Young Daughter Is So Angry?

It sounds like she need to learn a little more on how to "talk" about her frustrations. Causing physical pain to herself is to relieve the pain she has inside. I'd concentrate on giving her the verbal skills to talk about what's bothering her and other physical ways to de-stress herself. She's at a good age for piano lessons. My son would blaze away on the piano when he was mad or nervous.... it was very cute to watch.... and he's a great piano player as an adult :)

I agree with Grandma T. She does need to have appropriate outlets for her feelings, and also how to express her feelings verbally.

My younger daughter had some complex medical issues that used to affect brain function (referred to as "severe mental illness" (http://www.ItsNotMental.com). Expressive Arts Therapy helped her learn to express feelings that no child should have to have nor express.

And music helped. OMG - she would play angry. She would play joy. She would play contentment and play fear. But as she said about the violin, she could not play her screams because she'd break all the strings.

And art as well. She would express herself in play, and art, and creativity.

And verbally. She learned insight.

It really helped her cope with these intense, and horrible feelings without self-destructing. I used to say that for someone with "mental" illness (not) she had more mental HEALTH than most people I know.

It's important for children to know that feelings are OK. It is also as important for them to learn what feelings mean, to put a name on that feeling. Have her identify pictures of people with various expression on their faces. What are they feeling? Why might they be feeling this? What can we do when we feel certain feelings and what can we do when we identify these feelings in others?

Learning to calm yourself down is an important skill for all of us, but if learned early in life, it can take a lot of stress of growing up and growing old. Teach her to Stop and Think. Have her ask herself how her body feels (are her jaws clenched, hands in a fist, ears burning) let her describe, let her talk her way through this. It gives her control and builds the skill. After acknowledging how she feels and how it looks, have her take deep breaths (pretend she is smelling a lovely bowl of soup, inhale and exhale), count backward slowly, think calming thoughts, or talk to herself. Any or all of these can be calming.

Once she is calm, have her figure out what it was that made her upset. How can she solve this problem? Will the solution work for her and the others involved? Is it safe? Is it fair? How will others feel about it? Will it work? If not, then brainstorm another solution until you and she come up with one that will work for everyone. This teaches compromise and problem solving.

She will feel much better knowing that she is having normal feelings and that she can figure out a way to get through them and problem solve.

Well I would agree that it sounds like she needs better anger management techniques. These behaviors could turn into something much worse if she doesn't learn now how to control her anger. Is she in school yet? Maybe talk to her classroom teacher or school counselor. If she's not in school then when she gets angry slowly start introducing her to new techniques to control her anger, things like counting, going to her room for a few minutes, writing in a journal, etc. She needs to understand that it's okay to be angry but it isn't okay to hurt herself or others.

Sometimes at that age they just don't know how to put all those bundled up feelings into words. Just work with her on finding ways to stay calm and being able to use her words. Also other ways to get frustrations out that won't harm her. Sometimes just yelling into a pillow or hitting a pillow works. Then she can move on from there to try to put it into words. Takes time, but will work out.