Making Sense of Aggression Preview Video

0:01 When a child attacks, if we see it as anger, it occurs to us that that child perceives  an injustice, that they've been mistreated. So we ask, “Why did you hit your sister?” The child doesn't really know why,  but they have to make up some reason or they say “I don't know” or they  say “My sister took away my toys.” They come up with some story of not fair. Now as soon as you get a story  of not fair, you're caught.

0:29 Now you've got to get the story from the sister  and sure enough, you find it's a different story. Now you're caught again, now  you've got to make a judgment. Once you've decided whose story is right, you  act as jury, and you make out the sentence, and what a long laborious process  that hardly ever goes well. And this is where most people are doing it. They are trying to hunt anger down  and it's not an anger problem.

0:58 What moves us to attack is  the emotion of frustration. Frustration is simply the  experience of what doesn't work. It may be the back that doesn't  work, scissors that don't work, it can be the communication that doesn't work. We thought that children acted to get results  and that's called the instrumental theory. It was thought that you could control  aggression by its consequences. That has not worked and it never will work.

1:31 We all know now that it's an emotional problem. We are moved to attack. We attack because something has not  worked, not to make something work. If we see a child being angry, it will be a different interaction than  if we see a child being frustrated. It is a completely different emotion. Anger is evoked by perceived injustice. Frustration is evoked simply  by something not working. Anger involves cerebral cortex activity.

2:02 Frustration is a root emotion  that can exist without being felt. In fact, it most often exists without being felt. None of the kids that I was working with, with  aggression problems, knew they were frustrated. And so it came out of nowhere, it seemed,  to other people, and it confused them. Anger triggers impulses to seek justice. Frustration is very primitive,  impulses simply to attack. You feel like biting somebody's  head off, smashing something, kicking something, hitting something, but  it can be because your back doesn't work.

2:39 It's not necessarily anybody's fault. You're never angry without also being frustrated, because you wouldn't be angry unless  something is not working for you. But you can be frustrated  without ever being angry. If you start from here and you realize why  did the child hit his sister? Because he was frustrated! Something wasn't working for him,  is he likely to know what's not working for him? Nah, it's a primitive deep emotion  involving very little consciousness.

3:12 You probably know more what didn't work for him. Maybe he hasn't eaten yet and  he has to have his stomach full. Maybe he's in pain, in physical pain. Maybe Daddy's been gone too long  and he can't handle the separation. Will he know it? Not a chance. When you care about children and you  perceive that, when they've attacked, no matter what the attack is – a tantrum, suicidal inclination – when you see that child  is frustrated, it draws your heart out to them.

3:42 “Oh my goodness, something's not working for you.” You may not know what. It may be a big thing, it may be a little thing, it may be cumulative, but you know  something isn't working for them. We can grant anybody the right to be frustrated,  because we know frustration is existential. That means to be alive is to be frustrated. Now we might not like the way the frustration is  being expressed, but we know two things already.

4:14 It is normal to be frustrated, and we  can grant the right to be frustrated. That frustration needs to  come out, but not this way.