From the author: To love aggression? Childhood aggression is very tiring, inconvenient, can cause pain, causes retaliatory anger (which you also don’t want to face) and often shame if there are witnesses. This is the animalistic part of a child’s behavior, which animals need and our ancestors needed in order to survive, protect themselves from predators and hunt. Our brain has not changed much since then - only 65 thousand years have passed, a “second” by evolutionary standards. When I hear my daughter growl, it seems to me that a wild animal is growling inside her. Although it’s not easy for me to cope with my feelings at this moment, I admire her. Yes, my daughter doesn’t like some circumstance and she is ready to fight for it to become exactly the way she wants. Personally, I miss this. Many of my clients lack the ability to openly express their needs, say what they don’t like, defend their interests, withstand retaliatory pressure and negotiate a compromise. To want, which is often also problematic, and to do it. Aggression is suppressed, and along with it the willingness to actively act and defend oneself has gone. When we want to have a calm child who is friendly with everyone and accepts everything, we want to have our ethereal fantasy in the flesh. The child has energy - the energy of desire and selfhood. He is not our plan or a puppet. In early childhood, he is still ready to express himself freely and fight for HIMSELF. When a child is faced with the fact that the only way to be accepted in the adult world is to be a non-objecting, submissive being, he refuses energy and is deprived of access to it. You have to put on a mask and refuse to openly express your Self. The fear of rejection and shame for “unacceptable” actions outweighs. This is the price he pays to be accepted. Yes, you say, but a child causes harm to other people when he takes out aggression on others and invades other people’s boundaries. - This is fixable. Recognizing the child’s right to defend himself, help him cope with the situation in which the aggression arose. The child had to attack because he doesn’t know how else to cope with the situation. You can broadcast with your behavior and words: “I know, you weren’t fighting in an empty place, you were extremely annoyed by something, I know. Let me help you figure it out.” By denying a child aggression and struggle, we deprive him of protection, disarm him, without giving anything in return. Along with aggressive reactions, we “throw out the water with the baby.” We turn away, we don’t accept his “ruffy”, “uncombed”, but very necessary for life, part. The child needs this energy in order to find inner support, so that in the end he can gradually break away from US and set out on his own voyage. Then the question arises, do we want this, or is it important for us to keep the child under our control for as long as possible? Hearing what our child is fighting for, splashing out in aggression, is not an easy task, because at this moment we ourselves are overwhelmed with emotions - anger, irritation , shame. After all, the child opposes us and the rules of which we are the guides. Most often, he fights for himself, for his place in the sun and for love. If you can give it, give it, if not, sympathize. Sympathize with your little ones, who once had to completely submit, and now look for paths to themselves. “How to help a child live, and not suppress or alienate his aggression?” - read the continuation of the article. Elena Dotsenko, psychologist, child psychologist, gestalt therapist #psy_lenado, vk.com/lenado, Illustration by Steven Lefcourt. You can sign up for an online consultation with me here. Reproduction of articles on the Internet is permitted with attribution and a link to the site where the article was published.