Every week I teach social-skills lessons to children in kindergarten through sixth grade. I title one of my favorite lessons, “Anger Buckets.” In it I teach the children that they have an anger bucket inside of them, just like they have a heart, liver, and kidneys. They are amazed and we have fun learning about this unheard of body part. But all kidding aside, a visual image of a bucket that can be filled and emptied by things that happen to us each day and by our responses to these things, help us to realize how our emotions work.
In actuality, I see people having two buckets, one an “anger bucket,” and the other a “happiness bucket.” When our anger buckets get too full, we erupt like a volcano and spew our anger out onto others. When our happiness buckets get full, we overflow with the ability to care for and accept ourselves and others. There is a lot of “psycho-babble” out there on the topic of what “makes” people happy or angry, and it can become confusing. Therefore, I thought it might be more helpful and fun to ask some of the kids in my groups to tell me things that their parents could do that would fill their happiness buckets and/or empty their anger buckets. These are some of the answers I received. I hope you enjoy them as much as I did.
· “Play baseball with me”
· “Watch movies with me”
· “My mom and dad could make me happy by talking to get all of my anger out”
· “Take me to a lake”
· “Take time off work early to pick me up”
· “Take me to the park so we could fly a kite”
· “My mom gave me a hug”
· “My dad took me to the mountains”
· “My mom would take me to work with her”
· “Playing sports for an hour or two”
· “Go to the library”
· “Eating together”
· “They can hug me and we can read with each other!!!”
· “build snowmans”
· “taking me on a walk”
· “play some games with me”
· “tell me ghost stories”
· “I like it when you play Checkers with me.”
· “My mom plays a game that’s called “Capture Mom” and we chase our mom. When we find her she scares us and we get away.”
· “I like to go anywhere with my mom, just by myself.”
**I have left these answers as close as possible to the children’s wording.