Effective Anger Management

We have noticed that there are 3 things that affect Habtamu's anger level.

1. sleep (or lack thereof)
2. food (or lack thereof)

And the most important one:

3. poop.

There have been many a time when he will just be angry, upset, pissy, generally not fun to be around, and then he'll go poop, and voila! He is his usual goofy, happy self.

We have pointed this out to him on many occasions... pre-poop and post-poop.

The other day he was getting very upset with his Math. He likes math, and he knows how to do what he's working on, but he reverted to a 3 year old tantrum, and got up and left the table. He disappeared for awhile and I heard the toilet flush after about 10 minutes. He came back to the table smiling and said, "Hey, Mom! Do you know how I got rid of my anger? I POOPED it out!"

It's so hard to keep a straight face sometimes, but as a kid I hated being laughed at for (what to me were) revelations, so I said, "Did you POOP? And do you feel better?"

"Yes!" he said, relieved.

This story is for Jodi S., who caught me in church this morning and said, "You guys have to blog! I need a laugh!"