Tips for dealing with aggressive foster children

It’s not uncommon for foster children to display aggressive behaviour. This can be due to many reasons, such as feelings of inadequacy, low confidence, previous trauma, lack of emotional support from earlier caregivers or sleep deprivation. With that in mind, there are techniques you can use to help manage your foster child’s aggressive behaviour:

Reward good behaviour

Rewarding good behaviour, rather than bad behaviour,  is a much better approach. You can reward your foster child in various ways, from positive words of encouragement to treating them to a day out and doing something they enjoy.

Remain calm and confident 

By remaining consistently calm and confident, you are likely to help your foster child develop the skills to regulate their own emotions. By modelling calm behaviour, you set a positive example for your foster child to follow.

Communication skills training 

Some foster children may lack the communication skills needed to express their thoughts and feelings. Without the willingness or ability to communicate what’s troubling them, they are likely to suppress their emotions and instead express them through their behaviour.

Teaching them how to express their thoughts and how they relate to certain feelings, whilst also encouraging vulnerability can reduce the likelihood of aggressive or explosive behaviour in the future.

When communicating, ask questions to help uncover the root cause of their distress. If you find it’s the same recurring issue which is causing aggressive behaviour,  you may need to raise it with your supervising social worker or seek help from a therapist to address the underlying problem.

Self-awareness

Your foster child will likely model their behaviour on yours in some way. For this reason, it is important to remain self-aware and lead by example. Such behaviours include:

• Maintain an optimistic attitude. When presented with problems or concerns from your foster child, demonstrate that you’ve listened and understood them before offering a solution.
• Stay calm and collected.
• Show understanding and compassion.
• Manage your emotions and maintain composure in stressful situations.

Regular exercise 

Physical activity directly impacts our mental health and well-being by reducing stress and anxiety, improving mood, and providing a space for expressing emotions. By encouraging your foster child to take up a sport or an activity that involves physical exercise like running, they’ll gain confidence and improve their sleep quality. They’ll also develop discipline. Together, all of these qualities contribute to better control over their emotions. Here are some examples of physical activities you can encourage your foster child to try undertaking:

• Hiking
• Team sports like football, rugby or basketball
• Tennis
• Cycling
• Gymnastics
• Swimming
• Climbing

Other ways of dealing with aggressive behaviour

By using techniques that cooperatively help your foster child understand themselves, they’ll better recognise the underlying issue or issues of their aggressive behaviour. You can then help further by equipping them with coping strategies.

This may eventually stop the behaviour or reduce the frequency of the outbursts once the child understands they’re in a safe environment. Aggressive behaviour in foster children can also be managed using these other techniques:

• Anger management techniques – Teach your foster child anger management techniques like deep breathing exercises, counting slowly to ten, positive self-talk and drawing their emotions.
• Calming activities – Activities like painting, fishing, meditating, spending time in nature, and reading, have been shown to help children feel calmer and more relaxed.
• Problem-solving activities – With your foster child, engage in a problem-solving activity like a puzzle, board game or solving a murder mystery to help manage their aggressive behaviour.