What Causes Anger Outbursts in Kids? The Top 2 Reasons

This article is an excerpt from the Shortform book guide to "The Explosive Child" by Ross Greene. Shortform has the world's best summaries and analyses of books you should be reading.

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Does your child get angry quickly? What causes anger outbursts in young children?

There’s a belief that outbursts come from manipulative children and medical diagnoses, but that’s actually not correct. That’s why The Explosive Child by Ross Greene helps you discover the cause of your child’s behavioral issues so you can work together to address them.

Continue reading to learn what causes anger outbursts in children so you can start overcoming them.

The Cause of Anger Outbursts

If not from manipulative children or diagnoses, then what causes anger outbursts? Greene explains that there are two reasons behind outbursts: a practical challenge and a lack of the executive skill needed to meet that challenge.

1) A Practical Challenge

The first component of an anger outburst is simple: A child has trouble with something practical, like doing a specific task or following a specific rule. All people, children and adults alike, face practical challenges throughout their lives for any number of different reasons. For example, Liz has great difficulty getting out of bed in the morning.

(Shortform note: Not all outbursts are rooted in specific tasks or challenges—some are caused by a physical response to overstimulation. These meltdowns are particularly common in children on the autism spectrum, and while they may seem similar to other outbursts—involving a child shutting down or lashing out—they are based on the body becoming overwhelmed instead of on emotions. Resolving meltdowns therefore requires getting a child away from the overwhelming stimuli rather than addressing practical challenges.)

2) A Lacking Executive Skill

A practical challenge alone isn’t enough to cause an outburst, however. A child must also lack an important executive skill: skills crucial for self-control and functioning in everyday life—like patience, emotional management, or flexibility. Most people can use these skills to cope with practical challenges productively—they could persevere in spite of their struggle, take a break to calm down, or try using a different approach, for example.

On the other hand, a child who lacks executive skills might not know how to approach a practical challenge and might be unable to communicate this to their parents. When their parents then tell them to complete these challenges, the child will get frustrated with their inability to do anything and have an outburst. Meanwhile, since the child can’t communicate what they’re going through, their outburst might look like willful disobedience to an outside observer. While all children sometimes experience this frustration, an “explosive child” struggles with more executive skills and therefore has more outbursts.

For example, Liz’s brother Bobby has trouble getting out of bed in the morning but also has the executive skills to express his needs and solve problems ahead of time. He asks his parents for a space heater so his room isn’t cold and then has an easier time getting up. Liz, on the other hand, struggles with these same executive skills. So when her parents tell her she has to get up, she feels like she can’t, is unable to explain that to her parents, and has trouble managing how frustrated that makes her—all of which lead her to have an outburst.

Executive Function

While Greene refers to the abilities listed above as “life skills,” we’ve chosen to call them executive skills because they closely correlate with executive function: a set of mental processes used in self-management and decision-making first theorized by psychologists in the 1970s. Executive function includes skills in three main categories:

Planning and organization: The ability to break down tasks into individual steps. Skills in this category include problem-solving, setting and prioritizing goals, and time management.

Focus and memory: The ability to manage what you’re paying attention to in the moment. Skills in this category include starting or changing tasks without procrastinating, keeping multiple pieces of information in mind, and flexibility.

Self-control and self-awareness: The ability to understand and manage your thoughts and feelings. Skills in this category include impulse control, emotional management, and self-reflection.

What Causes Anger Outbursts in Kids? The Top 2 Reasons