Anger and Courage - Learning from Children’s Books Part 1

As an intuitive counselor in my fifties, working by creative expression, I was drawn to children’s books, and Molly Bang’s When Sophie Gets Angry—Really, Really Angry caught my attention, beginning with the cover of Sophie’s round, blue eyes staring out and the short line of her upside down mouth warning—I’m angry!

In my reading about anger, I’d discovered a cultural anthropologist whose definition of anger is that it is purposeful for only twenty minutes to identify a situation that needs attention. That was different from my experience and from what clients told me of feeling anger about certain situations for years. So I decided on different creative ways to teach that long term anger was neither necessary, nor justified, nor did it produce results, and in addition, it could hurt both the one speaking with anger and the one listening.

The book begins with Sophie, playing with her life-size, stuffed Gorilla until her sister grabs it. From another room, Sophie’s mother admonishes, “It is her turn now, Sophie.” Bang illustrates her book in bold colors that fill the double pages with Sophie’s imagination of what is happening as she smashes, roars, and explodes—with each word painted in big, bold strokes,

                                    SMASH, ROAR, EXPLODE,until PABAM—and an angry Sophie runs out the door and into the scattered trees. She runs and runs and starts to cry, until finally she is quiet. Sophie climbs a tall beech tree. She puts her arms around its smooth, wide, gray trunk. She feels the breeze through her hair. She watches the waves moving in the nearby inlet water. Sophie finds her way to comfort herself. Then she returns home where her family welcomes her.

I asked my clients to read aloud Bang’s book as an imaginative view of anger. Sitting in rocking chairs in a room filled with children’s toys and art materials, reading a children’s picture book seemed appropriate. I wanted each to feel Sophie’s anger then remember one’s own: to realize the mother’s voice is gentle but firm and question if the client now was spoken to that way—to picture Sophie in the tree looking at the water—and did the client have a special place to go for comfort?—but especially on the final page to learn that Sophie returns home to a welcome. There is no blame, no punishment, and no one makes her feel guilty or embarrassed. She sees only smiles and is happy. While the book ends here, the next step would be for Sophie’s mother to explain that at another time it could be Sophia’s turn with Gorilla and her sister who would have to give him up. And for my client, it would be to open to the courage to put a time limit on anger, to walk away from the precipitating situation, to go to a place of comfort and then with restored balance, return to re-focus.

My realization is, “An imaginative children’s story can show, in simplicity, a new way to behave with anger, not only for the child of the story, but also for an adult who has yet to learn its true purpose that it is a prompt for a situation of discomfort, but not the solution.”