by Corky von Texasheim

Created on: June 20, 2008   Last Updated: November 17, 2010

You should beat them, of course. After all, as my parents told me, "emotions are for ethnic people." I try to raise my children to be Stepford-esque automotons, showing as little emotion as possible. We DON'T want the neighborhood talking about MY little Tiffani and Justyn.

And of course, the previous paragraph is absolute poppycock. No more would I name a child a trendy name with a misplaced or strangely missing "y" (which seems to be a theme in American child naming lately) than believe that expressing emotions is a bad thing.

There is nothing wrong with expressing any emotion, with anger being among those set of things handed down to us over six million years of our evolution as a species. However, teaching our children to express any emotion, including anger, appropriately, is key to making sure little Tiffani or Justyn doesn't grow up to be the next Aileen Wuornos or Ted Bundy.

And the best way to teach any child is by adamantly NOT implementing the old adage of "do as I say, not as I do." We teach by example. Invariably, whenever there's a public "scene" either at a shopping mall or a high school graduation party involving "the child everyone stares at," if one listens closely we realize that the parents with this child are the ones being inappropriate.

For example, yelling at a child at a McDonald's in front of 100 other hungry customers eagerly awaiting a cholesterol filled, high calorie, cheesy treat will of course result in anger on anyone's part, no matter their chronological age. How would or should one feel when someone twice or three times their size is screaming at us to "make up your mind" or "stop fiddling with your shoe." Does the indecision involving the McNugget-Kiddieburger dilemma or the fascination with one's shoelaces REALLY warrant public embarrassment? Use some perspective.

Anger begets anger, and an angry parent will make an angry child. A parent inappropriately expressing anger, especially if frequent and/or inconsistently, will result in a more angry child who in turn will also express anger frequently and/or inconsistently.

I also find that many times perception or misperception about a child's emotional state, especially if the child is showing "a 'tude," makes a parent angry unnecessarily, and then feeding to an already stressful situation many a time.

I once sat in a small hospital emergency room in Vermillion, South Dakota, with a migraine from hell. A 13 or 14-year-old girl was in the same waiting room, ice pack being held

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