Pack lunch or buy it? Headband or hairclip? Tell the truth or
spare her feelings with a little white lie? Every day, kids face
dozens of choices, from the ordinary to the complicated. One of
the most important decisions a young person makes each day has
to do with how he handles angry feelings. Anger is a basic,
spontaneous, temporary internalized feeling, usually triggered
by frustration and experienced as an unpleasant state (Long,
Long & Whitson, 2008). It comes and goes in all of our lives and
can be experienced as mild, medium, and intense. While anger is
a universal of the human experience, its expression is diverse.
Consider these four basic choices Leslie can makes to express
her anger at being excluded: Leslie brings her Chinese jump rope
outside during school recess. She invites a group of classmates
to play. The kids quickly organize the order in which each
person will jump. When play begins, Leslie soon realizes that
she is left out of the line and is stuck holding the rope the
whole time. She is