Ask Sam letter

Hello there,

Thank you for your message. You’ve been really brave to write to me and tell me a bit about how things are for you at the moment. It sounds like you’ve been dealing with a lot.

I can hear that you often get into fights with your mum and that you talk back to her and hit her back if she slaps you. It’s not OK that your mum slaps you. No one has the right to hurt you in any way, even if you are arguing with them. ChildLine would say that slapping you is a form of abuse. It might be helpful to have a look at the page on physical abuse in Explore. You deserve to be supported with what’s going on and you don’t have to deal with this alone.

You mentioned that you need help getting through your anger issues. I can hear that you get very angry at your mum and other people, and that you sometimes end up saying things that you don’t mean. Anger is an important emotion just like happiness and sadness. It’s OK to feel angry sometimes, and often anger can be there for very important reasons. However, anger causes problems when you loose control of how it makes you behave. The way you express your anger shouldn’t hurt you or the people around you.

It might be helpful to think about the kind of things that make you feel angry. Some people can have more control over their anger after they are able to work out what has triggered those feelings. Sometimes writing a journal about the things that are going on for you can be really helpful and powerful. It can be a safe way to express how you’re feeling and it can also be a way of recording the things that might be causing your anger. Young Minds have got some other good information on their website about healthy ways of dealing with anger.

You said that you want to find ways to communicate better with your mum. I think that is a really good thing to aim for. If you feel like you and mum understand each other better, you might find you get less angry with her. Perhaps you might like to try writing mum a letter? Writing things down instead of talking face to face can give you more time to think about what you would like to say.

It might be that you and mum find you need support from other people to get you talking more openly. This might be something you can talk about more with a Childline counsellor. You can speak to them about absolutely anything by calling the free helpline on 0800 1111 or you could log on for a 1-2-1 chat, which is a bit like instant messenger.

Well done for writing to me.

Take care,

Sam