When Your Child Loses Control: A Calm, Play-Based Guide to Aggressive Behavior

If your child hits, bites, throws things, or explodes over small limits, this guide is for you.

When Your Child Loses Control helps parents understand aggressive behavior not as “badness,” but as a nervous system problem showing up under stress. Instead of punishment charts or lectures that don’t work in the moment, Dr. Mark Bowers offers a calm, play-based approach focused on safety, connection, and skill-building.

This guide walks you through what’s happening in your child’s brain during meltdowns, how aggression escalates, and where parents actually have leverage. You’ll learn how to spot early warning signs, prevent blowups when possible, and respond clearly and firmly when they happen without adding fear or shame.

Inside, you’ll find:

• Simple explanations of why aggression spikes at home and during transitions

• Clear safety plans and non-negotiable boundaries that don’t rely on threats

• Exact scripts to use during hitting, biting, yelling, throwing, and destruction

• Play-based strategies that help kids release control and reset their bodies

• Repair conversations that teach skills after the storm, not during it

• Guidance tailored for neurodivergent children, anxiety-driven aggression, and overwhelmed nervous systems

This is not a theory-heavy book or a demand to stay perfectly calm. It’s a realistic, step-by-step guide that assumes you’re human, your child is struggling, and things will sometimes get messy.

If you’re exhausted, worried, and searching for something that actually helps in real life, this guide gives you a plan you can return to again and again.  42 Pages.