One of the things I enjoy about this blog is reading about the tribulations and joys of mothers of younger kids. Now that mine are all legal adults (25, 22, and 18), I must admit I do at times think: Oh, I remember those days. I also remember thinking in those days that once I was in these days, my kids would think rationally and act accordingly. Yeah, right.

To give them credit, they do think rationally and act accordingly a good portion of time. It throws me now and then, though, to be reminded that they are still governed by the “personality difficulties” they had as little kids. Why does that surprise me? I still battle with my own personality difficulties, yet at times, I expect to see my kids already having ironed out theirs.

My oldest son has always had an anger issue and always argued ad nauseam in an ever-seeking quest for fairness. His anger first developed when he was just shy of three and suddenly found out he was no longer going to be the center of mom’s and dad’s attention—something that didn’t seem fair to him. After his competition (his brother) was born, he had so many angry outbursts that we took him to a child psychologist who put me in a room with him, told me how to speak to him, and observed us interacting. Honestly, I don’t remember what we learned other than to say, “You are coloring with the red crayon,” when he was coloring with the red crayon. One of those lessons in how to be non-judgmental.

Much later, when he butted heads with his dad in stereotypical first son-father scenarios, he expressed his anger by putting his fist all the way through the sheetrock once and, more than once, actually going after his dad in hand-to-hand combat. Now that he is a grown up with a college degree, a real job, and a 401K, he still verbalizes his anger at things he finds unfair or things that frustrate him—like some computer program not operating correctly. His dad can still drive him to burst into flames when, for example, four of us are crammed into our Toyota Corolla driving four hours to Steamboat Springs and his dad keeps digging him to commit to planning his trip to Nepal in the exact manner his dad is describing. (Actually, it drove me crazy also.) After some yelling, my angry son feels everyone is ganging up on him and cannot, for anything in the world, stop himself from getting in the last angry word.

Later in that Steamboat weekend, when I had a quiet moment alone with my oldest son, I told him how hard it is for me to control my temper and how long it took me to realize how much energy it sucked away into elevated heart rates and pounding pulses. I told him I didn’t want him to go as long as I did to figure out how to take deep breathes and let things go (as much as possible). I told him that even though he tells us he is never “like this” with anyone but our family, he probably is—some of the time. And I even suggested that it may be one of the reasons the girls he meets aren’t staying interested (he really wants a steady girlfriend). I asked him to seriously consider taking an anger management course before he gets much older.

How convenient (and telling?) then that one of his buddies had just told him about a course that is “specifically designed to bring about positive and permanent shifts in the quality of your life”—including communicating and interacting more positively with people. I told him to go for it and that I’d pitch in $50 of the $150 cost. Then we started talking about a girl he met.

When we had that quiet moment, he was so rational and acted accordingly—just like he does most of the time. Who knows if the course will help; I just hope it will get him to think before he reacts so quickly.

Next time I’ll tell you about son number 2.

P. Carol Jones is the author of “Toward College Success: Is Your Teenager Ready, Willing, and Able?” All three of her kids gave her ample material for her book. You can read about it at www.pcaroljones.com or www.towardcollegesuccess.com.