The facilitator explains to children that one way to reduce conflict and aggression in our daily lives is to strengthen our ability to recognise the rising tension in some situations. The participants are encouraged to think of such situations that can lead to tension, and, in some cases, violence. If the group members are hesitant and do not enter the discussion, the facilitator can start with a personal example and then the list can be expanded with the examples the participants come up with. After the completion of this part of the activity, we can proceed to a group discussion asking participants to complete the sentence:

“We can expect trouble when…”

Possible answers could be:

“When we are stressed about an event that is about to happen, when we have not prepared for something that is happening, when our personal space is invaded or violated, when someone we love is in trouble” and so on.

Following this, participants choose a problematic situation from the list created and try to imagine with more details how the person involved reacted.

The questions guiding our discussion are:

• What signs can tell us if a person is angry? What do our bodies do when we are angry?

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• If we notice some of these signs in ourselves or the other(s) early on, is there anything we can do to avoid the escalation of the situation?
• If so, what could that be?

Participants, if they so wish, can also draw the signs of anger or physically represent them.