The Explosive Child

I recently finished reading The Explosive Child: A New Approach for Understanding and Parenting Easily Frustrated, Chronically Inflexible Children. It was very interesting. I liked it for the most part, and definitely took away some helpful information. The premise of the book is that most "explosive children" are impaired in their ability to handle frustration adaptively and in their ability to be flexible. This is something I have noticed as a common thread for years among children at school who struggle with behavior. Maya also definitely struggles in both of those areas also. Dr. Greene spent time explaining the importance of identifying triggers, which everyone who has ever parented a toddler probably has done. According to him, and I would agree, most things that cause these children to have "explosions" or "meltdowns" or whatever you want to call them are quite predictable if you observe the patterns for any length of time. He describes these children as having a disability in the areas of flexibility and response to frustration in a similar way that someone might have a learning disability in reading or math. Dr. Greene also believes that children do well if they can. If they are not doing well, they are usually missing skills and abilities that they need in order to do well. Based on over ten years of experience with school-aged children, I would say that nine out of ten behavior problems are a result of missing skills, not having positive models, not knowing what to do, etc. It is true that most children want to fit in and be approved of and that few, if any, would choose to be explosive if they were capable of handling frustration and unexpected changes in their lives more adaptively. He talks about some of the reasons behind these problems such as sensory overload, difficulty empathizing and an inability to identify and/or label emotions. Dr. Greene goes into detail about how these skills can be modeled and taught. He advocates a plan he calls "plan B" in which there is empathetic dialogue between parents and children and they come to a mutually satisfactory solution to a problem that addresses both the concerns of the child and the parent. He encourages being proactive and coming up with solutions to problem situations before they arise so that everyone can talk about the problem calmly and make a plan to deal with it ahead of time in order to avoid explosions and meltdowns. Another thing I liked about the book was that Dr. Greene explains that the diagnosis of these children (ADHD, OCD, ODD, autistic, Asberger's, etc.) should not prevent us (teachers, parents, doctors, caregivers) from identifying skills that they need to learn (being more flexible, responding adaptively to frustration, etc.) and teaching them those skills.

Most of the things Dr. Greene discusses in the book are things that I have done to a varying degree over the years with students at school who have moderate to severe behavior problems. Even the empathy step alone goes a long way with these kids. They just want to know that you realize they are upset and can understand. These days with Maya, now that we have been able to identify triggers, understand sensory issues better and her language has improved enough to understand our explanations and for her to express most wants and needs, meltdowns happen far less frequently than they did even a year ago. We are able to be proactive and prevent a lot of them by being aware of possible triggers ahead of time and avoiding them or talking her through them ahead of time. Of course we do try to allow situations in which there is some frustration or need to be flexible when she is feeling good so that she can learn these skills. It has also been beneficial to help her label her emotions. This book had a lot of great ideas that I use/will use both personally and professionally. I think the biggest idea that I took away from the book was that children do well if they can, and if they aren't doing well, we need to figure out what is at the root of those behaviors, because they usually aren't acting out for nothing.