The Explosive Child

by Ross W. Greene, PhD

  And what are those conditions? Quite simply, when there are expectations they’re having difficulty meeting. If your child is having difficulty brushing his teeth before going to bed at night, that’s a time when he’s more likely to exhibit concerning behaviors. If he’s having no difficulty meeting that expectation, it won’t cause concerning behaviors. If your child is having difficulty getting started on or completing a particular homework assignment, that’s a time when he’s more likely to exhibit concerning behaviors. If he’s having no difficulty meeting that expectation, it won’t cause concerning behaviors.

  Why does your child exhibit concerning behaviors more often and, perhaps, in ways that are more extreme than many other kids? The answer to that question comes from the research that has accumulated over the past fifty years on kids with concerning behaviors: he’s lacking crucial skills.

  Wait, he’s lacking what?

  He’s lacking crucial skills. Kids who exhibit concerning behaviors are compromised in the global skills of flexibility, adaptability, frustration tolerance, emotion regulation, and problem solving. These are skills most of us take for granted. And most kids are blessed with sufficient levels of those skills. Your child was not so fortunate.

  He’s not lacking motivation? No, he’s not. But a lot of folks still think that. Why haven’t your efforts to motivate your child to behave more adaptively—with rewards and punishments—been successful? Because he isn’t unmotivated. If your kid could respond to problems and frustrations adaptively, he would. That’s because—and this is, without question, the most important theme of this entire book—kids do well if they can.

  So, he’s not exhibiting concerning behaviors on purpose? No. The kids about whom this book is written do not choose to exhibit concerning behaviors any more than a child would choose to have a reading disability. And, in fact, that is an apt comparison. Kids who are having difficulty reading are lacking the skills required for being proficient in reading. Kids who are having difficulty adaptively handling problems and frustrations are lacking the skills required for being proficient in handling problems and frustrations. A long time ago kids who had difficulty reading were referred to as lazy or stupid. Thankfully, that isn’t the case anymore. But, way too often, we’re still referring to kids with concerning behaviors in ways that are tragically inaccurate.

  And he’s not exhibiting concerning behaviors because he just wants his own way? We all want our own way, so that’s a nonstarter, too. Getting your own way adaptively requires some very important skills.

  The kids do well if they can philosophy is important for another reason. See, a different mentality—kids do well if they want to—has dominated adult thinking for a long time, and it is that very mentality that has caused many people to believe that poor motivation is the driving force behind concerning behaviors. But the research doesn’t tell us that your child is lacking motivation. Plus, if that mentality, and the strategies that go along with it, were serving you well, you wouldn’t be reading this book right now. There is no great risk in viewing things through different lenses.

  So, if you’re not focused on behaviors—rewarding the ones you like and punishing the ones you don’t like—how will your child’s behavior improve? By focusing instead on the expectations your child is having difficulty meeting. I’ll be referring to those unmet expectations as unsolved problems and, in this book, you’re going to learn how to solve them. Solving problems is a task ill-suited to time-outs, stickers, berating, lecturing, ignoring, taking away privileges, sending a child to his room, spanking, and a lot of other things caregivers do with the best of intentions. Once a problem is solved, it doesn’t cause concerning behavior anymore.

  You might be wondering how you ended up with a child who responds so poorly to problems and frustrations. What caused this? Was it nature or nurture? While it’s understandable that you’d be asking those questions, they won’t be a major focal point of this book. First, both nature and nurture are always implicated when it comes to a child’s development. And there are many aspects of nature and nurture that could have affected your child’s skills in the domains of flexibility, adaptability, frustration tolerance, emotion regulation, and problem solving. It could be the gene pool, the fact that your child was born two months prematurely, or perhaps exposure to substances in utero. It could also be a difficult temperament, trauma history, brain injury, or seizures. Without being dismissive of the potential impact of any of these factors, the reality is that we can’t establish the cause of your child’s concerning behaviors with great precision. But we can identify the skills your child is lacking and the expectations he is having difficulty meeting (you’ll learn how in the next two chapters). Those are things you can actually do something about.

  Does your child’s psychiatric diagnosis provide you with precise information about his lagging skills and unsolved problems? Not really. While diagnoses—such as ADHD, oppositional-defiant disorder, bipolar disorder, depression, autism spectrum disorder, reactive attachment disorder, disruptive mood dysregulation disorder—can be helpful in some ways (for example, they “validate” that there’s something different about your child, they might be necessary to qualify your child for special services, and they might be needed to convince your insurance carrier to pay for mental health services), they don’t provide you with information about your child’s specific lagging skills and unsolved problems. Diagnoses can also be counterproductive in that they imply that the problem resides solely within the child and that it’s the child who needs to be fixed. And, since diagnoses are simply categories containing lists of concerning behaviors, they may not be telling you anything about your child that you didn’t already know.

  But aren’t some concerning behaviors more severe than others? Yes, no doubt. Some kids—the lucky ones—cry, pout, sulk, whine, or withdraw when they’re struggling with problems and frustrations. They’re lucky because caregivers tend to respond to these less severe behaviors in ways that are more supportive, empathic, and nurturing. Other kids—the unlucky ones—scream, swear, hit, kick, bite, spit, destroy property, or worse. These behaviors are definitely more severe, and we adults tend to respond to them in ways that are far less empathic and far harsher and more punitive. But whether a child’s concerning behavior is lucky or unlucky, it’s communicating the exact same thing: I’m stuck . . . there’s an expectation I’m having difficulty meeting.

  Of course, if you’re the parent of a kid who is communicating that he’s having difficulty meeting expectations in ways that are unlucky, your life is definitely harder. But it’s going to stay harder if you’re still thinking that your child’s behavior is manipulative, attention-seeking, unmotivated, stubborn, willful, intransigent, bratty, spoiled, controlling, resistant, out of control, and defiant.

  So, we have some important things to figure out about your child. What skills is he lacking? The answer to that question will help you understand why your child is responding so poorly to problems and frustrations. What expectations is he having difficulty meeting? That’s going to help you know when your child exhibits concerning behaviors. If you identify those unsolved problems proactively, they become highly predictable. And if they’re highly predictable, they can be solved proactively rather than in the heat of the moment.

  * * *

  Well, in only a few pages, we just covered some really important territory. Here are the key points of this chapter:

  If your kid could be more flexible, handle frustration more adaptively, and solve problems more proficiently, he would, because kids do well if they can.

  Handling problems and frustrations adaptively requires important skills, ones your child is lacking. It is very important that you come to see your child through the prism of lagging skills rather than lagging motivation.

  Your child’s concerning behaviors—whether lucky or unlucky—are communicating that he is having difficulty meeting certain expectations.

  Those expectations—called unsolved problems�
�are predictable and can be identified and solved proactively.

  The problem-solving process you’ll be learning about in a few chapters will not only solve the problems that are causing your child’s concerning behaviors, but it will also reduce his concerning behavior and enhance the skills your child is lacking. And it will help you and your child become allies, not adversaries. Partners, not enemies.

  Hard to fathom? Understandable. When you’ve been thinking and parenting in a certain way for a long time, changing lenses and practices can take some doing. You’ll learn about these changes in the next few chapters.

  * * *

  Debbie knocked at the door of Jennifer’s bedroom, opening it very slightly. “Jennifer, I’m going to take a walk.”

  As expected, Jennifer was still watching a movie, wearing headphones. She didn’t acknowledge Debbie’s announcement.

  Debbie opened the door a bit farther—a high-risk move—and raised her voice (another high-risk move). “I’m taking a walk,” she said loudly.

  Jennifer looked annoyed, paused her movie, and removed one headphone. “Why do you always scream at me?” she groused. But Debbie could sense that, at the moment, the level of agitation wasn’t extreme.

  “I wasn’t screaming. I didn’t know if you heard me.”

  “I heard you. Can I go to the store later? I need a new pair of rain boots. Mine are too small.”

  “We can try to do that later, yes,” said Debbie.

  Ambiguity was not Jennifer’s strong suit. “Well, can we or can’t we?”

  “I think we can, but I need to find out what Dad and Riley are doing before I say yes for sure.”

  “I need rain boots!” Jennifer intoned.

  “I know that, Jennifer. I’ll do my best.”

  This response was no less ambiguous, but Jennifer was distracted by her movie and the fuse didn’t light. Debbie was tempted to ask Jennifer what movie she was watching but decided instead on a quick escape.

  Once outside, Debbie called her friend Sandra. They’d met in a support group a few years back and had talked almost daily since. They often laughed about their unlikely friendship and the fact that they’d come from “different sides of the tracks.” Debbie came from a solidly middle-class background, graduated from college, married her high school sweetheart, and had been primed to have the model family (until Jennifer put the kibosh on that game plan). Sandra came from harder circumstances. She was born to a teenage mom whose pregnancy did not interrupt her drug use, never knew her biological father, lived with different relatives at various points of childhood and adolescence, was roughed up on several occasions by her mother’s boyfriends, ran away and lived on the streets a few times, became pregnant with Frankie when she was sixteen years old, got her GED at age twenty, and now worked as an aide at a nursing home.

  Their common bond was the concerning behavior of their children. Frankie, now thirteen, had episodes that were more severe than Jennifer’s and had experienced the “outer edges” of treatment for kids with concerning behaviors (he’d already had multiple placements on inpatient psychiatry units and was in a special education program for kids with emotional and behavioral challenges).

  “Hey,” Debbie said when Sandra answered. “Do you have a minute?”

  “Sure. Just hanging out with Frankie,” Sandra said. “He has that bug going around.”

  “I’m sorry, I’ll let you go.”

  “No, no, he’s on the couch watching TV. He’s actually rather pleasant when he’s sick. Kinda pathetic actually. Makes me wish he was sick all the time.”

  “You’re funny. I feel the same way about Jennifer sometimes. It’s the only time she lets me mother her.”

  “So, what’s up?”

  Debbie thought it was a little twisted that she looked forward to telling Sandra about Jennifer’s latest blow-up—and to hearing Sandra’s stories as well—but it made her feel less alone.

  “If you can believe it, we had a blowout over waffles this morning.”

  “Waffles? Why?”

  “Well, Jennifer decided that she had the monopoly on the family waffles, and went a little wacko when Riley decided he wanted waffles, too.”

  “Oh my. Was it ugly?”

  “A lot less ugly than it could’ve been. It’s actually sorta comical, now that I’m thinking about it . . . watching her stalk off to her room to protect her waffles. Although Riley and I didn’t think it was funny at the time. Poor kid.”

  “That’s why I’m glad I don’t have any kids besides Frankie. No one has to suffer besides me.”

  “I feel bad for Riley,” said Debbie. “He’s gotten a raw deal in the sibling department. But it’s nice to have one child who’s well-behaved . . . it helps me know I’m actually capable of raising a well-behaved kid.”

  “Yeah, well, I’m stuck with just my one out-of-control kid. I’m the stereotypical bad single mom. Just ask his teachers.”

  “I think you deserve a medal for what you’ve been through with that kid.”

  “You showing up at my awards ceremony?”

  “I think all parents of challenging kids deserve an award,” said Debbie. “Not just for what we live with . . . but for tolerating what people say about us!”

  “Did you tell Kevin about the waffle episode?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Did he lose it?”

  “Not this time.”

  “Are you going to tell Jennifer’s therapist about it?”

  “I already emailed her, but I doubt she’ll give me much guidance on what to do. She never does. She just meets with Jennifer and they talk about whatever they talk about and I’m left wondering what I’m supposed to do when she goes nuts and my other kid is petrified and my husband loses his mind. Jennifer doesn’t even want to go see her anymore. The only reason I make her go is because I need to feel like I’m doing something. Otherwise I’d be doing nothing.”

  3

  Lagging Skills

  You already know what concerning behaviors your child exhibits. You may also know what diagnoses have been applied to your child based on those behaviors. And you may have spent some meaningful time contemplating (and maybe even agonizing over) the potential factors that caused those behaviors.

  We’re not going to be talking about any of those things for the remainder of this book. In this chapter and the next, we’re going to focus instead on the information that’s been missing: lagging skills and unsolved problems.

  Identifying your child’s lagging skills will help you achieve a much better understanding of why she responds so poorly to problems and frustrations. It will also help you take your child’s concerning behaviors less personally, respond to your child with greater compassion, and better anticipate situations in which she is likely to run into difficulty. And when you identify the expectations your child is having difficulty meeting—again, those unmet expectations are called unsolved problems—you’ll know exactly what problems need to be solved to reduce the likelihood of concerning behaviors. This chapter focuses on identifying your child’s lagging skills. In the next chapter, we’ll turn our attention to unsolved problems.

  Below is the instrument we’ll be using to identify both. It’s called the Assessment of Lagging Skills & Unsolved Problems (ALSUP), and you can find it in an editable/fillable version on the website of the nonprofit I founded, Lives in the Balance (www.livesinthebalance.org).

  Your first task in completing this instrument is to check off the lagging skills that seem to apply to your child. No need to obsess over whether to check off a particular lagging skill. If a lagging skill seems to apply to your child, check it off.

  For many parents, those lagging skills represent new information. That new information can cause some parents to feel guilty that they weren’t aware of something very important about their child. They may also feel regret about the adversarial interactions they’ve had with the child, driven by inaccurate beliefs about the child’s behavior. They wonder why none of the mental healt
h professionals they’ve consulted told them about lagging skills and unsolved problems (the reason is probably that the training these professionals received took them in a different direction). And they wonder if it’s too late to turn things around and whether their relationship with their child is irretrievably broken.

  It’s not too late to turn things around, and your relationship with your child is not irretrievably broken.

  Some parents feel overwhelmed by the sheer number of lagging skills they’ve checked off for their child. But those lagging skills have been there all along; good that you now know what they are.

  Other parents feel that lagging skills are too negative. Those lagging skills don’t diminish your child’s many positive attributes, but they do explain why your child has been responding to problems and frustrations so maladaptively. And, compared to many of the other things that have been said about your child, perhaps accurate is more apt.

  Some caregivers wonder how they’re going to teach all of those lagging skills. Well, you don’t actually need to teach most of them, not explicitly anyway. Those skills will be enhanced by solving problems in the ways you’ll soon learn. The primary goal of identifying lagging skills is to ensure that you have the right lenses on. Your child is lacking skills, not motivation.

  Just to make sure those new lenses are helping you see things as clearly as possible, let’s take some time to think more about how some specific lagging skills would make it difficult for your child to respond to problems and frustrations adaptively. No need to be exhaustive here; just a sampling.