Summary/Review of “The Explosive Child” by Ross W. Greene, Ph.D

The Explosive Child written by Dr. Ross W. Greene, Ph.D

Chapter 1 The Waffle Episode

This is a case study of a child.

1. Explosive children have wonderful qualities and tremendous potential. In most ways, their general cognitive skills have developed at a normal pace. Yet their inflexibility and poor tolerance for frustration often obscure their more positive traits and cause them and those around them enormous pain. There is no other group of children who are so misunderstood.

2.) Explosive children often require a different approach to discipline and limit setting than other children. Dealing more effectively with explosive children requires, first and foremost, an understanding of why these children behave the way they do. Once this understanding is achieved, strategies for helping things improve often become self — evident. In some instances, achieving a more accurate understanding of a child’s difficulties can, by itself, lead to improvements in adult — child interactions, even before any formal strategies are tried.

Chapter 2 Children Do Well If They Can

1. Skills may lag because of a child’s lack of exposure to the material.
2. More commonly, children have difficulty learning a particular skill even though they have the desire to master the skill and have been provided with the instruction typically needed to master it. It’s not that they don’t want to learn; it’s simply that they are not learning as readily as expected.
3. Children’s skills develop unevenly in math, reading and physical skills.
4. Explosive children lag behind in acquiring skills in flexibility and frustration tolerance.
5. Explosive children do not choose to be explosive in the same way that children who have reading and mathematical difficulties do not choose to do so.
6. The interpretation of the child’s explosive behavior will be linked to how you try and change the behavior.
7. Explosive behavior reflects a developmental delay — a learning disability in the skills of flexibility and frustration tolerance.
8. Putting a lot of energy into teaching an explosive child “who’s boss” may be counterproductive since the child is already motivated and knows who’s boss.
9. You need to have the proper philosophy: If the child could do well, he would do well.
10. The problem is that a very different philosophy (children do well if they want to) — often guides adults’ thinking in their interactions with explosive children. Adherents to this idea believe children are already capable of behaving more appropriately but simply don’t want to.
11. An explosive outburst — like other forms of maladaptive behavior — occurs when the cognitive demands being placed upon a person outstrip that person’s capacity to respond adaptively. An explosion can be defined as a “neural hijacking”. When a person is in the midst of an explosion, there’s “nobody home.”

Chapter 3 Pathways and Triggers

1. Need to understand what makes it hard for the child to ‘do well’ keeping in mind that children ‘do well if they can.’
2. Pathways represent skills that need to be trained and are explanations and not excuses for the behavior.
3. Inept parenting and poor discipline are not the reasons your child is lacking skills in the domains of flexibility and frustration tolerance.
4. If you’re able to pinpoint lacking thinking skills that are contributing to the child’s difficulties, it’s unlikely that you will continue explaining the behavior as attention — seeking, manipulative, or unmotivated.
5. Identifying the child’s pathways will help to make explosions more predictable.
6. If you know the thinking skills the child is lacking, you’ll know exactly the thinking skills that need to be taught.

Each pathway sets the stage for explaining specific thinking skills.

1. Executive Skills

2. Language Processing Skills

3. Emotion Regulation Skills

4. Cognitive Flexibility Skills

5. Social Skills

Although rewards and punishments can and may have a place, they do not train the child in the above skills.

Executive Skills

Shifting cognitive set (Shifting from one mindset to another e.g. moving from one environment (recess) to a completely different environment (e.g. reading). This requires a shift from one mindset to another p. 25–26

Organisation and Planning. Explosive children are unable to identify the problem that frustrates them which leads them to saying ‘no’.

Thinking clearly and problem solving is easier if a person has capacity to separate or detach themselves from emotions cause by the frustration.

Language Processing Skills

Explosive children lack basic vocabulary for expressing and categorizing feelings. This leads to swearing and other inappropriate language.

Language enables people to solve problems

Emotional Regulation Skills p.55

Some children experience irritability, agitation, crankiness and fatigued mood more often and more intensely that others. This leads to an increase in difficulty to cope with frustration tolerance and flexibility. This may be caused by brain chemistry.

Explosiveness can be fueled by a chronic state of irritability and agitation. Anxiety can be added to the list that leads to irrational thought.

Cognitive Flexibility Skills.

Explosive children are black and white thinkers stuck in a grey world.

A lack of cognitive flexibility skills lead to difficulties in approaching the world in a flexible and adaptable way.

They struggle when events are not predictable.

They have difficulties seeing the ‘big picture’.

Adults around these children need to be flexible.

Social Skills

1. Explosive children have difficulty in attending to social cues and nuances and connecting cues to past experiences.
2. When we think in terms of Pathways being explanations, the door opens to the process of thinking about how to help the child.

Triggers p 47

Triggers are a situation or event that routinely precipitates explosive outbursts.

Tiggers are problems that have yet to be solved.

Pathways set the stage for a child to be explosive. Triggers are situations or events over which the child is exploding.

Chapter 4 Pathways and Triggers brought to Life (case studies)

(Nothing to report)

Chapter 5 The truth about consequences

1. Standard behavior management approaches assume that the child has learned.
2. Standard behavior management may help but some find they don’t help the child to change his behavior and can lead to an increase in explosive behavior.
3. Rewards and punishments do not teach skills.
4. p. 77 lists 1–6 of what are viewed as ‘good parenting skills’. These approaches may help but may not.
5. Psychology and psychiatry are imprecise sciences, and different mental health professionals have different theories and interpretations of explosive behavior in children.
6. Children may exhibit poor behavior for any variety of reasons, so there’s no right or wrong way to explain t and no one-size-fits-all approach to changing it.
7. The key is to find explanations and interventions that are well matched to the individual and their family.
8. Reward and punishment programs don’t teach the skills of flexibility and frustration tolerance. Getting punished or not receiving rewards makes kids more frustrated, not less.
9. Being inflexible yourself doesn’t help your child to be more flexible. Here’s a simple equation to summarize this phenomenon:

Inflexibility + Inflexibility = Explosion

10.) If a child has a reading disability, what’s the appropriate intervention? Figure out why and teach the skills he lacks. If the child is delayed in the development of mathematics skills, what’s the appropriate intervention? Figure out why and teach the skills he lacks. If your child is challenged in the domains of flexibility and frustration tolerance, what should you do? Figure out why and teach the skills he lacks!

Consequences

1. We live in a society in which many adults, when faced with a child who isn’t meeting expectations, can think of only one word: consequences. There are only 2 ways in which consequences are useful: (1) to teach basic lessons about right from wrong. And (2) to motivate people to behave appropriately. It’s a very safe bet that the child already knows right from wrong, so it wouldn’t make a great deal of sense to spend a lot of time using consequences to teach him something he already knows. And, it’s also a safe bet that the child already is motivated not to make himself and those around him miserable, so it wouldn’t make sense to spend a lot of time using consequences to give him the incentive to do well. Children do well if they can. If the child could do well, he would.

Chapter 6 Plan B Collaborative and Proactive Solutions (CPS)

1. All the adults involved with the child need to have a clear understanding of the child’s difficulties
2. May be necessary to put your parenting (teaching) agenda on the back burner temporarily.
3. It may be necessary to reduce the demands on the child’s flexibility and frustration tolerance.
4. Need to come to terms with the fact that the child is different.
5. Most explosions are predictable. (Triggers and problems that have yet to be solved.)
6. Recommendation — to keep a record of problems that cause the child to be frustrated.

7.) Some triggers: waking up, getting out of bed, getting ready for school, sensory hypersensitivity, homework, getting ready for bed, boredom, shifting from one activity to another, sibling interactions, being hungry, just before dinner, food choices / quantity, clothing choices, sudden change of plans, taking medication

Three Ways to manage the Explosive Child — Use Plan A, Plan B or Plan C

Plan A

Handles a problem by imposing the adult will.

An explosive outburst occurs when the cognitive demands being placed upon a person, outstrip that person’s capacity to respond adaptively

If a Plan A is thrown at a child who doesn’t have a Plan A brain, you place a cognitive demand upon the child that outstrips the child’s capacity to respond adaptively. P. 91

Plan C

Drop the expectation for now to avoid an explosion. This doesn’t mean you ‘give in’. It would be giving in if you started with Plan A and then went to Plan C. The idea of using Plan C is to be proactive and to prevent an explosion. If you predict that a particular trigger will lead to an explosion, you are being realistic and can focus on the bigger stuff.

Using Plan C can lead to stability. You might use Plan C for homework, using good table manners, getting to school on time, swearing. Eventually Plan B will be used for these.

Plan B

Collaborative and Proactive Solutions (CPS). This involves engaging the child in a discussion in which the problem or unmet expectations are resolved in a mutually satisfactory manner.

There are 2 ways to do Plan B

• Emergency Plan B — use as the child begins to become frustrated
• Proactive Plan B — gets the problem solved proactively before the child heats up. It is done by discussing the problem

3 Steps for doing Plan B

• Empathy
• Define the Problem
• Invitation

Empathy — keeps people calm. It keeps the child rational so the conversation can take place.

Acknowledges the child’s problem

Showing empathy does not lead to a loss of adult authority.

How to Empathize

1. Repeat the child’s concern back using the child’s words
2. Children often are not able to verbalise a concern so the adult needs to ask “What’s up?” If the child can’t articulate, the adult needs to take an educated guess. Keep it simple. For Example if the child says ‘I want pizza’, the adult response would be ‘You want pizza, what’s up?” Reassure the child by saying “I’m not saying you have to do anything” or “I’m not saying ‘no’. This neither agreeing or disagreeing. It keeps the child calm. P. 102.

Define the problem

Define your problem and the child’s problem. If you only define the child’s problem, you are using Plan C.

Invitation

• The child and the adult brainstorm the solutions to the defined problem. “Let’s think about how we can solve the problem. Do you have any ideas?”
• p.107 Somewhere between the childhood and adulthood, someone has concluded that the only person to come up with a good solution is an adult. Problem solving takes time — explosions take longer. Whilst the adult might have something in mind, it is important not to have a predetermined solution.
• An ingenious solution is one that is doable, realistic and mutually satisfactory. If the child comes up with a one sided solution, the response might be “That’s one idea, however the solution has to work for both of us.”
• Some problems require more than one conversation
• The rest of this chapter gives examples

Chapter 7 Learning Curves

Things that can go wrong. P 132

• Over relying on Emergency Plan B
• Using Plan B as a last resort
• You may be putting solutions on the table instead of concerns
• You may be entering Plan B discussions with preordained solutions
• You may be agreeing to solutions that are not realistic, doable or mutually satisfactory
• You’re feeling as if you’re not very good at Plan B yet, so you’re still using a lot of Plan A instead. Remember empathy (not ‘no’) is the first step of Plan B.
• Missing one of more of the three steps — empathy, define the problem, invitation.
• The child might be lacking skills crucial for participating in Plan B.

Responses to commonly held beliefs and attitudes

When will the child be held accountable for his actions?

Many people believe that accountability is a code for punishment. Some believe that if consequences the child has received for his explosions haven’t stopped him exploding, it must be because they didn’t cause the child enough pain. The majority of explosive kids experienced a great deal of pain. It is the assumption of this book that the child already knows what is right and wrong and is motivated. Many explanations for the child’s behaviour are clichés such as:

• He just wants attention — we all want attention. This cannot explain the explosions
• He just wants his own way — we all want our own way. This does not explain the explosions.
• He just wants control — we all want control. Same deal
• He won’t cooperate — if you’re talking about the true meaning of the word cooperate — “to collaborate, to come together’ — then it may be that the child has not been given a chance to do this.
• He’s manipulative — Good manipulation requires forethought, planning, impulse control, organisational skills. Explosive kids are poor manipulators.
• He just needs to step up to the plate — this is not possible because the child does not have the skills to do this.

If the child is given the skills he needs so that he doesn’t explode anymore and so he doesn’t need help anymore, he can be held accountable.

Common Concerns and Questions and Responses p 146 -

• People worry that by not using Plan A, the child is not having limits set. Limit setting means that your needs are met and the child’s needs are met. Plan B sets limits.
• Safety Issues — Problems that cause children to be unsafe are not solved with Plan A; they get solved with Plan B. Plan A of course is used, for example to stop a child from running in front of a car. The adult will use physical restraint and go into Plan B after.
• If the child is exploding, there’s a good chance that Plan A is being used. STOP. Go to Plan B if possible otherwise go to Plan C and at the next opportunity go to Proactive Plan B.
• Plan B takes too long: Unsolved problems take more time than solved problems. The amount of time will decrease as the skills are developed
• Partner won’t do Plan B p 154
• The child won’t do Plan B — this may be because the child lacks the skills to do Plan B
• Child says he doesn’t care about my concerns. The child doesn’t have to care about your concern s. You own them. Your concerns have to be taken into account for a mutually satisfactory solution.
• Rewards for doing Plan B — fewer explosions and getting along better will usually be reward enough
• Time out — time is often used as a punishment and can exacerbate explosions. On the other hand, it can be productive for a child and adult to go separate ways so that a discussion can resume after.
• Working with an explosive child is exhausting and requires a lot of energy

Chapter 8 Teach your child well

Skills required for a child to participate in Plan B

The child needs to be able to:

• articulate his concerns
• consider possible solutions and
• be able to reflect on the feasibility and likely outcomes of solutions and the degree to which they are mutually satisfactory.

Concerns

Finding out ‘What’s up?’ might require questioning, and making suggestions about possibilities.

Considering a Range of Possible Solutions

Solutions to problems encountered by human beings fall into one of three general categories

• Ask for help
• Meet halfway / give a little
• Do it a different way.

Reflect on the Likely Outcomes of Solutions and the Degree to Which They are Feasible and Mutually Satisfactory

Initially, children may fail to follow through on an agreed –upon solution. This may be because the solution was unrealistic, or may have failed to address the child’s concern.

Other children have difficulty thinking about the likely outcomes of solutions they consider

Others have difficulty thinking about whether the solutions under consideration are truly realistic and address both concerns. Adult response: I know that solution would make you happy but it would not make me happy. Let’s try and think of a solution that will make us both happy.

Training other skills with Plan B

Language processing skills — teach the language of feelings.

Executive Skills — planning, organisation, shifting cognitive set and separation of affect — using Proactive B can help with this

Emotion Regulation Skills

Medication?

By solving problems using Plan B, a child’s anxiety and irritability can be reduced.

Cognitive Flexibility Skills

Empathy and Reassurance is crucial for these children because they often overreact when faced with the realisation their rigid notions about how events should unfold will not be fulfilled.

Defining the problem helps the child do something he’s never been good at: taking another person’s concerns into account.

The invitation (3rd step of Plan B) helps the child do something he’s never been very good at — adjusting to the idea that there might be some shades of gray and that there is a variety of ways to solve a problem.

Social Skills

Teaching these skills takes less time than not teaching them. Some children automatically and inaccurately interpret their experiences and the intentions as ‘It’s not fair”, “You always blame me!”, ‘Nobody likes me,” “I’m stupid’. These interpretations can cause spontaneous combustion if unchallenged. See p 199–204 for samples of discussions with a child to disconfirm the above beliefs. Help child to look at exceptions through questioning.

Other Notes on Chapter 8:

1. Phrases you should consider teaching the child are: “Give me a minute”, “I can’t talk about that right now”, “I need help”, “I don’t feel right.”, “This isn’t going the way I thought it would”, and “I don’t know what to do. Some gentle reminding will be necessary on these phrases as well.
2. The vast majority of solutions to problems encountered by human beings fall into one of these three general categories: (1) ask for help; (2) meet halfway/give a little; and (3) do it a different way.
3. One of the reasons parents lose faith in Plan B — at least initially- is that the child has failed to follow through on an agreed — upon solution. This is usually the sign of an unrealistic solution or a solution that failed to adequately address the child’s concern — thus creating the need to come up with a new and better solution.
4. Some children have trouble expressing the fact that they’re frustrated. In other words, they lack the basic vocabulary of words that express feeling, so they don’t have the arsenal of words to tell you that they’re frustrated. Instead, they hit, swear and destroy things. If this is the case, the only thing to do is teach the child a basic vocabulary of feeling words, starting with happy, sad, and frustrated. You should start with just these three words because, regardless of a person’s age — if you’re overambitious in teaching new skills you won’t teach any skills at all. And because those three feelings cover about 80 % of human emotions anyway.
5. It’s often useful to implement a 0–5 ranking system, in which 0 denotes “not frustrated at all” and 5 denotes “really, really frustrated”. The same can be done with colors (Green — Red) for younger children.
6. Don’t forget: Just as a child with a reading disability won’t begin reading overnight, a child who has difficulty recognizing, expressing, and describing frustration won’t begin to use the new vocabulary overnight. There is no quick fix.

7.) Typically, the child understands that the poor first reaction they may have when responding to a situation isn’t the best one, but typically, the child only reacts that way under one condition: when he’s frustrated. If he thought that the reaction was okay, he’d do it at other times — if not all the time, as well. But even if the child does think the reaction is okay, you’re going to be giving the child a plethora of other words and phrases to use if you abide by the above terms.

8.) Kids who have difficulties regulating their emotions are often more irritable or anxious than other kids. There is a very strong tendency to use medication to reduce a child’s irritability and anxiety. For some children medication is truly indispensable, but one reason medications are overused is that a lot of prescribers don’t know about the pathways and haven’t really gotten to the bottom of a child’s irritability or anxiety. One of the benefits of implementing Plan B with the child you are working with is that it reduces the child’s anxiety and irritability levels, by helping the parent and child solve the problems that are contributing to the irritability and anxiety in the first place! Many children’s irritability and anxiety can be traced back to chronic problems that have perpetually gone unsolved. Medicine doesn’t solve these problems, and neither do consequences. Only solving problems solves problems.

9.) The second step of Plan B — Define the Problem — helps the child do something he’s probably never been good at: taking another person’s concerns into account. The child doesn’t have to own your concern to assist in solving the problem, and he doesn’t have to care about it, he merely needs to take it into account.

Chapter 9 Family Matters (Needs to be read)

This chapter takes a look at issues that can occur in the household including sibling relationships, communication patterns, dealing with parents and dealing with grandparents.

There is then an in-depth glance at the “drama” that can occur in a real life home and how to appropriately handle it while utilizing Plan B, and what to do if the CPS model fails.

Chapter 10 Better Living Through Chemicals (Should be read)

No one wants to see a child medicated unnecessarily, so a conservative approach to medication is recommended. However, some characteristics are well addressed by medication; namely, hyperactivity and poor impulse control, inattention and distractibility, irritability and obsessiveness, and having an exceedingly short fuse. This chapter lists medications that can help with all of these characteristics.

Chapter 11 The Plan B Classroom

Because of policies of inclusion, typical classrooms have a range of students with both behavioural and cognitive special needs.

Many schools follow Plan A

Standard school disciplinary practices do not work for the students to whom they are most frequently applied, and aren’t needed for the students to whom they are never applied.

Students who behave well do so because they can.

There is little to be shown for detentions, suspensions and expulsions.

Common response to applying standard disciplinary procedures

‘We have to set an example’

When a school continues to apply interventions that don’t help a child to behave adaptively, it gives the message that people are not sure how to help the child.

Is there a likelihood that students who aren’t explosive will become explosive if you do not set an example?

What message is given to the explosive child if the strategies that are applied are not working? The child becomes more alienated.

Under what circumstances do we have the best chance of helping the child to learn and practice better ways of dealing with a child’s inflexibility and low frustration tolerance — in school or suspended from school?

Important for a school to have the philosophy that “Children do well if they can”

Time: taking time to try and fix the problem takes less time than not fixing the problem

Expertise: An understanding of the three domains — Pathways, three Plans and the three steps for doing Plan B.

A Plan B Road Map

Achieve a consensus on the student’s pathways and triggers.

Prioritise which problems are to be proactively solved (triggers) and which skills need to be proactively taught (pathways)

Create a community of learners by using Plan B with all students — that is a social curriculum which accentuates differences.

Objections to Plan B for an individual student

“I can’t have different sets of rules for different kids. If I let one child get out of or get away with something, my other students will want to as well.”

Teachers have different expectations for different children. ‘Fair does not mean equal.’ That’s why some students receive special help in reading while others are not; some students participate in other programs. “everyone in our classroom gets what he or she needs. If someone needs help with something, we all try to help him or her. And everyone in our class needs something special.” It is no different when a child needs help with flexibility and frustration tolerance. If a child in the class challenges why an explosive classmate is receiving special accommodations and assistance, the response can be “ Everyone in our classroom gets what she or he needs. If someone needs help with something, we all try to help him or her. Because you are very good at handling frustration, I bet you could be helpful to ? next time he gets frustrated.”

Other children will not want to become explosive. Children are good at understanding the fair — does not mean equal concept and at making exceptions for children who need help. It is adults who struggle with this.

Chapter 12 Now is the Time

This chapter recaps what has been in the other chapters.

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