The Explosive Child | The Explosive Child: A New Approach for Understanding and Parenting Easily...

For anyone that deals with Kids... or adults | The Explosive Child: A New Approach for Understanding and Parenting Easily Frustrated, Chronically Inflexible ... | Ross W. Greene

books:


	• The Explosive Child: A New Approach for Understanding and Parenting Easily Frustrated, Chronically Inflexible ... Ross W. Greene Harper Paperbacks, 2010 - 336 pages average customer review:based on 196 reviews view larger image
	for more information click here

highly recommended

a great book

Have you ever had the feeling that someone whacked you on the side of the head and now you can see things differently/better. That is the best description I can give of my reaction to reading this book. Because of that I decided to write a long review.

Our son struggles with many situations and can be explosive. We have had the endless counsel to put him on a token system. We've tried any number of times, and it's not that he doesn't want to do it, it's that when his frustration level rises he just can't do it. The response to this is always a) give it more time or b) you're not being consistent and contingent enough. The explosions increase and the behavior gets worse. We've been through any number of normal and alternative approaches and in the end they can't quite believe that it didn't work (though most of them can never admit it to us.) Then there is also the message that it's our fault that our son is the way he is.

The question in our mind was always "Why can't you just bend a bit and make everything go smoother for yourself."

Little did we know that this question is the key question. It's clear that our son is not thinking clearly about options when he gets frustrated, etc and that no one was noticing this or giving us any clear ideas to what to do about this (ideas that work.) This is not about want, he is out of control. Him sobbing inconsolably for a couple hours and when we ask him why, he says "I don't know" through the pain and the tears. He is not making this choice to get attention or manipulate us, he has lost all control over himself and his emotions.

Then we found this book and the whack up side the head. This book descibed my son and made it all make so much sense.

Here is my paraphrase of the whole book. Philosophy: "Kids do well if they can." What is it that prevents kids like this from "being able to bend" (adapt?) They are missing the skills to do it. Gasp. What do you do? You teach them the skills. Gasp2. How do you do it? You engage them and work with them to solve their problems, modeling the frontal lobe processes they need to develop. Gasp3 Can they learn this way? Dr. Greene has plenty of solid science to say yes in most cases. Everywhere from individual to schools, to forces residential mental health facilities and even a correctional facility show positive results from this approach.

But there is a catch. To teach a kid these skills, you can't tell them what to do! You have to engage them with exactly what they are feeling and thinking (which they often don't know,) then work through a problem solving process with them that completely honors their thinking and focuses on how to get the result. When you tell them what to do, there is no space for you to model the process from where their thinking/feeling starts to a working solution.

The comparison to reading difficulties is really useful. Old model: kids who don't learn to read are either lazy or stupid. Approach: Either motivate them to read (because they are lazy) or give up (because they are stupid.) Basis: belief about effort Results: lots of lids don't learn to read. New model: Most kids who are struggling to read have specific issues that prevent it. Basis: There are developmental delays that can be corrected. Approach: diagnose the specific issues and develop/apply skill building tools to resolve the diagnosed problem. Result: many more kids learn to read.

There are those who say this approach to read is bad, but the number of readers is getting better with this approach. The problem is the resources to do this are hard to come by.

When it comes to behavior, the dominance of the belief that kids choose or want to be bad is pervasive. If you read some of the one star reviews and published criticisms of Dr. Greene, they are mostly shouting their belief. The lack of serious scientific thinking about development of behavior neurologically allowed the philosophical behavioralists (my words) to hold forth on what's going on and what to do and kept this area decades behind other educational areas. I see these concepts as one of the major steps in this direction.

Are there kids who are lazy. You bet. Are there are kids that are manipulative. You bet. Do these kids need external motivation. Yes. But being explosive is not easy and there are far easier ways to be manipulative.

So why not try this and see if it works? You can always go back to the other things you have been trying for years if you don't see any changes in 6-12 months. "I don't have the time" will be a common refrain. For the parents and teachers of kids with these issues, the explosions take up far more time than this ever will. "Why should I treat this kid differently?" That's a discussion for another day.

One last thing to say, and his doesn't come from the book. Why do there seem to be so many more behavior problems now than in the past? Common belief: The lax society coddles kids and they end up this way. My personal belief: our society has become much more complex with more and more specialized, conforming roles.

Before MacDonalds, you were a cook who made, flipped and sold burgers. Now you are a cog in a fast food empire, where the time the fries cook is computerized and weight and the thickness of burgers controlled to exacting standards. The need is for people to be ever more conforming to succeed. This leaves more and more people outside the required set of conforming skills. That means that more and more people fail to succeed and become behavior problems. There is the golden measure that we always want productivity to increase.

The same goes for schools, where instead of 50% of the kids reading at grade level (that's what the statistic means after all...) we want 80+% of the kids to reach this level of ability. The increase in the complexity of the science that kids learn today is amazing, they are learning science that didn't exist 40 years ago. To be able to achieve these levels, there is more conformance required and more stress on those who struggle either academically or behaviorally. Upgrading curricula is like increased productivity, it creates more and more stress, fewer and fewer kids that can cope. The ones who can't cope either check out or act out...

for more information click here

The Explosive Child

This book has helped me understand what is like to be my child. This book has helped enormously with understanding and relating to my child.

For anyone that deals with Kids... or adults

This is an amazing book. It's not so much only for explosive child, but an explosive person. You must understand that there is no magic pill, or instant fix, I work with people (including explosive children) everyday, the more you practice the techniques the more effective you will be utilizing them. If you've been using other techniques (forcing your will... because I said so, or rolling over... fine just this once) you might want to read this one, to find out another way. it shouldn't take too long.

for more information click here

Great Book!

This is an excellent "how to" guide for helping a child find acceptable ways to deal with frustration. There are lots of examples of problem behaviors along with a format for brainstorming solutions with the child. The concept is excellent, but I would suggest professional help in implementing this process into the home environment. Parents who are at their breaking point with explosive behavior may find the discipline required for this process to be difficult to implement without help. The procedures include identifying the triggers that precede explosions, prioritizing the problems, brainstorming with the child on ways to handle a problem (during periods of calm), and coming to a mutually agreeable alternative solution. I highly recommend this book.

for more information click here

What?s an explosive child? A child who responds to routine problems with extreme frustration-crying, screaming, swearing, kicking, hitting, biting, spitting, destroying property, and worse. A child whose frequent, severe outbursts leave his or her parents feeling frustrated, scared, worried, and desperate for help. Most of these parents have tried everything-reasoning, explaining, punishing, sticker charts, therapy, medication-but to no avail. They can?t figure out why their child acts the way he or she does; they wonder why the strategies that work for other kids don?t work for theirs; and they don?t know what to do instead.

Dr. Ross Greene, a distinguished clinician and pioneer in the treatment of kids with social, emotional, and behavioral challenges, has worked with thousands of explosive children, and he has good news: these kids aren?t attention-seeking, manipulative, or unmotivated, and their parents aren?t passive, permissive pushovers. Rather, explosive kids are lacking some crucial skills in the domains of flexibility/adaptability, frustration tolerance, and problem solving, and they require a different approach to parenting.

Throughout this compassionate, insightful, and practical book, Dr. Greene provides a new conceptual framework for understanding their difficulties, based on research in the neurosciences. He explains why traditional parenting and treatment often don?t work with these children, and he describes what to do instead. Instead of relying on rewarding and punishing, Dr. Greene?s Collaborative Problem Solving model promotes working with explosive children to solve the problems that precipitate explosive episodes, and teaching these kids the skills they lack.

for more information click here