Customer Reviews

The Explosive Child: A New Approach for Understanding and Parenting Easily Frustrated, "Chronically Inflexible" Children

5 star:		(72)
4 star:		(11)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

This book is a must read for almost ANY parent and certainly for parents of difficult, challenging kids. It has helped me understand why our son has "meltdowns" and how to deal with them without making them worse. The book has helped me feel less self-blame for my son's outbursts and thereby less anger at him - and has given me real tools for helping him to understand himself. I have purchased many copies to give to our close friends and family, and have recommended it to my own patients (I am a psychotherapist myself), to help them with their kids and even their relatives' kids.
The book focuses first of all on really explaining the various neurological and psychological processes that cause certain kids to become overwhelmed and to act in ways that are controlling, resistant, demanding and out of control. It applies to a variety of diagnosible and non-diagnosed situations, including but not limited to: ADHD, Sensory Integration Dysfunction, Tourette's, BiPolar Disorder, and Oppositional Defiant Disorder. By understanding the behavior in terms that are clear and non-technical, at the same time scientifically sound, parents are allowed to feel compassion for their kids struggles instead of frustration and blame. Greene then offers some very clear approaches for determining which behavior to be strict about, which to ignore completely and which to begin working on with your child. He then offers specific ways to work on these behaviors. The book is full of clinical examples in which I'm sure everyone will recognize themselves or their situation in at least one if not more. I just can't say enough about what a great book this is and how grateful I am to have had it recommended to me.

Finally somebody who understands what we live with. After several years of professionals suggesting that we just needed another parenting class, we were ready to fall apart. "The Explosive Child" acknowledges that children like mine exist and that we have to understand why they are the way they are and how we can start to bring some sanity to our lives. For desperate parents, this book is like oxygen. It provides a great template for dealing with explosive children on a day to day basis. Dr. Greene's book gave me the courage to stop accepting answers that clearly weren't in our daughter's best interest. This gave me the understanding of how to start advocating for my child. If you find yourself thinking that 'something just isn't right with my child' and 'how can I live with this behavior forever' and 'we need help because nobody understands what we live with', then this book belongs in your hands today. I am not exagerating when I say this book saved our family. We actually have hope that we can raise our child to be a happy and self-sufficient person instead of ending up dead or in jail.

This book is a great resource and source of new found confidence! As an occupational therapist, I have to be extremely adaptable and read my child clients very effectively. I often work with chronically inflexible and easily frustrated children and my approach to this behaviour is often inconsistent. However, with Dr. Greene's book, I now feel better prepared to work with these children while maintaining a handle on my professionalism and confidence as a fly-by participant in these children's lives.

I also think every parent should read this book. Not only for those parents who have an inflexible child, but also those who don't. It's fresh spin on parenting and may increase the flexibility of our already flexible children. It also fosters independence and choice, which is often taken away from some of our strictly parented children.

GREAT BOOK!

I thought I knew it all. I won't lie. I thought that belts and whips were the best way to take control of my chemically unstable youngster. Dr. Greene showed me that everything I knew was wrong. Timothy, my unruly son, had given my wife and I nothing but Hell since his conception (The Mrs. got a bladder infection that very night.) His behavior was, in a word ... EXPLOSIVE. Sometimes, and I kid you not, Timothy would scream so loudly I worried that his little head would come apart. Sometimes... I wished for his noggin' to pop, and I'm not proud of that. Thanks to Dr. Greene, I no longer wish death on my son. As hard as it was for my wife Olive and I to realize, there really is no set bedtime. We would have pretended there was a set bedtime.... forever. There is no set bedtime. Thank you Dr. Greene

This book has changed our lives! I have read it several times through, and given copies to all of my daughter's educators. I cried when I read the opening chapters - it described my life to a tee. But now, after using the methods discussed in the book for about a year, the difference in my daughter, my household and my sanity are remarkable. This methodology is phenomenal!

I've read this book at least 20 times and have purchased copies for teachers and other parents of difficult kids. Whenever I feel burned out with my wonderful but explosive child, this books helps me to pull myself back together and renews my hope and energy. The Collaborative Problem Solving technique works! What a relief after so many failures.

Dr. Greene writes about these kids with affection and respect - and less face it, if your kid is explosive and inflexible, affection and respect from teachers, therapists, doctors, police, etc (maybe even from yourself) has been hard to come by. I can't begin to describe the relief and hope I felt when I finally saw a description of my child that FIT (!) and didn't blame either her or myself for being horribly inadequate people and causing the whole problem in the first place.

If you parent or teach these kids - you need to read this book. Your outlook and actions will change and so will the child.

This was a great book with strategies that are helpful when dealing with a explosive child. However, I feel the book is for children who are at least seven years and older. My son is five and is not mature enough to enter into the problem-solving methods that are suggested in this book.

This book was recommended to me by a mom of a special needs child. The approach has definitely worked for my preschooler, who has several delays and sensory integration dysfunction (he is, at times, impulsive, hyperactive, oblivious to danger, and engages in unacceptable sensory seeking behaviors like biting and hitting). Of course, I also address his underlying neurological/sensory needs through therapies; Greene is clear that some kids do need OT, medication, etc. to help them.

When a child does feel bad after a meltdown or misbehavior and says he "doesn't know" why he engaged in the behavior, clearly he needs help learning to stop himself before he gets to what Greene calls "vapor lock"-in tantrum mode, unable to learn, listen, or think straight. For the process to work, parents have to let go of the unnecessary stressors, and often there are creative compromises parents can make with kids to acknowledge and respect their needs.

This does not mean let your kids walk all over you! It means helping your child develop crucial skills of impulse control, frustration tolerance, self-regulation, creative compromise, and self-awareness. For some kids with special needs this takes more work over more time.

I also wanted to clarify that Greene says that TEMPORARILY you will probably have to tolerate swearing and backtalk until the child learns better self-control-this is not supposed to last forever. Perhaps he could've been clearer on what you're supposed to say after the event to remind the child of your disappointment and give him a chance to apologize and make amends. But you know, it's clear from his examples that he often deals with parents who start a conversation with hostile sarcasm, or instantly say "No" just to get off on the power they have over their child, or make demands that are truly petty, so parents do need to do the hard work of looking at themselves to see if they are modeling the very nasty, controlling behavior they object to in their children!

One concern: without an IEP, and a label like ADHD or ODD, will teachers really be willing to employ this method? Also, I'm sure many families will need to have family therapy to keep them "on track" with this approach.

I probably would have given the first half of this book this book 5 stars for the authors vivid understanding and explaination of just why some children are so inflexibe and volatile. He described our own childs behaviour in explicit detail and I'm sure this information on its own is probably enough to get parents started in the right direction.

It is recommended that parents sharply reduce demands and expetations by enforcing only the ablolute minimum firm unyielding limits. (but no advice on how to actually do it)
The avoidance of meltdowns is given as a top priority because when children are incoherent, they are not receptive to learning. His theory is that if you strive to keep the child coherent as he/she approaches a meltdown by negotiating and problem solving, they will eventually learn to manage frustration. I think they will learn to manage their parents and avoid learning and growth. He insists that the few absolute demands will be enough to maintain the adults as authority figures and that everything else is not important enough to risk instigating a meltdown. I agree that it is useless to lecture or punish during or after a meltdown, but avoiding a meltdown should not even be a consideration when it comes to family rules and values. This approach teaches a child to fear their own emotions as they watch their parents jump through hoops in fear of angry outbursts.

I can say with certainty that this approach would have been catostrophic with our child as he rarely actually wanted what he was fussing about. He would endlessly bait and lure us into senseless arguaments trying to get us to explain or negotiate our rules with no purpose. We found the philosophy and methods in the book "The Manipulative Child: How to Regain Control and Raise Resilient, Resourceful, and Independent Kids" to be the key to teaching our child to deal with frustration and volatile emotions.
Medication, cajoling, and negotiating is no substitute for effective discipline. I realise that this book is an alternative method for only the most extreme cases where it may be the only option. Prematurly adopting these methods for a child that is merely difficult, may achieve the opposite of the intended effect and make things much worse.
I would also highly recommend reading "Setting Limits with the Strong Willed Child" by Robert J MacKenzie.

If your child, even as young as one year old, is wild, explosive and starting to physically abuse you, I HIGHLY recommend this book. My son is six, and I wish I'd had this book when he was one. Even so, it vindicated my years of decisions to NOT use corporal punishment (and not to medicate or pathologize), since, as the book rightly says, "every child wants to be good"!

NO OTHER professionals understand these children (99% will automatically assume the family is violent) or can resist labeling them incorrectly with miscellaneous trendy dysfunctions, but this author resists.

Greene has a solid step-by-step approach to dealing with the explosions, and I found his approach helpful. But really, the fact that he NAMED my wild child correctly; treated him humanely; didn't pathologize him or our family; didn't infantilize and bore me as a reader; and didn't suggest drugging him -- these things made all the difference!

I can't say enough about this book. Other people see a monstrous brat and assume the worst (or else the behaviour only happens at home and nobody believes you); Greene sees an "explosive" little child (otherwise smart, healthy and sane) who WANTS to be and do good for himself and his family.

Don't wait til your child is too old! Buy this book NOW if you have a feeling that, even as a young toddler, your child's temper is white-hot. Even if s/he's too young to reason with, you'll start developing Greene's method and make it into habit.

I could kiss this Greene guy for writing this book! And it's so perfectly titled!

(And I'm not a shill for him or the publisher -- I've wasted money and read LOTS of utterly useless parenting books that went straight to recycling. Most psychologists write lousy books that should have been two-page pamphlets.)