The Explosive Child

A New Approach for Understanding and Parenting Easily Frustrated, Chronically Inflexible Children

By: Dr. Ross W. Greene

Narrated by: Dr. Ross W. Greene

Length: 2 hrs and 38 mins

Publisher's summary

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 attentionseeking, manipulative, or unmotivated, and their parents aren't passive, permissive disciplinarians. 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.

The Explosive Child is the highly acclaimed, lifechanging parenting guide in which Dr. Greene first delineated the Collaborative Problem Solving approach. Dr. Greene explains why kids exhibit challenging behaviors, why traditional behavior management strategies may not be effective for many kids, and how to use Plan B to solve problems collaboratively and teach your child the skills he or she is lacking.

As the model has evolved over the years, so has The Explosive Child, and it is available here in an abridged and updated fourth edition narrated by Dr. Greene.

Throughout this compassionate, insightful, and practical book, Dr. Greene provides a new conceptual framework for understanding their difficulties. 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.

Download the accompanying reference guide.

©2011 Dr. Ross Greene (P)2011 Dr. Ross Greene

it didn't help me

not sure if I missed something but after finishing this book, I feel even more confused and powerless as how to help my son.

Get the knowledge and think...

It's not hard to understand how to implement this method, but I have a few problems with chapter 9 the rest of the family. You can lead a horse to water but you can't make them drink... You can lead a jackass, to knowledge but you can't make them think.... however you can always try. In my day the alternative to Plan A was Military School. I think Plan B is worth a try, it would help to have more fairness and understanding of an explosive child and their needs to be able to be successful in life.... and mercy for the rest of the family. This book is not just a bunch of Psyco babel, give it a try before you run out of time.
It takes understanding and time to rethink and retrain any kind of handicap, have patience and try.

Great suggestions

I liked it and have been trying it. My child seems to explode all the time. Not just with daily triggers. She struggles to keep answering questions and get to the heart of the issue. Sometimes this helps, sometimes my questions make her explode worse. We will keep working

Amazing

This was amazing, it hit home! Great book highly recommended for parents dealing with odd, adhd etc

an amazing resource for parents.

if your child is really struggling this will help you figure out what to do to support them.

Give this a chance!

Give this a chance and follow through! What do you have to lose? Very helpful

Very Helpful

The author suggest that there's a reason for the explosion and frequently it relates to the dictatorial position we take as parents, but if we can engage the child and work together, we might get better results. To me, limits and consequences have a role.....but we do frequently assume we have all the answers and the child's concerns are blown off. A strong willed child would likely be upset with being ignored. I've started working through things with my son and have seen some progress. Good stuff and I'm really glad I listened.

A better way to parent

As a foster parent I thought I knew how to best walk through the CPS Plan B steps already. i took the time to write down problems with our explosive child that were predictable. Never did I imagine my first few tries at this going ao poorly to address those concerns. I learned right away I assume too much and don't collaborate enough with my explosive child. There is still lots of room to grow with these steps but we will get to a good place after more practice.

excellent and brief

Easy to implement and super helpful. Will be using right away. Changes how you frame the situation

Encouraged!

Very insightful. I wish I had these tools when my middle child was little. She is 26 going on 27. I would have tried to adapt to my ex husband. They both I feel an Explosive disorder. All the children rearing said to constantly be firm not try and talk them through it. I am naturally an encourager. Thank you for writin this book.