A new Approach for Understanding and Parenting Easily Frustrated

Parent: Billy, I know that you like playing with your 
friends after school and that it’s sometimes hard 
to stop to come in for dinner. 
Billy: Yeah. 
Parent: The thing is, it’s really important to me that 
we eat dinner together as a family. 
Billy: I don’t care if we eat dinner together as a 
family. 
Parent: Uhm . . . OK . . . maybe it’s more important to 
me that we eat together than it is to you. But I’d 
still like to see if we can solve the problem. You 
want to keep playing with your friends, and I want 
us to eat dinner together as a family. Let’s think 
about different ways we could solve that 
problem. 
My child and I agree on a solution and then he won’t do 
what he agreed to. 
As you’ll read in Chapter 8, that’s usually a sign that the 
solution wasn’t realistic, doable, or mutually satisfactory in the 
first place. Remember, Plan B isn’t an exercise in wishful 
thinking. Both parties need to be able to follow through on 
the solution. If your child isn’t following through, it’s proba-
bly not because he won’t but because he can’t. Better work to-
ward a solution that he can actually do. 

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Learning Curves 
157 
I’ve been taught that it’s important for parents to be 
consistent with each other in front of the child so the 
child can’t do any “splitting.” So what advice do you 
give parents if one is using Plan A on an issue and the 
other disagrees? 
Explosions are far more destructive to families than 
parents disagreeing in front of their children. What’s inter-
esting is that if two parents share the same concern, they 
already agree on the main point (that they have a concern 
to put on the table). Your concern is entered into consider-
ation with both Plan A and Plan B. So if one has begun 
heading toward the point of no return (Plan A), good 
teamwork means that the other parent should jump in 
(quickly) and get the child’s concern on the table (to initi-
ate Plan B), head off an explosion, and get the problem 
solved. Then the parents need to talk privately about how 
they can get their concerns addressed without causing ex-
plosions. 
Life is a bit more interesting if one parent is using Plan 
A and the other is doing Plan C, for this suggests that the 
parents are not yet in agreement about whether they 
should be putting a concern on the table. Before the issue 
is raised with the child, the parents need to discuss 
and agree upon whether the concern is actually worth 
pursuing. 

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158 
The Explosive Child