A new Approach for Understanding and Parenting Easily Frustrated

participant in making things better. 
Nonetheless, this understanding doesn’t always pre-
vent siblings from complaining about an apparent dou-
ble standard between themselves and their explosive 
brother or sister. Armed with the knowledge that 
parental attention is never distributed with 100 percent 
parity and parental priorities are never exactly the same 
for each child in any family, you should resist responding 
to this complaint by trying even harder to get your ex-
plosive child to look like your other children. In all 
families—yours and everyone else’s—fair does not mean 
equal. Even parents in “ordinary” families often find 
themselves providing one child with more help with 
homework, having higher academic expectations for one 

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208 
The Explosive Child 
child, or being more nurturing toward another. In your 
family, you’re doing things a little differently for the 
child who has deficits in the areas of flexibility and frus-
tration tolerance, but you’re also doing things differently 
for the other children, who have challenges of their own. 
So when siblings are complaining over disparities in 
parental expectations, it’s an excellent opportunity to do 
some empathizing and educating. 
Sister: How come you don’t get mad at Danny when 
he swears at you? It’s not fair! 
Mother: I know that it’s very hard for you to listen to 
him swearing. I don’t like it very much, either. But 
in our family we try to help one another and 
make sure everyone gets what he or she needs. 
I’m trying to help Danny stay calm when he gets 
frustrated and to help him think of different words 
he could use instead of swearing. That’s what he 
needs help with. 
Sister: But swearing is bad. You should get mad at 
him when he swears. 
Mother: Well, I don’t get mad at you when I’m 
helping you with your math, right? That’s because 
I don’t think getting mad at you would help very 
much. Remember how I used to get mad at 
Danny whenever he swore? It didn’t work very 
well, did it? It just made things worse. So I’m doing 

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Family Matters 
209 
something now that I think will eventually work 
better. I think it’s starting to work pretty well.