A new Approach for Understanding and Parenting Easily Frustrated

Question: Isn’t this the job of special education? 
Answer: No, special education really has very little to 
offer many explosive students. 
Time for Plan B. But let’s make sure the wagon is packed 
before we start heading into the wilderness. We’re going 
to need a few things: 
• A Philosophy: Most schools don’t have a philosophy 
about children. What they have instead is a curricu-
lum and a school discipline code, neither of which is 
of much use when trying to figure out why a student 
is exploding and how to teach him the skills he needs 
to stop exploding. Your philosophy about children is 
what guides and governs your response when a stu-
dent is not doing well. What’s your new philosophy? 
You might want to consider children do well if they 
can. That way you won’t waste a lot of time trying to 
“teach him a lesson” or find ways to give a student the 
incentive to do well. Good teachers know that al-

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250 
The Explosive Child 
though it would be more efficient to have all the stu-
dents in a classroom have the exact same learning 
styles and capabilities, it never works out that way. So 
it’s always necessary to adapt lessons and assignments 
to individual learners. The learning disability of in-
flexibility and poor tolerance for frustration is as 
good a reason to do Plan B as any other type of learn-
ing disability. 
• Time: Teachers often complain that they don’t have 
time to do Plan B. Of course, doing the right thing and 
fixing the problem always takes less time than doing 
the wrong thing and not fixing the problem. But it’s ab-
solutely true that the school schedule isn’t designed to 
give school personnel the time they need to discuss a 
student’s pathways, develop action plans for teaching 
the thinking skills a child lacks and using Plan B, and 
meeting periodically to assess the student’s progress 
and reconfigure the action plan. On the other hand, 
what’s done with the meeting time that does exist is 
often—don’t take this the wrong way, please—a waste 
of time. Too much time is spent telling stories (about 
the student’s behavior) rather than making sense out of 
the stories with the pathways. Too much time is spent 
agonizing and obsessing over categorization (“Does he 
need a 504 Plan or an IEP?”) rather than developing ac-
tion plans to get the job done. 

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The Plan B Classroom 
251 
• Expertise: Many educators apply to explosive students 
the same principles of discipline that were effective 
with their own children, generally with poor results. 
Other educators believe that the expertise necessary 
for understanding and helping an explosive child is 
well beyond their grasp. Not true. You need expertise 
in three domains: five pathways, three Plans, and three 
steps for doing Plan B. So chin up: If you’ve read the 
ten chapters that preceded this one, you’re well on 
your way in the expertise department. Now you just 
need experience. No time like the present. 
• A Plan B Road Map: We’re going to have to replace 
the school discipline code with something that will 
actually work: a road map for implementing Plan B. 
It’s a pretty easy road map to follow. The first goal is 
to achieve a consensus on a given student’s pathways 
and triggers (see Chapter 3). This usually requires a 
meeting or two involving all of the adults who inter-
act with the child at school. It often makes sense to 
have parents and relevant mental health professionals 
present as well. Intervening before you know what 
pathways and triggers are coming into play is akin to 
a hunter firing a shotgun randomly into the air and 
hoping to hit something good. The next goal is to pri-
oritize which problems are to be proactively solved 
(triggers) and which skills are to be proactively taught 

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252 
The Explosive Child 
(pathways), then to determine the specific roles each 
adult is to play in helping with the Plan B problem
solving and teaching. Even if the initial action plan 
goes well, the whole crew should reconvene periodi-
cally to gauge progress, revisit triggers and pathways, 
adjust goals, and revise the action plan accordingly. 
In creating the action plan, it’s important to bear 
in mind some of the principles discussed in earlier 
chapters. First, there is no quick fix. It’s worth repeat-
ing: You don’t fix a reading disability in a week, and 
you don’t fix this learning disability in a week either. 
Second, ensuring good communication among adults is 
absolutely essential. All the adults who interact with 
the child must have a clear understanding of his 
unique difficulties, the skills to implement Plan B, 
and knowledge of the action plan. Third, blaming 
doesn’t help. When things are going poorly at school, 
parents have a tendency to blame the school staff, 
and school personnel have a tendency to blame the 
parents. Blaming misses the important point: The 
child is frustrating all of us, and none of us has done 
an incredible job of helping him yet, so let’s see if we 
can put our heads together and come up with a plan 
that incorporates the best we all have to offer. 
Let’s apply the above Plan B principles to a very com-
mon trigger, homework, which may well be the most 

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The Plan B Classroom 
253 
common cause of explosions. Many explosive children 
find homework to be extremely frustrating, perhaps 
because they don’t have any brain energy left after a 
long day at school, or because their medication has worn 
off, or because they have learning problems that make 
homework completion an agonizing task, or because 
homework—especially long-term assignments—requires 
a lot of organization and planning. Thus, it’s no accident 
that these children often exhibit some of their most ex-
treme explosiveness while they’re trying to do homework. 
Do these difficulties render some children incapable of 
completing the same homework assignments as their 
classmates? Sometimes. Does having a child explode rou-
tinely over homework help him feel more successful 
about, and set the stage for, future completion of home-
work? No. With Plan A, the teacher is simply insisting that 
a child complete his homework, regardless of the toll it 
takes on the child and on the folks who are enforcing the 
teacher’s will at home. With Plan C, the teacher is drop-
ping the homework expectation completely. 
And with Plan B? First, we’re going to operate on the 
assumption that if the student could do all the home-
work you’ve assigned, he would. Then we’re going to get 
a good handle on the factors (including pathways) that 
are contributing to the child’s difficulties on homework. 
Then we’re going to apply the expertise we’ve obtained 
from the preceding chapters and engage the child and/or 

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254 
The Explosive Child 
his parent(s) in a Plan B discussion. Here’s how it might 
sound with a parent: