A new Approach for Understanding and Parenting Easily Frustrated

particular, whacked me on the back and smiled at me 
before?”) in order to interpret the cue (“Was this an 
overexuberant greeting or an aggressive act?”). Then he 
has to think about what he wants to have happen next 

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Pathways and Triggers 
45 
(“That was a mean thing to do . . . I’d like to avoid get-
ting into a fight with this person” or “That was a nice 
greeting . . . I’d like to play a game with him”). Then, 
on the basis of his interpretation of the cue and the 
outcome he desires, the boy must begin to think about 
how to respond, either by remembering his experiences 
in similar situations or by thinking of new responses. 
Then, he must evaluate the different possible responses, 
consider the likely outcomes of each (“If I smile back, 
he’ll probably ask me to play a game with him”), choose 
a response, enact it, monitor the course of events 
throughout, and adjust the response accordingly. 
Sounds like a lot of thinking for one event, yes? The 
key point is that this process is nonstop and requires a lot 
of efficiency and flexibility. It’s barely noticeable to peo-
ple for whom it happens automatically, but it’s very frus-
trating if you’re not one of those people. 
Many explosive children have trouble attending to ap-
propriate social cues and nuances; do not accurately inter-
pret those cues (“He hates me,” “Everybody’s out to get 
me,” “No one likes me”); are inefficient at connecting cues 
with past experience; may not be very efficient at consid-
ering how they want a social interaction to ensue; may 
have a limited repertoire of responses and end up apply-
ing the identical responses (giggling, poking, intruding) to 
situations in which such responses are inappropriate; may 
be quite unskilled at recognizing how they’re coming 

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46 
The Explosive Child 
across or appreciating how their behavior is affecting oth-
ers; and may lack the skills for handling the most basic of 
social interactions (starting a conversation, entering a 
group, sharing). Such children—who suffer from what 
Daniel Goleman has referred to as emotional illiteracy— 
are likely to find social interactions extremely frustrating. 
This can, at the least, contribute to the child’s general 
level of frustration; at worst, it may lead to a chronic pat-
tern of explosions. 
Can these children be helped to develop more adap-
tive social skills? Yes, usually. It does take a while. But 
only if adults recognize that trying hard to motivate a 
child who’s already motivated to do well wouldn’t be the 
best way to go about teaching the social skills that are 
lacking. 
Just in case you were wondering, children are often defi-
cient in skills that cut across multiple pathways. Perhaps 
the most important thing the pathways can help us un-
derstand is that flexibility and frustration tolerance are 
not skills that come naturally to all children. We tend to 
think that all children are created equal in these capaci-
ties, and this tendency causes many adults to believe that 
explosive children must not want to be compliant and 
handle frustration in an adaptable way. As you now 
know, in most cases this simply isn’t true. 

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Pathways and Triggers 
47 
By the way, there’s a big difference between interpret-
ing the pathways described in this chapter as “excuses” 
rather than as “explanations.” When the pathways are in-
voked as excuses, the door slams shut on the process of 
thinking about how to help a child. Conversely, when the 
pathways are used as explanations for a child’s behavior, 
the door to helping swings wide open, for the pathways 
provide us with an improved understanding of the 
child’s needs and a clearer sense of what we need to do 
next. It’s very difficult to be helpful without this compre-
hensive, in-depth understanding of a child’s difficulties. 
TRIGGERS 
There’s one other piece of terminology to cover before 
the chapter ends: triggers. 
What’s a trigger? A situation or event that routinely 
precipitates explosive outbursts. Triggers can best be 
thought of as problems that have yet to be solved. The pos-
sibilities are endless, but here’s the short list: homework, 
sensory hypersensitivities, tics, sibling interactions, bed-
time, waking up in the morning, meals, being bored, rid-
ing in the car, recess, being teased, reading, writing, being 
tired, being hot, or being hungry. 
So while the pathways are what set the stage for a 
child to be explosive (skills that need to be trained), trig-

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48 
The Explosive Child 
gers are the situations or events over which the child is 
actually exploding. Help the child develop the thinking 
skills and solve the problems and there won’t be any 
more explosions. 
Once you know what your child’s pathways and triggers 
are, his explosions become highly predictable. Lots of 
folks believe that a child’s explosions are unpredictable 
and occur “out of the blue,” but that theory is seldom 
substantiated. For reasons that will become much clearer 
in Chapter 6, predictable explosions are a lot easier to 
deal with than unpredictable ones. 

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4 
Pathways and Triggers 
Brought to Life 
A
s you might imagine—given 
the different pathways and triggers that could be in-
volved with each individual child—inflexibility and poor 
frustration tolerance can look different in different chil-
dren. So that the characteristics you’ve read about start 
to come to life, it’s useful for you to have a good idea of 
what they look like in other kids. You’ll probably see sim-
ilarities between the children described in this chapter 
and the explosive child you’re trying to parent or teach. 
These children and their families are revisited in one way 
or another throughout the book. 
49 

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50 
The Explosive Child 
CASEY 
Casey was a six-year-old boy who lived with his parents 
and younger sister. His parents reported that, at home, 
Casey was very hyperactive, had difficulty playing by 
himself (but wasn’t great at playing with other kids, ei-
ther), and had a lot of difficulty with transitions (getting 
him to come indoors after playing outside was often a 
major ordeal). His parents also reported that Casey 
seemed to be quite bright, in that he had excellent mem-
ory for factual information, but that he became anxious 
when presented with new tasks or situations and was fre-
quently in an irritable, agitated mood. The parents had 
read a lot about ADHD; while they thought that this di-
agnosis fit Casey, they felt that many of his difficulties 
fell outside the realm of this disorder. They thought the 
term “control freak” fit their son better than any tradi-
tional diagnosis. Casey was quite restricted and rigid in 
the clothes he was willing to wear and the food he was 
willing to eat (he often complained that certain fabrics 
were annoying to him and that many common foods 
“smelled funny”). Most of these characteristics had been 
present since Casey was a toddler. 
His parents had previously consulted a psychologist, 
who helped them establish a reward and punishment 
program. The parents vigilantly implemented the pro-
gram but found that Casey’s hyperactivity, inflexibility, 
and irritability were more potent than his clear desire to 

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Pathways and Triggers Brought to Life 
51 
obtain rewards and avoid punishments. Indeed, the pro-
gram actually seemed to frustrate him further, but the 
psychologist encouraged the parents to stick with it, cer-
tain that Casey’s behavior would improve. It didn’t, so 
the parents discontinued the program after about three 
months. They often tried to talk to Casey about his be-
havior, but even when he was in a good mood, his capac-
ity for thinking about his own behavior seemed limited; 
after a few seconds, he would yell “I can’t talk about this 
right now!” and run out of the room. 
Casey had difficulties at school, too. His first-grade 
teacher reported that Casey would occasionally hit or 
yell at other children during less structured activities,