A new Approach for Understanding and Parenting Easily Frustrated

Language Processing Skills 
Some of the skills discussed above can emanate from 
difficulties in language processing. But, as you read in 
Chapter 3, there are a few other language processing skills 
worth thinking about as they relate to your child’s ability to 
deal effectively with frustration. Some children, for exam-
ple, have trouble expressing the fact that they’re frustrated. 
In other words, they lack a basic vocabulary of feeling 
words, so they don’t have the words to tell you that they’re 
frustrated. Instead, they swear or hit or destroy things. 
So if a child is lacking a basic vocabulary of feeling 

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Teach Your Children Well 
189 
words, there’s only one thing to do: Teach him a basic vo-
cabulary of feeling words, starting with happy, sad, and, of 
course, frustrated. Why only three words? Because— 
regardless of a person’s age—if you’re overambitious in 
teaching new skills you won’t teach any skills at all. And 
because those three feelings cover about 80 percent of hu-
man emotions anyway. Once a child becomes comfortable 
with and begins using this rudimentary vocabulary, more 
sophisticated feeling words—despondent, dysphoric, dis-
enfranchised, discombobulated—can be added to a child’s 
repertoire. 
For some kids, even starting with the word frustrated 
is too advanced. Some actually can’t say the word, in 
which case “angry” or “mad” will suffice. For some, saying 
any words is too frustrating, in which case it’s often use-
ful to have the child point to a picture of a frustrated 
face or rank their level of frustration with numbers, a 0 
to 5 ranking system, in which 0 denotes “not frustrated at 
all” and 5 denotes “really, really frustrated”; or colors, for 
example, green denotes “not frustrated at all,” yellow sig-
nifies “starting to get frustrated,” and red denotes “really, 
really, frustrated.” Of course, it’s important for the adults 
to use the same terminology as the child and to give the 
child opportunities for using the language at times other 
than when he’s most frustrated. 
For example, Helen—a child you read about in Chap-
ter 4—learned and practiced her rudimentary vocabu-

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190 
The Explosive Child 
lary by discussing the past day’s events with her parents 
at bedtime. The parents would ask her what happened 
during the day that made her happy, whether anything 
made her sad, and whether anything caused her to feel 
frustrated. If Helen couldn’t remember specific events 
that fit one of these three categories, her parents would 
suggest some possibilities. If Helen had difficulty labeling 
the emotions that were associated with a particular 
event, her parents would help her. The parents made 
sure Helen’s teacher was also aware of her new vocabu-
lary so that Helen didn’t become confused by different 
terminology. When Helen became frustrated and ex-
pressed her frustration inappropriately (“No! I can’t do 
that right now!” “Leave me alone!” “Screw you!” or worse), 
her parents and teacher would calmly remind her of her 
new vocabulary (“Boy, you sure sound frustrated!”). Over 
the course of several months Helen began to express her 
emotions in a much more appropriate manner across an 
increased number and range of situations. And her vocab-
ulary of emotions slowly became broader and more so-
phisticated and eventually included such terms as confused, 
disappointed, excited, bored, and annoyed. 
Don’t forget: Just as a child with a reading disability 
won’t begin reading overnight, a child (explosive or not) 
who has difficulty recognizing, expressing, or describing 
frustration won’t begin using his new vocabulary over-
night. There’s no quick fix. But this isn’t rocket science, 

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Teach Your Children Well 
191 
either. The skills we’re teaching are fairly basic. It’s just 
that consequences don’t teach them. 
So if swearing is usually a sign that a child doesn’t cur-
rently have the linguistic skills to express frustration 
adaptively, then responding to swearing with “I refuse to 
be spoken to like that!” or “Go to your room and come 
back when you’re ready to talk to me the right way!” 
wouldn’t get the job done (unless your child actually 
lacked the knowledge that you didn’t want to be spoken 
to that way or wasn’t motivated to speak to you the right 
way).