A new Approach for Understanding and Parenting Easily Frustrated

Parent: The reason Oscar doesn’t listen to us is that 
he thinks he’s so much smarter than we are. 
Now, it’s not uncommon for people to make inaccu-
rate inferences about one another. Indeed, responding ef-
fectively to these inaccuracies—in other words, setting 
people straight about yourself in a manner they can 
understand—is a real talent and requires some pretty 
complex, rapid processing. Of course, in an explosive 
child, the demand for complex, rapid processing presents 
a small problem: he’s not very good at it. So while there 
are some children who can respond to speculation by 
making appropriate, corrective statements to set the 
record straight, an explosive child may hear himself being 
talked about inaccurately and become extremely frus-
trated. This is an undesirable circumstance in and of it-
self, but it’s especially undesirable because whether Oscar 
thinks he’s smarter than his parents probably isn’t worth 

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212 
The Explosive Child 
spending much time discussing. In fact, this topic is a red 
herring that just distracts everyone from the main issue, 
which is that Oscar and his parents still haven’t figured 
out how to get past his inflexibility and poor tolerance for 
frustration so they can discuss and resolve important is-
sues. Of course, speculation can be a two-way street. 
From a child’s mouth, it might sound something like this: 
Oscar: The only reason you guys get so mad at me 
so much is because you like pushing me around. 
Such statements can have the same detouring effect, 
especially when adults follow the careening child in 
front of them straight through the flashing lights and de-
tour barriers and right off the cliff: 
Mother: Yes, that’s exactly right, our main goal in life 
is to push you around. I can’t believe you’d say 
that, after all we’ve been through with you.