A new Approach for Understanding and Parenting Easily Frustrated

Eric: Huh? 
Mother: But that’s not what we wanted to talk to you 
about. You’re staying up too late doing your 
homework. 
Eric: I get it done, don’t I? 
Father: Yes, apparently you do, but we want you to 
get it done earlier so you get more sleep. 
Eric: I get enough sleep. 
Father: We don’t think you do. You’re very grouchy in 
the morning, and you have trouble waking up. 
We want you to do your homework when you get 
home from school from now on. 
Eric: I’m not doing my homework when I get home 
from school! I need a break when I get home 
from school! What difference does it make? 
Mother: It makes a difference to us. Now, your father 
and I have already talked this over, so there’s no 
discussion on it. You need to get your homework 
done when you get home from school. 
Eric: No freaking way. 

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Family Matters 
217 
Hmmm. Eric may or may not actually be interested in 
thinking about how to get his homework done earlier. Ei-
ther way, perfectionism (combined with Plan A) is not a 
particularly effective way to engage him in a discussion 
on the topic. 
Other maladaptive communication patterns include: 
sarcasm, which is either totally lost on explosive children 
(especially the black-and-white thinking variety) or ex-
tremely frustrating to them because they don’t have the 
skills to figure out that the parent meant the exact oppo-
site of what he or she actually said; put-downs (Parent: 
“What’s the matter with you?! Why can’t you be more like 
your sister?”); ruination, sometimes called “catastrophiz-
ing,” in which parents greatly exaggerate the effect of cur-
rent behavior on a child’s future well-being (Parent:“We’ve 
resigned ourselves to the fact that Hector will probably end 
up in jail someday”); interrupting (Don’t forget, the child is 
probably having trouble sorting through his thoughts in 
the first place—your interruptions don’t help); lecturing 
(“How many times do I have to tell you . . .”); dwelling on 
the past (“Listen, kid, your duck’s been upside down in 
the water for a long time . . . you think I’m gonna get all 
excited just because you’ve put together a few good 
months?”); and talking through a third person (“I’m very up-
set about this, and your father is going to tell you why . . .
isn’t that right, dear?”). All very counterproductive. 
Over time the goal is for you to be able to communi-
cate with your explosive child in a way that demonstrates 

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218 
The Explosive Child 
to him that you can control yourself during discussions, 
stay on topic, recognize when discussions aren’t going 
anywhere, get the discussion back on track, and deal 
more adaptively with things that are frustrating to you 
both. This is very hard to do, and it’s made even harder 
by the fact that you probably have very powerful feelings 
of your own that influence the way you react to your 
child. But things can change; you may just need a little 
help to make them change. 
PARENTS 
Needless to say, living with an explosive child is a lot eas-
ier when adults communicate well enough to implement 
Plan B. At the least, the adults need to reach a consensus 
on how they want to approach specific problems or un-
met expectations. If you’re unable to reach such a con-
sensus, your child will have to continue to handle two 
completely different sets of expectations, and we already 
know that boat won’t float. 
While an explosive child can put pressure on adults’ 
relationships with each other, troubles between a couple 
can make life with such a child much more difficult to 
deal with. For partners who aren’t even very good at col-
laboratively solving problems with each other, working 
things out with a child may be even more challenging. 

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Family Matters 
219