A new Approach for Understanding and Parenting Easily Frustrated

Parent: It’s time to stop playing Nintendo and get 
ready for bed. 
Child (responding with more emotion than thought): 
Damn! I’m right in the middle of an important 
game! 
Parent (perhaps also responding with more emotion 
than thought): You’re always right in the middle of 
an important game. Get to bed! Now! 
Child: Sh-t! You made me mess up my game! 
Parent: I messed up your game? Get your butt in 
gear before I mess up something else! 
Child: 
(Kaboom) 
As this dialogue suggests, if you respond to a child 
who’s having difficulty separating affect by imposing 
your will more intensively and “teaching him who’s the 
boss,” you probably won’t help him manage his emotions 

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Pathways and Triggers 
31 
and think rationally in the midst of frustration. Quite 
the opposite, in fact. So we often tell explosive children 
and their parents and teachers that there are only two 
goals: Goal number two: Think clearly in the midst of frus-
tration. Goal number one: Stay calm enough to achieve 
goal number two. 
LANGUAGE PROCESSING SKILLS 
How might lagging language processing skills set the 
stage for a child to have a learning disability in the do-
mains of flexibility and frustration tolerance? Most of 
the thinking and communicating we humans do in-
volves language. Indeed, language is what separates hu-
mans from other species. For example, dogs don’t have 
language. So if you were to step on a dog’s tail, he’d 
have only three options: bark at you, bite you, or run 
away. But if you step on the metaphoric tail of a lin-
guistically compromised human being, he’d have only 
the same three options: bark at you, bite you, or run 
away. From this perspective, swearing can be thought of 
as nothing more or less than the human “bark.” It’s what 
we humans do when we can’t think of a more articulate 
way to express ourselves. 
Many prominent theorists have underscored the im-
portance of language skills in helping us humans reflect, 

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32 
The Explosive Child 
self-regulate, set goals, and manage emotions. Let’s ex-
amine the role of three specific language skills— 
categorizing and expressing emotions, identifying and 
articulating one’s needs, and solving problems—to eluci-
date why this might be. 
Many explosive children don’t have a basic vocabulary 
for categorizing and expressing their emotions. This is a 
big problem, for it’s actually very useful to be able to let 
people know you’re “frustrated” when you’re frustrated. 
Can you imagine feeling all the sensations associated 
with frustration—hot-faced, agitated, tense, explosive, 
and so on—without being able to let people know what 
you’re feeling? Under such circumstances, there’s some 
reasonable chance that words other than “frustrated” will 
come out of your mouth. (“Screw you,” “I hate you,” “Shut 
up,” and “Leave me alone” are some of the milder possi-
bilities.) Worse, if you don’t have the word “frustrated” in 
your vocabulary, there’s a pretty surefire chance that 
people are going to think you’re something else (“angry,” 
“hostile,” “out-of-control,” “scary”). Then they’re going to 
treat you as if you’re angry, hostile, out-of-control, or 
scary, and you’re going to get even more frustrated. 
Some children do just fine at categorizing and labeling 
their feelings but have trouble coming up with the words 
to tell you what’s the matter or what they need. For ex-
ample, most eighteen-month-old children don’t yet have 
the skills to tell us what they need using words. So when 

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Pathways and Triggers 
33 
they need something, they point, grunt, cry, or babble. 
Then we get to try to figure out what they’re trying to 
“say.” I’m hungry? My diaper’s wet? Can you play with 
me? I’m tired? But there are many older children (and 
adults) whose skills at telling people what’s the matter or 
what they need are not significantly greater than the av-
erage eighteen-month-old. That’s frustrating! 
Finally, language is the mechanism by which most 
people solve problems. That’s because a lot (if not most) 
of the thinking we do in solving problems is in the form 
of language. And also because most of the solutions we 
have stored in our brains (from problems we’ve solved or 
seen solved previously) are in the form of language as 
well. (We humans aren’t quite as creative as we think we 
are in the problem-solving department: We rely almost 
exclusively on past experience to help us solve problems 
in the present.) For example, if you find you have a flat 
tire, you don’t have to do a whole lot of original thinking 
to solve the problem. You just have to think about how 
you (or those you’ve observed) have solved that problem 
previously. There aren’t that many possibilities. You 
could fix the tire yourself, call your significant other, ask 
someone for help, call a service station, swear, cry, or 
leave the car for junk (some of those solutions would be 
more effective at solving the problem than others). The 
process of accessing previous solutions tends to be auto-
matic and efficient for many children. But children 

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34 
The Explosive Child 
whose language skills are lagging may have difficulty effi-
ciently accessing past solutions that are stored in lan-
guage. Take George, for example: