A new Approach for Understanding and Parenting Easily Frustrated

Mother: Mickey, why so grumpy? It’s a beautiful day 
outside. Why are you indoors? 
Mickey (slumped in a chair, agitated): It’s windy. 
Mother: It’s windy? 
Mickey (more agitated): I said it’s windy. I hate wind. 
Mother: Mickey, you could be out playing 
basketball, swimming . . . you’re this upset over a 
little wind? 
Mickey (very agitated): It’s too windy, dammit! 
Leave me alone! 
Anxiety falls under the “emotion regulation skills” 
category as well because, similar to irritability, anxiety 

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38 
The Explosive Child 
has the potential to make rational thought much more 
difficult. Of course, it’s when we’re anxious about 
something—a monster under the bed, an upcoming test, 
a new or unpredictable situation—that clear thinking is 
most crucial. This combination of anxiety and irrational-
ity causes some children (the lucky ones) to cry. But a 
substantial number of them (the unlucky ones) explode. 
(The cryers are the lucky ones because we adults tend to 
take things far less personally and respond far more em-
pathically to children who cry than we do to children 
who explode, even though the two behaviors often em-
anate from the same source.) Also, it seems pretty clear 
that many obsessive-compulsive children begin ritualiz-
ing because, in the absence of rational thought, the ritu-
als are the only things they can come up with to reduce 
their anxiety. 
Let’s use me as an example. I used to be flight-
anxious . . . that’s right, scared of flying. No, I wasn’t in-
tentionally being anxious (sweaty palms, racing heart, 
catastrophic thoughts) so flight attendants would pay at-
tention to me. I was truly unnerved to find myself five 
miles above the earth going five hundred miles per hour 
in an aluminum apparatus filled with gasoline, with my 
life in the hands of people (the pilots and air traffic con-
trollers) I’d never met. To control this anxiety, I used to 
engage in a few important rituals to ensure the safe 
progress of my flight: I had to sit in a window seat (so I 

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Pathways and Triggers 
39 
could scan the skies for oncoming aircraft), and had to 
review the emergency instruction card before the plane 
took off. I knew these rituals worked because all the 
flights I’d been on had delivered me safely to my desti-
nation. 
Did these rituals cause me to behave oddly at times? 
On one flight, my plane was cruising along at thirty-
three thousand feet or so and I was, as usual, vigilantly 
scanning the horizon for threatening aircraft. Then the 
unthinkable happened: I spotted an aircraft far off on 
the horizon ascending in the general direction of my air-
plane. By my expert calculation, we had about five min-
utes before the paths of the two planes crossed and my 
life would come to an abrupt, fiery end. So I did what 
any very anxious, increasingly irrational, human being 
would do: I rang for the flight attendant. There was no 
time to spare. 
“Do you see that airplane down there?” I sputtered, 
pointing toward the speck many miles off in the dis-
tance. She peered out the window. “Do you think the 
captain knows it’s there?” I demanded. 
The flight attendant tried to hide her amusement (or 
amazement, I wasn’t sure which) and said, “I’ll be sure to 
let him know.” 
I was greatly relieved, albeit certain that my heroism 
was not fully appreciated by either the flight attendant 
or the passengers seated near me (who were now scan-

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40 
The Explosive Child 
ning the aircraft for empty seats to move to). The plane 
landed safely, of course, and as I was leaving the airplane 
once we’d landed, the flight attendant and pilot were 
waiting at the door and smiled as I approached. The 
flight attendant tugged on the pilot’s sleeve and intro-
duced me: “Captain, this is the gentleman who was help-
ing you fly the plane.” 
I’m proud to say that although I still generally prefer 
window seats, I no longer scan the skies for oncoming air-
craft or review the emergency manual (and have sur-
vived hundreds of flights on which I did neither). How 
did I get over my flight anxiety? Experience. And by 
thinking (clearly). An Air Florida pilot got the process 
going. As I was boarding this Air Florida flight, the cap-
tain was greeting passengers at the door of the aircraft. I 
seized the opportunity. 
“You’re going to fly the plane safely, aren’t you?” I 
sputtered. 
The pilot’s response was more helpful than he knew: 
“What, you think I want to die, buddy?” 
That the pilot wasn’t particularly enthusiastic about 
dying was an important revelation, and it got me think-
ing. About the thousands of planes in the air across the 
world at any given time and the slim odds of something 
disastrous happening to the plane that I was on. About 
the millions of flights that arrive at their destinations un-
eventfully each year. About the many, many flights I have 

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Pathways and Triggers 
41 
been on that arrived safely. About how calm the flight at-
tendants look. About how many of my fellow passengers 
are fast asleep. Even when there’s turbulence. Quite un-
intentionally, that Air Florida pilot had given me a new 
way of thinking, which was helpful to me during mo-
ments when I was inclined to become highly irrational. 
Instead of staring out the window thinking “What if the 
wing falls off?” I could instead think a less anxiety-
provoking thought, such as, “The pilot doesn’t want to 
die” or “The likelihood of something catastrophic hap-
pening to my aircraft is really quite slim.” As you’ll see, 
one of the most valuable things we can do for an explo-
sive child is to help him stay rational at times when he’s 
likely to become irrational. 
Can irritable or anxious children be helped to prob-
lem solve more adaptively and at the same time reduce 
their irritability and anxiety? Certainly. But not by put-
ting a lot of effort into coming up with new and creative 
ways to punish them. 
COGNITIVE FLEXIBILITY SKILLS 
Very young children tend to be fairly rigid, black-and-
white, literal, inflexible thinkers. That’s because they’re 
still making sense of the world and it’s easier to put two 
and two together if you don’t have to worry about ex-

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42 
The Explosive Child 
ceptions to the rule or alternative ways of looking at 
things. As children develop, they learn that, in fact, most 
things in life are “gray”: There are exceptions to the rule 
and alternative ways of interpreting things. We don’t go 
home from Grandma’s house the same way every time; 
we don’t eat dinner at the exact same time every day; 
and the weather doesn’t always cooperate with our 
plans. Unfortunately, for some children, gray thinking 
doesn’t develop as readily as we might wish. Though they 
are often diagnosed with disorders such as nonverbal 
learning disability or Asperger’s disorder, these children 
can best be thought of as “black-and-white thinkers 
stuck in a gray world.” They often have significant diffi-
culty approaching the world in a flexible, adaptable way 
and become extremely frustrated when events don’t pro-
ceed as they had originally configured. 
More specifically, these children often have a strong 
preference for predictability and routines, and struggle 
when events are unpredictable, uncertain, and ambigu-
ous. These are the kids who run into trouble when they 
need to adjust or reconfigure their expectations, tend to 
overfocus on facts and details, and often have trouble 
recognizing the obvious or “seeing the big picture.” In 
practical terms, this is the child who may insist on going 
out for recess at a certain time on a given day because it 
is the time the class “always goes out” for recess, failing 
to take into account both the likely consequences of in-
sisting on the original plan of action (e.g., being at re-

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Pathways and Triggers 
43 
cess alone) and important conditions (an assembly, per-
haps) that would suggest the need for an adaptation in 
plan. These children may experience enormous frustra-
tion as they struggle to apply concrete rules to a world 
where few such rules apply: