The Explosive Child: A New Approach for Understanding and Parenting Easily Frustrated, Chronically Inflexible Children

by Ross W. Greene

As you know, solving problems is much easier if a person has the ability to think through solutions. The emotions people feel in the midst of frustration can make rational thinking more difficult. It’s not that the emotions are all bad: they can be useful for mobilizing or energizing people to solve a problem. But the skill of putting one’s emotions aside so as to think through solutions to problems more objectively, rationally, and logically is really important. Kids who are pretty good at this skill tend to respond to problems or frustrations with more thought than emotion, and that’s good. Children whose skills in this domain are lacking tend to respond to problems or frustrations with less thought and more emotion, and that’s not good at all.