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

by Ross W. Greene

Solving problems is a task ill-suited to time-outs, stickers, berating, lecturing, ignoring, taking away privileges, sending a child to his room, spanking, and a lot of other things caregivers do with the best of intentions.

First, both nature and nurture are always implicated when it comes to a child’s development.

Other kids—the unlucky ones—scream, swear, hit, kick, bite, spit, destroy property, or worse. These behaviors are definitely more severe, and we adults tend to respond to them in ways that are far less empathic and far harsher and more punitive.

Those lagging skills don’t diminish your child’s many positive attributes,