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

by Ross W. Greene

If your kid could be more flexible, handle frustration more adaptively, and solve problems more proficiently, he would, because kids do well if they can.

Handling problems and frustrations adaptively requires important skills, ones your child is lacking. It is very important that you come to see your child through the prism of lagging skills rather than lagging motivation.

Your child’s concerning behaviors—whether lucky or unlucky—are communicating that he is having difficulty...

“Bad attitudes” tend to be the by-product of countless years of being misunderstood, overcorrected, overdirected, and overpunished by adults who didn’t recognize that a kid lacked crucial thinking skills. But kids are resilient; they come around if we start doing the right thing.