Detective Work
Tools for Understanding & Navigating Blow Ups
Dr. Ross Greene offers some tips that can help parents and teachers uncover the root cause of children's struggles with major blow-ups. He also explains steps we can take to work together with our children to address them.
Consider This Example
Jennifer, age eleven, wakes up, makes her bed, looks around her room to make sure everything is in its place, and heads into the kitchen to make herself breakfast. She peers into the freezer, removes the container of frozen waffles, and counts six waffles. Thinking to herself, "I'll have three waffles this morning and three tomorrow morning," Jennifer toasts her three waffles and sits down to eat.
Moments later, her mother and five-year-old brother, Adam, enter the kitchen, and the mother asks Adam what he'd like to eat for breakfast. Adam responds, "Waffles," and the mother reaches into the freezer for the waffles. Jennifer, who has been listening intently, explodes.
"He can't have the frozen waffles!" Jennifer screams, her face suddenly reddening.
"Why not?" asks the mother, her voice and pulse rising, at a loss for an explanation of Jennifer's behavior.
"I was going to have those waffles tomorrow morning!"
Jennifer screams, jumping out of her chair.
"I'm not telling your brother he can't have waffles!" the mother yells back.
"He can't have them!" screams Jennifer, now face-to-face with her mother.
Greene, R. W. (2021, pp. 1–2). The Explosive Child Updated and Revised Edition: A New Approach for Understanding and Parenting Easily Frustrated, Chronically Inflexible Children. Harper Paperbacks.
This illustrates some of the nuances behind behaviors and emotions. Like adults, some kids may just have a rough day once in a while, and this kind of reaction is rare. But other kids are more rigid, inflexible, or don’t yet have the coping skills to work through these seemingly small problems. Neurodiverse children are also more likely to need extra support in this area. Greene lays out a dynamic approach that can be a game-changer for these kids (and families), but it takes some work.
According to Greene: “Challenging behavior occurs when the demands and expectations being placed on a kid exceed the kid’s capacity to respond adaptively…and some kids are better equipped (i.e., have the skills) to handle certain demands and expectations.”
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