Daniel+Carr,+The+Explosive+Child

The Explosive Child

media type="youtube" key="x7VS-zlURFM" width="425" height="350" The explosive child is:

*Extremely weak in the areas of flexibility, problem-solving, adaptability, and frustration tolerance *Prone to frequent and serious tantrums that can Include verbal abuse, destroying things, and physical violence against other human beings or animals. *Resistant to positive and negative reinforcement––it doesn't work.

Why I Chose This Topic:

To be perfectly honest, I chose this topic because I wanted to cover something that no one else had chosen. That said, I'm glad I chose it; some of the resources provided, namely the first set of videos I've included, are some of the best I've come across in all of my forays into the world of Wikis. Most of what follows is based on the work of Dr. Greene, as he is psychologist who coined the term "Explosive Child" and has described it extensively in his work.

__** Top 5 Things I've Learned for Working With Explosive Children: **__


 * 1) If kids can do well they will.**

One of the popular philosophies that guides many adult reactions to explosive kids is, misguidedly, that these kids do well only when they want to. The implication of kids do well if they want to is that the adults role then is to make kids want to do well. Kids who don't do well are labeled as coercive, attention seeking, limit-testing, and on and on. The way to get kids to want to do well if they don't is through the use of rewards and punishment. Unfortunately, if kids already want to well but can't, then there is a problem. The alternate philosophy is that if kids can do well, they will. The ramifications of this approach is very different than the former. If kids will do well if they can, then that implies if a kid is not doing well, then there must be something standing in his or her way. Under this philosophy,** the role of the adult is to find out what problem is standing in the way of the kid using cooperative problem solving **.

(See Dr. Greene, video 1)

__**2) The Explosive Child is the result of developmental delay, not bad parenting.**__

Dr. Greene's discovery of his developmental delay theory was based on his early work. In his first few years as a psychologist, he found that all of the advice he was giving, that is, parents of explosive children need to be better at parenting, wasn't working. Then he decided to start listening to parents, and he discovered that, to his surprise, parents of explosive children often had other children who were not explosive. This led him to the theory that explosivity among the children he was working with was not a learned behavior, in other words, a functional behavior designed to get something the kid wanted or to avoid something they didn't want, but rather developmental in its nature. ** These delays he noted were related to cognitive skills in the areas of flexibility, adaptability, frustration tolerance, and problem solving.. **

(See Dr. Greene, video 2)


 * __ 3) When you treat explosive children as if they have a developmental delay, with the same level of compassion and understand as you would treat kids with other developmental delays, they get better. __**

Conversely,** if you treat kids as if they are unmotivated, attention seeking, and coercive, then they will get worse. ** We would never treat a kid with a reading disability this way, and we need to think the same way about explosive children. These kids are lacking skills in key areas due to developmental delays. That's it.

(See Dr. Greene, videos 4 & 5)


 * __4) It's better to deal with challenging behaviors before they become a crisis.__**


 * Challenging behaviors of explosive children are highly predictable. //Don't wait until you are in a crisis to deal with it!// **

(See Dr. Greene, video 5)

__**5) There are three steps to effectively helping explosive children: Empathy, Define the Problem, The Invitation.**__


 * The first step, empathy, is all about information gathering **. Dr. Greene recommends going about this using the following sentence frame: I've notice (plainly describe behavior X), what's up? The next step is listening, and it may take a kid awhile to respond; no one may have ever asked him or her. When the kid responds, the next step is to drill for information and find out what's going on. This is not an aggressive act of interrogation, but simple information gathering questions to get to the root of the problem.


 * The second step is defining the problem. This is where the adult gets to put their concerns on the table. ** According to Dr. Greene, all adult concerns can be fit into three categories: Safety, learning, and how the behavior is impacting oneself or others.

The final step is cooperative problem solving. ** Once both concerns are clearly stated, then it becomes possible to work towards a win-win solutio **n. For more, see the videos below.

(See Youtube video #5 & #6)

RESOURCES:

The following six videos are of a presentation made by Dr. Greene. I give the whole series a 5 out of 5 stars; After I saw the first one I could not stop watching them.

Video 1: media type="youtube" key="jvzQQDfAL-Q" width="425" height="350" Video 2: media type="youtube" key="vokGMLxP9DA" width="425" height="350" Video 3: media type="youtube" key="vokGMLxP9DA" width="425" height="350" Video 4: media type="youtube" key="LfiYmUxKOXM" width="425" height="350" Video 5: media type="youtube" key="QTG6kQot3f8" width="425" height="350" Video 6: media type="youtube" key="ARIEXN1yf00" width="425" height="350"

http://advancedpsychcare.tripod.com/sitebuildercontent/sitebuilderfiles/explosive.child.pdf

This is a PDF article that is the perfect companion to Dr. Greene's videos. This article is an expansion of Dr. Greene's work by Dr. Brian Richardson, and it is focused on the practical application of Dr. Greene's approach. In its 33 pages, you will find a myriad of tools to help you work with explosive children. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED. 5 out of 5.

http://www.ehow.com/about_5427915_explosive-child-syndrome.html

This article gets a 3 out 5. It is short, concise, and does a great overview of the subject of explosive children. It does not have enough information, however, to warrant any more than 3 stars.

http://www.achangeinthinking.com/PDF/inflexibleexplosivechildren0807.pdf

This is a link to an article that is slightly more in-depth, but not much. A quick primer that is good to look at in conjunction with other resources. 3 out of 5.

http://www.oprah.com/oprahshow/The-Warning-Signs-of-Explosive-Childhood-Rage

I like this interview with Dr. Greene because in it he talks about the implosive child, that is, the child who violently internalizes their frustration. 4 out of 5.