Product Description

A groundbreaking approach to understanding and parenting children who frequently exhibit severe fits of temper and other intractable behaviours, from a distinguished clinician and pioneer in this field, now updated to include the most recent research.

Almost everyone knows an explosive child, one whose frequent, severe fits of temper leave his or her parents standing helpless in their fear, frustration, and guilt. Most of these parents have tried everything—reasoning, behaviour modification, therapy, medication—but to no avail. They wonder if their child is deviant or just plain bad.

Dr. Ross Greene has worked with thousands of explosive children, and he has good news: these kids aren't bad, and neither are their parents. Rather, explosive children suffer from a physiological deficiency in frustration tolerance and flexibility. Throughout this compassionate book, Dr. Greene demonstrates why traditional treatments don't work for these kids and offers a new conceptual framework for understanding their behaviour, along with new language to describe it. He explains the latest neuroscience findings about the importance of flexibility, and, most important, he shows parents specific, practical ways they can recognize the signs of an impending explosion, defuse tension, and reduce frustration levels for the entire family.

• For parents, psychologists, educators and ADHD groups.
• In addition to the scientific foundation of the book, Greene addresses parents in practical ways that will help show results in difficult children and their effect on families.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1655 in Books
• Published on: 2005-09-01
• Released on: 2005-09-20
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 320 pages

Amazon.com
Flexibility and tolerance are learned skills, as any parent knows if they've seen an irascible 2-year-old grow into a pleasant, thoughtful, and considerate older child. Unfortunately, for reasons that are poorly understood, a few children don't "get" this part of socialization. Years after toddler tantrums should have become an unpleasant memory, a few unlucky parents find themselves battling with sudden, inexplicable, disturbingly violent rages--along with crushing guilt about what they "did wrong." Medical experts haven't helped much: the flurry of acronyms and labels (Tourette's, ADHD, ADD, etc.) seems to proffer new discoveries about the causes of such explosions, when in fact the only new development is alternative vocabulary to describe the effects. Ross Greene, a pediatric psychologist who also teaches at Harvard Medical School, makes a bold and humane attempt in this book to cut through the blather and speak directly to the (usually desperate) parents of explosive children. His text is long and serious, and has the advantage of covering an enormous amount of ground with nuance, detail, and sympathy, but also perhaps the disadvantage that only those parents who are not chronically tired and time-deprived are likely to get through the entire book. Quoted dialogue from actual sessions with parents and children is interspersed with analysis that is always oriented toward understanding the origins of "meltdowns" and developing workable strategies for avoidance. Although pharmacological treatment is not the book's focus, there is a chapter on drug therapies. --Richard Farr

The Bloomsbury Review

"A tremendous resource and a must-read for adults involved with easily frustrated children who are hard to manage."

Myrna B. Shure, Ph.D., author of Raising a Thinking Child

"An insightful, sensitive portrayal of children who need helpand how to help them."

Customer Reviews

A great book to better understand the stressed child
Dr. Greene does a superb job of describing the temperamentally stressed child. He lets the reader know that the explosive child is wired in such a way that life stresses him/her easily and strategies to help don't come easily.

As the adults, be we parents or caretakers, we need to realize that children don't spend their days pondering how to make our lives miserable. These children are miserable and looking to us to teach them strategies to feel better.

Dr. Greene's book builds on the books on temperament such as "The Difficult Child" and "Raising Your Spiritual Child". He gives us a deeper understanding of the emotional consequences of temperamental mismatch. He then also has a program to help us help our children to become the boss of their emotions.

If one hasn't seen one of his workshops, I would also recommend you go. Hearing is definitely another way of absorbing the intent and knowledge that he offers.

Great Book, Big Help!
I loved this book. I have to say I was skeptical at first, as I felt the author was talking down to the reader, however, I was being over sensitive. As the mother of an adhd child, often a person gets over sensitive to percieved criticism when none is really there. Anyway, this book opened a whole new view for me on my child's behavior and the basic reasons behind it. At last I saw why conventional behavior modification (token economies, loss of privileges, etc) didn't work and I saw what would work. I found this book the most helpful thing I've tried in years. I would highly recomend this book to anyone dealing with an explosive child.

Higest Marks.

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

So far for us, this has been a great learning experience. But it is far from over. We are learning to communicate better and more effectively for all of our benefits. We aim to have a more loving and peaceful home with the help of this book.