The Explosive Child (Greene)

[cahn]

mildred_of_midgard and rachelmanija both told me to read The Explosive Child, so I reread it. I'd read it when E. was much younger (4? 6? something like that) and we had the most problems with her getting really upset about things -- and I had not found it very useful. I got the e-book from the library.

This turned out to be a VERY WEIRD experience for me because I read it and thought, wow, this book seems totally unfamiliar! I know it's been at least six years... and my memory is completely shot these days... but I had distinct memories of the book spending a lot of time on "pick your battles" which I found extremely not useful with E. (E's problem, especially at that age, was not battles of will between me and her! E's problem was battles of will between herself and herself -- she would get upset when she was not able to do things the way she felt she should, which spanned basically all activities, including quite a few that were things she loved to do, not things I was asking her to do at all, while my memories were that the book spent a lot of time on conflicts between what the parents were asking the kid to do and what the kid wanted to do, and how the parent should try just not to ask a whole lot of the former.)

The book I read was not primarily about picking one's battles. If anything I thought Explosive Child was a poor title for it; maybe Defiant Child, but really the title should have been How to Collaboratively Solve Problems with Your Child, because that's what almost all the book was about, and it was rather good at that! (The first few chapters were boring; they were all things like "why being Super Strict with your child isn't productive," which... okay, but yes, I have actually read parenting books before, thanks!) There were lots of examples, lots of discussions on the order of "if your child does X, here's a strategy to use that still keeps the focus on collaborative problem-solving and not going in an unproductive or Unilateral Telling Your Kid What to Do direction." Really it almost does a disservice to call it Explosive Child, because these strategies (as mildred_of_midgard remarked when she recced it) could be used with really anyone -- all children, not just explosive ones, and even adults. (Though many of the examples and details were child-centric; for example, he goes into things like what to do if a child answers "I don't know," to everything, which in my experience is a very common kid mode but not so common in adults.)

It was good and I am trying to use the techniques with both kids! (We do try to foster a family atmosphere where they feel like they have a say and can always bring up when they disagree, but I definitely do have a tendency to barrel through and say "this is what we're gonna do!" as a first pass.) I had one major nitpick: I was majorly side-eyeing Greene's claim that children would magically learn skills they were deficient in (like "difficulty managing emotional response to frustration so as to think rationally") by doing this collaborative problem-solving, because once you work on the problems the skills will naturally be exercised. Uhhhhhh you know what this reminds me of? it's like, if the kid is not able to read, collaborative problem solving and creating an atmosphere where reading is fun and snuggly is great and I absolutely am on board with it making an atmosphere conducive to reading, and some kids will pick it up automatically in the right atmosphere, but it's NOT actually teaching the kid to read, and NOT ALL KIDS WILL LEARN without explicit instruction! This is sort of how I feel about some of these skills. Sometimes you might need other tools! Some kids need more explicit instruction than others! Greene seems to think that you would never need any other tools except his, which is a common failure mode of books like these, but it annoys me :)

But anyway, I was still confused as to why it was so different than my memory; my memory isn't particularly good, but my failure mode with books is usually just to forget things wholesale, not have contradictory memories! So I did an experiment: the library also had a paper copy (first edition from 1998, I believe), and I checked that out. (This would have been the identical copy I would have read in the first place.) And lo, this book is almost COMPLETELY different from the e-book I read! Like literally, there are maybe a few pages that are in common with the e-book (two of the "sample cases," a couple of pages each, are the same). The rest of it is not just entirely different words, but also an almost entirely different focus! The collaborative problem-solving is relegated to one chapter of the book. MOST of the book talks about picking one's battles... sorting one's problems into "baskets" as to whether one wants to deal with them now or later. This is a very simple concept but gets a looooot of padding. Anyway... good choice by Greene, in subsquent editions, to greatly expand the collaborative problem-solving sections and diminish the "basket" section, because the former is way more interesting than the latter.

So my verdict is: if you are interested in the concept of collaborative problem-solving with your child, this book is worth checking out (maybe skip the first few chapters if you've ever read a parenting book before), but make sure it's the current version, not the original! (I also suspect there is a lot of overlap with How to Talk So Kids Will Listen And Listen So Kids Will Talk, which I also read at about that age and which perhaps I should also revisit.)

Comments

[rachelmanija]

It's quite a useful book but I am still laughing at the chapter titled "What if my child explodes anyway?" It reminds me of the time I got an email headlined "Have You Met Your New Suicide Requirement?"

[mildred_of_midgard]

Imagine if the book had been called The Exploding Child!

[cahn]

Heeee! NB: you may only meet your new suicide requirement once! :D

[antisoppist]

If it had been called "How to cope with your child who won't do things BECAUSE someone has asked them to" I might have read it! It's a bit late now. Though it sounds like I developed some of the same strategies on my own, largely because I was that kind of child myself.

[cahn]

Ha, yes! But you clearly did an awesome job without it :) This is not my model of child (nor was I that child), so the book in both incarnations was less helpful to me than it might have been had I had that model of child.

[hamsterwoman]

That's so wild that a later edition turned it into basically a totally different book! Sounds like a better one, so that's good, but still very strange.

E's problem, especially at that age, was not battles of will between me and her! E's problem was battles of will between herself and herself -- she would get upset when she was not able to do things the way she felt she should, which spanned basically all activities, including quite a few that were things she loved to do, not things I was asking her to do at all

This made me wince sympathetically XD I mean, I had actual battles of will with O, too (while he was unquestionably our "easy" child, he is also the stubbornest person in the family after me, and some battles he picked as a toddler were just plain non-negotiable, like running across the street), but he is also prone to this mode of holding himself to some self-imposed standard on leisure activities and getting upset (though glumly, not explosively for the most part) if he wasn't "good enough" at, like, drawing stick figures. (We were always very careful to emphasize effort rather than results, for the twin reasons that B was a terrible slacker at school stuff until he got to sufficiently advanced math (trigonometry and calculus) that held his attention, and I had Soviet school trauma that didn't care about effort/enjoyment/learning at all, just results, and was determined to avoid that for them, so we tried very hard to associate effort/process with the positive thing -- but O didn't believe anything positive we said, and would just crumple up his drawings and stuff like that.)

And L, we would joke that her battles of will weren't against us, they were against the universe -- things like gravity and the passage of time and things like that. Fortunately she got into fiddly hobbies like jewelry-making and crochet only later, when she already knew how to control her outbursts better. But there were definitely still a lot of explosions directed at the universe (with anyone nearby getting caught in the blast) when she was first picking those up. :P

[cahn]

Ahhhhh yes, we didn't have specifically stick figure angst (E. drew dogs during kindergarten, and then she drew dinosaurs during first grade, and that was pretty much that for her drawing career) but we very frequently had meltdowns when she was learning to write because she made the stem of the h too long, or something. (But she really wanted to write!) Heh, E. is completely not interested in crochet or jewelry-making for exactly that reason. Though I did insist on her learning an instrument, and that really set off the perfectionist thing as well.

Right there with you on emphasizing effort rather than results, for one of your reasons and the opposite of the other reason -- E isn't at all a slacker but conversely would probably kill herself trying if you asked for results, but also YES absolutely for childhood trauma around just caring about results (in my case my parents). E also never believes us when we say stuff like that..

[hamsterwoman]

Though I did insist on her learning an instrument, and that really set off the perfectionist thing as well.

Yeah, O's violin studies were prone to this as well, although it helped that he was older by the time he started practicing. And it probably also helped that nobody else in the immediate family plays an instrument (L chose to do choir, I did piano a long time ago but forgot everything, and B, the most musical of us, never learned to play for some reason). Violin was better, but trying to get him to play anything without an orchestra to dilute his individual sound was IMPOSSIBLE, even in an informal family setting (outside of practice, I mean).

but also YES absolutely for childhood trauma around just caring about results (in my case my parents)

I did also have that from my mother and grandmother, but I think it was a secondary effect of the school environment, because they were not at all like that with my brother, who did all his schooling here in the US. It could also, of course, be parents mellowing with a second child, but my grandmother did not mellow between my mother and me, so I think it's the external factors :P

[cahn]

Oh interesting! E didn't object to playing solo parts when it was polished or when she was first learning, it was that long middle slog where she wouldn't have things quite right where she just had (has) a really really hard time.

Oh, huh, that's interesting. Was the cultural environment one where doing well at school was really, really important for future prospects? My parents' culture was one where you had to sit exams for college, and what college you went to basically determined your future. And they never quite shook that off, I think.

[hamsterwoman]

I don't know what O's deal with performing solo is, but neither kid likes being the center of attention in a performing setting (they are fine with public speaking, and they're fine with performing as part of a group; I don't really get how this Venn diagram works, but as it's not mandatory in life to perform solos, I guess that's fine...)

Was the cultural environment one where doing well at school was really, really important for future prospects?

Yes, kind of in a defensive way. You had to sit exams for uni, and there was only a limited number of good universities in the USSR, and if you didn't get into those, you were probably going to have to go to school in the boonies somewhere. On top of which, institutionalized anti-semitism meant that a student from my family's background would need to pretty much be exceptional to even get a chance at the good schools. Also, high school grades were important because if one managed to get a gold medal, there were certain privileges/shortcuts one got when applying to uni -- e.g. my father was a gold medalist and thus was able to go to uni in Moscow, whereas my mother and my aunt, who were also very good students but did not get a gold medal IIRC, did not (although they were still able to get into first tier schools).

And I believe where you went to uni impacted where you were likely to get work afterwards, so the whole chain was definitely something that could impact the course of one's life.

[cahn]

That makes sense, I don't super like performing solo either, but I love performing as part of a group, even a small group where I'm exposed. It's weird! I think because I can concentrate on the group part of performing as a group, and that helps me not get nervous in a destructive way.

Oh wow, I didn't know those details. Korea was (maybe still is?) reasonably similar, I think, with sitting exams for university and the university you went to being extremely important for later life (though how you actually did at university not being nearly as important!)

[mildred_of_midgard]

Oh, WOW! That's so weird, but it makes sense. I was wondering why I read his other book that was supposed to be just this one but with a target audience of teachers rather than parents, and I started reccing it to everyone, and you had read his other book and were so "meh" about it. We effectively read two different books!

really the title should have been How to Collaboratively Solve Problems with Your Child, because that's what almost all the book was about, and it was rather good at that!

Yes! That's exactly why I've started reccing his other book to all and sundry.

because these strategies (as [personal profile] mildred_of_midgard remarked when she recced it) could be used with really anyone -- all children, not just explosive ones, and even adults.

And that is why I recced it to my boss (and still may rec it to *his* boss), because the collaborative problem-solving strategies are exactly what bosses should do with their direct reports!

The first few chapters were boring; they were all things like "why being Super Strict with your child isn't productive," which... okay, but yes, I have actually read parenting books before, thanks!

You have, but I think it's greeeeat that he wrote this, because many people have not! (I and *several* other bosses at work are trying to get Boss's Boss from reacting to low performers with micromanaging and threats, because he does not have collaborative problem-solving in his toolbelt.)

[cahn]

Yes, it's an entirely different book!

Now, it's also true that reading this when E was 4-6 or so meant I was also completely unimpressed by what collaborative problem-solving stuff there was, because it did NOT work for E at that time. Because at that age, whenever you asked her a question like, "Hmm, what do you think we should do?" or "Do you have any ideas?" it would set off her "omg someone is asking me a question therefore this has a right answer and I don't know what it is!!" trigger and she would become very unhappy. (Which was actually a root of some of our problems!) I suspect this was at least partially a theory of mind issue -- at that age she didn't really understand that other people had different information bases than she did, so that she did not understand the concept of trying to solicit her opinion about something. At her current age, of course, she has a much more developed theory of mind, and actually likes questions like that :) (Though is likely to answer with "I don't know!")

I think the overlap between people who have read parenting books and who are willing to read a book called The Explosive Child is pretty high :P (I don't think I'd be able to convince D. to read it.)

[mildred_of_midgard]

I think the overlap between people who have read parenting books and who are willing to read a book called The Explosive Child is pretty high :P

Well, yes, but all these people have to have a *first* parenting book! And I don't see why this wouldn't be someone else's, just because it wasn't yours.

[cahn]

Well -- the thing is, most parents, I think, are going to try other solutions before they read a book called The Explosive Child! Especially since most of the content is not aimed at parents of toddlers, and most kids start being challenging well before they hit the sweet spot of where this book's content is aimed. But certainly, as we've discussed before, I am blinkered by being of a particular cultural class where people do read a lot of parenting books in general :)

(Heh, you will be amused by this: My parents had Dr. Spock and a book called Kindergarten Is Too Late, the latter of which I read one summer when I was super bored. I remember among other things that it talked about why it made sense to teach young kids algebra instead of guess and check, which I always thought was actually kind of reasonable, mostly because I always hated guess and check. (Now I think that, like so many things, it depends on the kid, because some kids understand the concept of variables very early and some kids don't have that capability.) Buuuuut yeah that tells you something about them.)

[thistleingrey]

This version sounds pretty useful! (I seem already to do a bunch of these things with Reason, which is reassuring.)

[cahn]

Yeah, when you post about your parenting I'm like, "ahhhhh I should be taking notes on this!" :)

[thistleingrey]

Ah, not at all--I'm always relieved when it seems that some of my guesses are sort of okay.

[cahn]

<3

I was always amazed they let us take home these small people from the hospital without, like, extremely strenuous training! Or even a manual!!

[thistleingrey]

Yes, seriously! Some schools offer driver's ed, but like ... actual humans. /o\

[hidden_variable]

E's problem was battles of will between herself and herself -- she would get upset when she was not able to do things the way she felt she should

Relatable! We're seeing a lot of this from S right now--meltdowns when she decides her drawing isn't good enough, etc. Which should not surprise me, because I remember being kind of this way myself as a kid. I should definitely check out this book.

On a random and silly note, I searched Amazon for "The Exploding Child" and got Ben Braver and the Incredible Exploding Kid as well as Exploding Duck and Exploding Duck 2.

[cahn]

Heh, yeah, same -- E definitely gets it from me. But, sorry, I wasn't clear -- this is the kind of problem this book is less likely to address, it's much more about battles of will between the kid and the parent. But it's still worth checking out, I definitely realized I was doing a lot more of Telling My Kids How It's Going to Be than I realized I was!

"Incredible Exploding Kid" sounds like a, er, one-use superhero! I'm not sure I want to know more about Exploding Duck and sequel :P

[hidden_variable]

it's much more about battles of will between the kid and the parent

Ah, I see. We're definitely getting our share of that type of battle as well these days.

Given that there is a sequel, I guess the exploding duck was not a one-use duck? I can't say I'm inclined to investigate it either.

[cahn]

Ha, yes, I think it's inevitable to get more battles between kid and parent after a certain point... E actually took longer for those to manifest, I think, because of the ASD.

[tabacoychanel]

Oh my god that is WILD. As the parent of an almost 18 month old in themarket for parenting books I don't think I've read this one yet so good tip

[cahn]

It's really not useful for 18-month-olds :D Have you read the Parent Effectiveness Training books? There's a lot of overlap, I think, but I believe there is more toddler-ish material in there as well.