Who are Explosive kids?

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Description of Explosive Kids

The term “explosive kids’ is used to describe easily frustrated, chronically inflexible, explosive children. While many of these children carry a variety of diagnoses, parents often tell us that the term “explosive kids” better describes their child’s struggles. In addition, many find that it also provides a framework for understanding and alleviating the difficulties with which they present. This will become more evident as you review the following in-depth description.

What does a child described as “inflexible-explosive” look like? Dr. Greene provides a helpful list of criteria in his text, The Explosive Child.

Common Characteristics of Inflexible-Explosive Children

1. A remarkably limited capacity for flexibility and adaptability and incoherence in the midst of severe frustration. The child often seems unable to shift gears in response to parents’ commands or a change in plans and becomes quickly overwhelmed when a situation calls for flexibility and adaptability. As the child becomes frustrated, his or her ability to “think through” ways of resolving frustrating situations in a manner that is mutually satisfactory becomes greatly diminished; the child has difficulty remembering previous learning about how to handle frustration and recalling the consequences of previous inflexible-explosive episodes, has trouble thinking rationally, may not be responsive to reasoned attempts to restore coherence, and may deteriorate even further in response to punishment.
   
2. An extremely low frustration threshold. The child becomes frustrated far more easily and by far more seemingly trivial events than other children of his or her age. Therefore, the child experiences the world as one filled with frustration and uncomprehending adults.
   
3. An extremely low tolerance for frustration. The child is not only more easily frustrated, but experiences the emotions associated with frustration far more intensely and tolerates them far less adaptively than do other children of the same age. In response to frustration, the child becomes extremely agitated, disorganized, and verbally or physically aggressive.
   
4. The tendency to think in a concrete, rigid, black-and-white manner. The child does not recognize the gray in many situations ( Mrs. Robinson is always mean! I hate her! Rather than “Mrs. Robinson is usually nice, but she was in a bad mood today”); may apply oversimplified, rigid, inflexible rules to complex situations; and may impulsively revert to such rules even when they are obviously inappropriate (“We always go out for recess at 10:30. I don’t care if there’s an assembly today. I’m going out for recess!”)
   
5. The persistence of inflexibility and poor response to frustration despite a high level of intrinsic or extrinsic motivation. The child continues to exhibit frequent, intense, and lengthy meltdowns even in the face of salient, potent consequences.
   
6. Inflexible episodes may have an out-of-the-blue quality. The child may seem to be in a good mood, then fall apart unexpectedly in the face of frustrating circumstances, no matter how trivial.
   
7. The child may have one or several issues about which he or she is especially inflexible – for example, the way clothing looks or feels, the way foods taste or smell, and the order in which things must be done.
   
8. The child’s inflexibility and difficulty responding to frustration in an adaptive manner may be fueled by behaviors-moodiness/irritability, hyperactivity/impulsiveness, anxiety, obsessiveness, social impairment-commonly associated with other disorders.
   
9. While other children are apt to become more irritable when tired or hungry, inflexible-explosive children may completely fall apart under such conditions!

Should your child present with these difficulties, we strongly encourage you to seek out a qualified professional (one who possesses an extensive background and experience working with explosive kids) to conduct a thorough evaluation and to provide recommendations.

In establishing that developmental deficits in the domains of flexibility and frustration tolerance are the key factors underlying explosive behavior, we think the characteristics presented provide a more useful way of viewing our children. This is very different from the conventional wisdom: that these children are merely willful and spoiled, that they are fully able to control their explosive outbursts, and that poor parenting is to blame for their difficulties. Blaming parents for their children’s difficulties is not the best way to change things for the better in any family or classroom. When we dispense with the blame, the stage is set for adults to be part of the solution: re-establishing positive relationships with these children, creating experiences that will provide the training and practice in problem-solving skills, flexibility, and frustration tolerance.