Difficulty considering a range of solutions to a problem
Difficulty considering past experiences that would guide one’s actions in the present (hindsight)
Difficulty considering the likely outcomes or consequences of one’s solutions or potential courses of action (forethought)
What’s the main thing your brain must do when you’re faced with a problem? Solve it. That may seem pretty straightforward, but only if you have the skills to accomplish the mission.
Most of us have never given much thought to the actual thinking processes that are involved in solving a problem because we do it fairly automatically, but if you have a kid with concerning behaviors it’s definitely worth thinking about because she’s not doing it fairly automatically.
First, you need to consider the range of responses or solutions that would help you solve the problem (those solutions are almost always drawn from past experiences). Then you need to think about the likely outcomes of each potential solution so that you can pick the best one. Many kids have great difficulty considering a range of potential solutions that could be applied to a particular problem. Some can’t think of any solutions at all. Many also have difficulty anticipating how each potential solution would pan out. Some are so impulsive that, even if they could think of more than one solution, they’ve already done the first thing that popped into their heads. The bad news is that the first solution is often the worst one, the one that required the least amount of reflection and thought, which probably explains why some kids are notorious for putting their worst foot forward. Moreover, there are many kids who can’t think of any solutions at all. So, the problem remains unsolved. And the concerning behaviors being caused by that problem persist.
Difficulty expressing concerns, needs, or thoughts in words
Thank goodness humans learned, way back when, how to communicate using words. Language is what separates us from the other species (other species have language, but not as sophisticated and nuanced as ours). Language is the mechanism by which we exchange information about our thoughts, ideas, concerns, perspectives, and emotions. It’s the mechanism by which we think. And, though most of us haven’t thought about it much, language is the primary way in which we solve problems.
Yes, it’s internal language (self-talk) that helps us navigate and think our way through potential solutions (“I might not even feel like having waffles tomorrow morning . . . plus, I can ask my mom to buy more today . . . so it’s not such a big deal if my brother eats the rest of the waffles right now . . .”). Many kids lack that skill. Other kids may not have a basic vocabulary for letting people know they “need a break,” that “something’s the matter,” that they “can’t talk about that right now,” that they “need a minute” to collect their thoughts or shift gears, or that they “don’t like that.” Since they lack the wherewithal to adaptively communicate their thoughts, ideas, concerns, perspectives, and emotions, they may communicate these things using less optimal words: “screw you,” “I hate you,” “shut up,” and “leave me alone” are some of the milder possibilities. Some kids can’t muster any words and growl, scream, or hit instead. Take Gus, for example:
PARENT: Gus, I understand you got pretty frustrated at school today.
GUS: Yup.
PARENT: What happened?
GUS: Sammy wanted to play with my toys, and I didn’t want him to.
PARENT: So what did you do?
GUS: I kicked him.
PARENT: You kicked Sammy?
GUS: Yes.
PARENT: What happened next?
GUS: He told on me.
PARENT: And next?
GUS: I got put in time-out.
PARENT: Did that make you mad?
GUS: Yes.
PARENT: Which part made you mad?
GUS: It made me mad that Sammy took my toys.
PARENT: Were you mad about getting put in time-out?
GUS: Kinda. But I’m in time-out a lot, so I’m kinda used to it.
PARENT: Is it OK for you to kick Sammy?
GUS: No.
PARENT: How come you didn’t tell Sammy that you didn’t want him to play with the toys you were playing with?
GUS: I didn’t know what to say.
PARENT: Is this the first time you and Sammy have had this problem with the toys?
GUS: No, Sammy always wants to play with my toys.
If Gus already knows that he shouldn’t kick Sammy, then he doesn’t need yet another time-out to drive home the point. If what’s really going on is that Gus is having trouble coming up with the words to let Sammy know that he’s still playing with certain toys, then we’d need to help him solve that problem, something no number of time-outs would accomplish. So long as that problem is unsolved, Gus is going to keep kicking Sammy. If, as Gus suggests, this isn’t the first time that Gus and Sammy have had a conflict over sharing toys, then this is a highly predictable unsolved problem and it can be solved proactively. Even if that problem has never come up before, it’s predictable now (because it’s already happened once).
Difficulty regulating emotions
As you know, solving problems is much easier if a person has the ability to think through solutions. But frustration, anxiety, and other strong emotions can make the thinking part a lot harder. It’s not that the emotions are all bad: mild emotions can be useful for mobilizing or energizing people to solve a problem. It’s the really strong emotions that get in the way. So, the skill of putting one’s emotions on the shelf so as to think through solutions to problems more objectively, rationally, and logically—a skill called separation of affect—is really important. Kids who are pretty good at this skill tend to respond to problems or frustrations with more thought than emotion, and that’s good. But children whose skills in this domain are lacking tend to respond to problems or frustrations with less thought and more emotion, and that’s not so good. They often aren’t able to stem the emotional tide until later, when the emotions have subsided and rational thought has kicked back in. Then they’re often remorseful for what happened when they were upset. They may even have the knowledge to deal successfully with problems and can actually demonstrate such knowledge under calmer circumstances, but at the moment they’re emotionally aroused, their powerful emotions prevent them from accessing and using the information. You know what this looks like:
PARENT: Philip, come eat the scrambled eggs I made for breakfast.
PHILIP (responding with more emotion than thought, but also telling the truth): I hate scrambled eggs! You always make things I don’t like!
PARENT: Well, that’s what I made your sister! I made enough for both of you!
PHILIP: Well, that’s not what I want!
PARENT: I’m not running a restaurant! And I’m not sending you to school on an empty stomach! Eat the eggs!
PHILIP (dumping the eggs in the sink): No, I hate eggs!
PARENT (now perhaps also responding with more emotion than thought): Your Xbox is history, pal!
PHILIP: [kaboom]
So far, we’ve only been talking about in-the-moment emotion regulation. But there are some kids whose difficulties in managing emotions are more chronic. In other words, there are kids who are irritable, agitated, cranky, and/or fatigued much more often and much more intensely than others are. Most of us have more trouble handling frustration and solving problems when we’re in a bad mood. But these kids are in a bad mood a lot, so they have trouble handling frustration and solving problems a lot, too:
MOTHER: Mickey, why so grumpy? It’s a beautiful day outside. Why are you indoors?
MICKEY (slumped in a chair, agitated): It’s windy.
MOTHER: It’s windy?
MICKEY (more agitated): I said it’s windy! I hate wind!
MOTHER: Mickey, you could be out playing basketball, swimming . . . you’re this upset over a little wind?
MICKEY (very agitated): It’s too windy, damn it! Leave me alone!
MOTHER: Should we try to think of something you could do
instead?
MICKEY: There’s nothing else to do instead.
Because it can get in the way of rational thought, anxiety can have the same effect as irritability. Again, a little anxiety can actually be helpful, for it can spur a person to take action. But too much anxiety can make rational thinking much harder, which only makes the person more anxious.
Difficulty seeing the “grays”; concrete, literal, black-and-white thinking
Difficulty deviating from rules or routine
Difficulty handling unpredictability, ambiguity, uncertainty, or novelty
Difficulty shifting from original idea or solution
Difficulty adapting to changes in plan or new rules
Difficulty taking into account situational factors that would suggest the need to adjust a plan
Very young children tend to be fairly rigid, black-and-white, literal thinkers. That’s because they’re still making sense of the world and it’s easier to put two and two together if you don’t have to worry about exceptions to the rules or alternative ways of looking at things. As children develop, they learn that, in fact, most things in life are “gray”; there are exceptions to the rules and alternative ways of interpreting things. We don’t go home from grandma’s house the same way every time; we don’t eat dinner at the exact same time every day; and the weather doesn’t always cooperate with our plans.
Unfortunately, for some children, “gray” thinking doesn’t develop readily. These are the kids who sometimes end up with diagnoses on the autism spectrum, but regardless of diagnosis they’re best thought of as black-and-white thinkers living in a gray world. They often have significant difficulty approaching the world in a flexible, adaptable way and become extremely frustrated when events don’t proceed in the manner they had originally conceived.
More specifically, these children often have a strong preference for predictability and routines, and struggle when events are unpredictable, uncertain, and ambiguous. These are the kids who run into trouble when they need to adjust or reconfigure their expectations, the ones who tend to overfocus on facts and details and who often have trouble recognizing the obvious or “seeing the big picture.” For example, a child may insist on going out for recess at a certain time on a given day because it is the time the class always goes out for recess, failing to take into account both the likely consequences of insisting on the original plan of action (e.g., being at recess alone) and important situational factors (an assembly, perhaps) that would suggest the need for an adaptation of the plan. These children may experience enormous frustration as they struggle to apply concrete rules to a world where few such rules apply:
PARENT: Courtney, we can’t go to the park today . . . it’s raining.
COURTNEY: But we were supposed to go to the park!
PARENT: I know . . . I wish it wasn’t raining, but I don’t really see how we can still go . . . we’d get all wet.
COURTNEY: No, we still have to go to the park! That’s the plan!
PARENT: We can always go tomorrow if the weather’s nicer.
COURTNEY: We’re supposed to go today!
PARENT: How ’bout we go to a movie instead?
COURTNEY: No! We’re supposed to go to the park!
PARENT: Look, Courtney, it’s raining. We’d get all wet. I’m not going to the park in the pouring rain!
COURTNEY: [kaboom]
After the storm passes, the parent might try asking the usual:
PARENT: Courtney, how come you got so upset when we couldn’t go to the park because of the rain?
COURTNEY: I don’t know.
That’s actually a pretty informative response, though it may not seem like it. In a perfect world, the child would respond with something like “See, guys, I have a little problem. Actually, it’s a pretty big problem. I’m not very good at being flexible, handling frustration, and solving problems. And you—and lots of other people—expect me to handle changes in plans and things not going the way I thought they would with great ease. When you expect these things, I start to get frustrated, and then I have trouble thinking clearly, and then I get even more frustrated. Then you guys get frustrated, and that just makes it worse. Then I start doing things I wish I didn’t do and saying things I wish I didn’t say. Then you sometimes do things you wish you didn’t do and say things you wish you didn’t say. Then you punish me, and it gets really messy. After the dust settles—you know, when I start thinking clearly again—I end up being really sorry for the things I did and said. I know this isn’t fun for you, but rest assured, I’m not having any fun either.”
These kids are rarely able to describe their difficulties with this kind of clarity. But here’s a simple math equation that might suffice.
INFLEXIBILITY + INFLEXIBILITY = MELTDOWN
Hopefully, if it wasn’t already, the connection between lagging skills and maladaptive responses to problems and frustrations is now clear. Just to make sure, let’s take a close look—just for a few pages—at some of the inaccurate things that have been said about your child so we can put them to rest once and for all.
She Just Wants Attention
This common cliché is often invoked to explain why kids are exhibiting concerning behavior. But we all just want attention, so that doesn’t really distinguish your child from anyone else. If your child had the skills to seek attention adaptively, she would. More importantly, what’s the logical intervention for a kid who we think is seeking attention maladaptively? Ignore her, so as to deprive her of the attention she’s seeking. But if her concerning behavior is instead communicating that she’s having difficulty meeting a particular expectation, then simply ignoring the behavior will cause us to miss the boat on what’s really getting in the way.
She’s Manipulating Us
Here we have another popular but misguided way of portraying kids with concerning behaviors. Competent manipulation requires various skills—forethought, planning, impulse control, organization—that, as you’ve read, are typically found lacking in kids with concerning behaviors.
She’s Not Motivated
Once you’ve identified a kid’s lagging skills and unsolved problems, “unmotivated” no longer makes sense as an explanation for the kid’s concerning behaviors. Kids do well if they can, so she’s motivated already.
She’s Making Bad Choices
She’s choosing to exhibit concerning behaviors instead of adaptive behaviors? Why would she do that? Her life would be a lot better if she had the skills to make good choices.
She Has a Bad Attitude
She probably didn’t start out with one. “Bad attitudes” tend to be the by-product of countless years of being misunderstood, overcorrected, overdirected, and overpunished by adults who didn’t recognize that a kid lacked crucial thinking skills. But kids are resilient; they come around if we start doing the right thing.
She Knows Just What Buttons to Push
We should reword this one so it’s more accurate: when she’s having difficulty meeting certain expectations, she exhibits concerning behaviors that adults experience as being extremely unpleasant.
She Has a Mental Illness
You mean that she meets diagnostic criteria for a psychiatric disorder? As you’ve read, that just tells us what concerning behaviors she exhibits when she’s having difficulty meeting certain expectations. Borrowing from a renowned psychologist, Thomas Szasz, the term problems in living is far preferable to the term mental illness, for it points us in the direction of what really needs to be done to help kids with concerning behaviors: solve the problems that are causing those behaviors.
By the way, there’s a big difference between interpreting lagging skills as excuses rather than as explanations. When lagging skills are invoked as excuses, the door slams shut on the process of thinking about how to help a child. Conversely, when lagging skills are used as explanations for why a child responds so poorly to problems and frustrations, the door to helping the child swings wide open and caregivers are freed up to cons
ider alternative strategies for helping.
* * *
Here is a summary of the important points of this chapter:
A variety of lagging skills can make it difficult for a kid to respond to life’s problems and frustrations in an adaptive, rational manner.
Identifying your child’s lagging skills can help you understand her difficulties more accurately, take her concerning behaviors less personally, and respond in ways that are more compassionate, less punitive, and more effective.
Those lagging skills should also change your vocabulary. Attention-seeking, manipulative, unmotivated, and so forth . . . these characterizations of your child were never accurate and simply perpetuate the use of interventions that may not have been serving your child—and you—well at all.
* * *
Kevin was watching a football game with Riley when Debbie burst into the living room. “Honey, you need to come see this!” she said.
“What’d she do now?” Kevin groused, certain that Jennifer was refusing to do something.
“I found something on the web . . . you need to see it!” Debbie implored.
Relieved that there was no crisis at the moment, Kevin’s attention turned back to the television. “I’m watching the game with Riley.”
“This is important.”
“Watching the game with Riley is important.”
“Please.”
“Will it still be there at half-time? This is, like, the only thing I do to relax.”
Like I do anything to relax, thought Debbie, quickly cognizant that some things are best left unsaid. “So, screaming at the quarterback is relaxing? Fine, come to the computer at half-time.”
When Kevin came over to the computer, Debbie was engrossed in a video. “You’re all worked up over a video?”
“Listen to this.” Debbie went back to the beginning of the video.
Kevin watched the speaker in the video talking about kids with concerning behaviors. He was saying that the child’s behavior was not the most important part of the picture. “What a fruitcake,” Kevin groused. “He should live in my house for five minutes . . . we’ll see if he thinks the behavior is important then.”
The Explosive Child Page 3
