Regardless whether our kids come to us through adoption or birth or foster care, some kids are more challenging to parent, and parenting the easily frustrated, inflexible child can test even the best of parents. Parenting these kiddos may not be easy, but it doesn’t have to be a battle.
My eldest child was what my husband and I between ourselves euphemistically called “high maintenance”. When we weren’t feeling euphemistic we called her stubborn, high strung, and even on occasion “a pain in the b_tt”. I read every parenting book in my public library’s collection and then started in on Amazon. The books didn’t fit my kid, or was it that my beautiful, spirited girl didn’t fit the books?
In what I thought was an amazing flash of insight, she told me when she was nine and we were talking about self-discipline, “I don’t like anybody telling me what to do, including myself.” That, in a nutshell, summed up my sweetie.
I learned things by trial and error on my own, of course, but had my aha moment when I stumbled upon Mary Sheedy Kurcinka’s book Raising Your Spirited Child: A Guide for Parents Whose Child Is More Intense, Sensitive, Perceptive, Persistent, and Energetic. (You can listen to my interview with Mary – it’s truly one of my favorite all-time interviews.) The power of books is amazing.
My early parenting days of obsessively consuming parenting books is mirrored in my current job at Creating a Family, where I have to get to read all the books of the authors I interview. Given my parenting history, I particularly enjoyed the book and interview with Dr. Ross Greene, Harvard professor and author of The Explosive Child: A New Approach for Understanding and Parenting Easily Frustrated, Chronically Inflexible Children.
Early Trauma Can Make it Worse

The Explosive Child is not specific to parenting adopted children. All kids can and do exhibit these behaviors, but early trauma common in children adopted at an older age is a risk factor. One of the best things about The Explosive Child is Dr. Greene’s assumption that kids want to do well, and if they are struggling it is likely because they are lacking a specific skill needed to succeed. In the midst of dealing with a kid who doesn’t fit the mold, it’s easy to think that this kid is intentionally driving you nuts. This reframing turns their behavior into a teachable moment.
Real Life Example
Here’s an example from my parenting experience with my own lovely spit-fire. The Spirited Child encouraged me to closely keep track of when she was at her worst. I noticed that she usually fell apart during times of transitioning from one activity to another. While I am capable of being highly organized, my preferred operating mode is loose and flexible to take advantage of serendipity.
While trying to be loose and flexible may be good for middle-aged bodies (trust me my friends, I know!), they were not good for my kid because it meant lots of unpredictable transitions. She lacked the skill of smoothly changing her plans at the last moment. She’s an inertia loving gal.
Armed with this understanding, I set up routines for us to follow on most days and prepared her well in advance when we were going to vary from these routines. As she got older, we could do more advanced planning, and she learned to handle transitions better. While nothing is dramatic in parenting, we did see a reduction in the number of oppositional episodes.
Specific Skills Your Child Might Lack

In The Explosive Child, Dr. Greene lists a number of skills that behaviorally challenging kids might be lacking, including:
- Difficulty handling transitions, shifting from one mindset or task to another.
- Difficulty doing things in a logical sequence or prescribed order.
- Poor sense of time.
- Difficulty reflecting on multiple thoughts or ideas simultaneously.
- Difficulty considering the likely outcomes or consequences of actions (impulsiveness).
- Difficulty considering a range of solutions to a problem.
- Difficulty managing emotional response to frustration in order to think rationally.
- Difficulty deviating from rules or routine.
- Difficulty accurately interpreting social cues.
- Difficulty appreciating how he is coming across or being perceived by others.
Do any of these feel familiar? If you are parenting a behavioral square peg, they will. What would you add?
P.S. Although I liked the book, I didn’t like the title “The Explosive Child” since it seemed both overly broad and overly limiting for these challenging but often wonderful children. I asked Dr. Greene about the title in our interview. Turns out he is also no longer a fan, now preferring the term behaviorally-challenged, which includes a greater array of behaviors.
Check out my interview with Dr. Greene for lots of wonderful parenting ideas for these kiddos. While never easy, it doesn’t have to be a battle.
What we talked about on the podcast in my interview with Dr. Ross Greene, author of The Explosive Child:
- Psychiatric labels that are often attached to these children include oppositional defiant disorder, conduct disorder, bipolar, ADHD, attachments disorder, RAD, disruptive mood regulation disorder.
- What are the characteristics of a child that is behaviorally challenged or what is called the “explosive child”?
- What causes children to be easily frustrated and chronically inflexible.
- This type of behavior can be found in all kids—all people regardless of age, but is it more common in children who have been exposed to trauma earlier in life, which is often the case with children adopted at an older age, or is it exclusively an innate temperament?
- This behavior is not a choice of the child’s; if the kid could do better, he would.
- The most important thing a parent can do to help their child is to understand why she explodes in the first place.
- Are these kids acting the way they do because they want attention, or are strong-willed, or are manipulating us, or just have a bad attitude
- What specific skills do kids who have behavioral challenges lack?
- How to help a child who automatically says no to everything?
- What often sets children off?
- How to find the time to collaboratively problem solve with challenging children.
- What parenting techniques work with easily frustrated children who do not problem solve well.
- Do reward based systems usually work?
- Do punishment based systems usually work?
- What is the best way to help kids who struggle with their behavior at school?
Image credit: Simon Kellogg Image credit: Daniel Rosas Image credit: Danica T.
While I did find those books somewhat helpful — and the author’s tips above even more so — my experience has been that effectively parenting a child with an attachment disorder requires slightly different tactics.
I would suggest that anyone parenting a child who was adopted and exhibits the behaviors typical of attachment disorders also consider working with a therapist who specializes in this condition and/or finding some books and fellow parents who can help.
If we had not done so, I cannot even imagine what our family would be living with today.
The sooner you do so, the better, too!
Sincerely,
Full Spectrum Mama
Hi Full Spectrum Mama- I agree with you completely and thank you for pointing out that when a child has experienced a disruption in attachment, you should be working with a therapist with training in this issue.
I forgot to mention that I am very familiar with The Explosive Child, and some of it’s content when working with my NT children.
Hi Dawn, I am a temperament specialist who works primarily with children and families. The child described in The Explosive Child (or Behaviorally Challenged) is most likely one of the most rare MTBI/Kiersey types, the NT or Intuitive Thinker. I would love to connect with you about how I work with children and would love for you to take the child temperament test I have developed. My website is peopleworksco.com. Once you understand the intuitive thinker’s main motivational drivers, cognitive functions, social preferences….and a myriad of other characteristics, it takes a lot of the guess work out of parenting them!
Thanks for the information. The study of children’s temperaments is indeed a fascinating one!
Raising a Spirited Child totally saved my family. We were getting no help from therapists or peditricans. We kept being told to do the opposite of what I felt we needed to do. Not blaming my daughter and looking how to help her build skills is the direction we took. I think one of the most helpful things I heard (from your podcast on The Explosive Child) was the difference in the type of tantrums. Most kids have tantrums where normal parenting will work. I think they were referred to as donut tantrums, since if you offered the kid a donut they would probably stop the tantrum to eat the donut. My daughter could tantrum for two hours and if you offered her a donut during that time she would have ripped it apart, smashed it on the ground, and then stomped on it repeatively while spitting on it. She was in pure fight flight mode. She is now 5 years old and while still explodes more often then other kids (usuallly at the end of full day kindergarten and completely tired), she is doing great. It is managable and it keeps getting easier. We were told she was going to have ADHD and OCD, but neither has manifested itself. My daughter was just wired as a spirited kid, which probably helped her stay alive in the care center as a baby. And it is not her fault that she experienced trama from being cared for my so many different people as a baby.
For some reason my post disappeared – it will probably come back again after I post this. 😉 What your 9 year old said about herself, describes my 9 year old son to a T! Plus I read the part about transitions. My son says all the right things about moving or a change, but then his reactions are not so positive. Does the book give good advice for helping a child during transition? We’re moving again this summer. I think I have 2 new books to read.
yes, both books give practical advice for helping our Kids learn to better handle transitions,
Dawn Davenport – my son is 9, and your daughter’s statement at 9 described my son!!! Thanks for sharing.
for the record, that same daughter is now a young adult. She still doesn’t love transitions, but she handles them well, She is in the Peace Corps and is one of my best friends
I have not read the book and this is the first Creating A Family podcast I have listened to. I found it while searching for adoption support because of the struggles we are having with one of our foster daughters. “Explosive” seemed like a good adjective to describe her. In the first 10 minutes of the podcast I felt like the description given of the behaviors are the exact words I have been struggling to find to explain to the therapist, social worker, pediatrician, etc. I do feel like our “traditional” parenting that is working very well with her sister and our biological child just backfires with our “behaviorally challenged child.” However, I was not impressed with the example given of how to handle an explosive episode. In the example of the child freaking out over her brother eating waffles, nothing was said about addressing the explosion. It seems to me that the child exploded and then essentially got what she wanted (a never ending supply of waffles). I am tired of the chaos and conflict (and screaming, oh my, the screaming). How does this technique teach children that exploding, falling apart, throwing a tantrum, is NOT the correct way to handle conflict? This child is going to need to learn that sometimes she is just not going to have waffles for breakfast. And she will be okay.
Teresa, I so understand your frustration. I strongly recommend reading both Raising Your Spirited Child and The Explosive Child, and listen to both podcasts we did with the authors. I am running out of the office right now, so don’t have time to type a long response to your question. You are right that our ultimate goal is to help our kids handle frustration better and learn that sometimes, darnit, you’re going to run out of waffles. Both of these books address how to get the kids to that place and they begin by starting from where the child is and helping them develop the skills. And one of the key steps, especially at the beginning, is reducing the times that set the child off.