Children -- Outbursts, Difficult

[compnet]

He believes that children who have outbursts are "Delayed in the development of the skills of flexibility/adaptability and frustration tolerance, or have significant difficulty applying these skills where they are most needed."

Therefore, the logical intervention is to "Teach the skills of flexibility and frustration tolerance and reduce the likelihood of explosive outbursts, while maintaining adults as authority figures."

He argues that children/adults who have these problems have a deficiency in one or more of the following pathways: executive skills, language processing skills, emotion regulation skills, cognitive flexibility skills, and social skills.

For example, one of the executive skills is separation of affect which means separating emotions form thinking. The goal of intervention would be to teach the child how to think clearly in the midst of frustration. (As opposed to punishing the child for not thinking clearly in the midst of frustration).

One of the language processing skills is identifying and articulating problems and so you would teach the child how to find words to articulate moods and needs and concerns.

Cognitive flexibility (idea gets stuck in head and won't change) is another deficiency that can be assessed and trained.

He argues that explosive outbursts are highly predictable and that predicting them requires identifying the child's processing limits as well as the triggers.

Compliance is a cognitive skill that not all children are born having.

Parenting these children (and all children) should involve solving the problem together - as opposed to letting the adult dictate the solution or letting the child dictate the solution.

He believes that many outbursts can be avoided by successfully thinking through solutions with the child before the trigger presents itself. For example, if you know that your child freaks out when he has to brush his teeth, you work through a plan with him in advance so that he does not freak out.

Key steps are: 1) empathy, 2) define the problem, 3) invitation to create a solution.

Above all, though, parents must ask themselves if they truly have a concern. If the parent doesn't have a concern to set on the table then there is no need to say no to the child.

If your child has trouble shifting gears, you could help him to identify when a shift is going to be required, anticipate the shift, and do what is necessary to achieve the shift so that he is not always surprised.

Dr. Greene argues that explosive kids are often bad using past problems to resolve similar problems. If the problem is not precisely identical to a problem that they have seen before, they can't apply it. So, you have to teach them how to do cross apply situations. It may take 30 or 40 times, but he believes that you can teach them how to access past solutions.

Or, if the child has cognitive distortions (I am stupid) you can provide disconfirming evidence to refute the distorted cognition.

His philosophy is that "Children do well if they can"

In December 2004, he will have a study coming out that demonstrates that this approach is much more successful than than the Reward and Punishment model.

One of his messages is that it is important to teach your child to think and to do it at age 2-3, so that they don't get stuck in 2-3 year old behavioral issues.

"If you teach a child that someone always has to win and someone always has to lose, when does s/he learn the important skills of solving problems in a mutually satisfactory manner (win/win)?"

Retrieved from "http://www.pwsnotes.org/Dr._Ross_Greene"

[benjimom]

this is really intersting. I can see my son in some of that. He can get very angry when he is upset, he is doing better with that, but he still has his moments. He's six now.  Five was pretty bad.  I agree with specialmom, some adutls don't have the skills they need, they snap and loose it saying things that are not appropriate or untrue or they react to things quickly making unwise choices.

[specialmom]

Hi.  Well, I have a sensory kid myself and they can be pretty difficult at times.  Being inflexible is actually often a coping mechanism for kids with either a nervous system issue such as sensory or add/adhd or a learning disability.  Actually, I'd lump anxiety into that mix as well.  Trying to control things is one way kids (and adults) try to deal with some type of stress.  

With sensory------ regulation/modulation problems are common and result in what looks like a moody, volatile kid.  We found things like a stress thermometer to be really helpful.   It helps my son self monitor where he is at and to head off a melt down before it happens.  Also, self soothing can be problematic for all kinds of kids with a myriad of issues.  Teaching them how to calm themselves is an important goal for parents.  

Truthfully, many people never learn the skills to adequately handle frustration, sadness and anger.  These are the "hot head" adults you know.  They have no disorder but just don't cope well with their emotions.  Or they could be adults that do have a disorder but it was never diagnosed.  Anger management is a big topic for many therapists.

Anyway, interesting read.  Thanks for posting it.  I like the approach of identifying triggers and coming up with game plans ahead of time as well as his three step approach in dealing with a problem.