Parenting difficult kids

mha3484

Mon, Aug 20 2018, 2:26 pm

I posted this on another thread. I feel like I always comment on parenting threads about why I love Collaborative and Proactive Solutions also known as the Explosive Child book. The main reason I even know about this method is because the author spoke in my community when my son was in preschool. For whatever reason people don't seem to know about it. It has been so positive for our family that I wanted to share about it in more detail. If you have a child that is behaviorally challenging this method may help you.

Hashem has given me great children B'H but they are so not easy in totally different ways so most of the standard parenting approaches just dont work for us. The only thing that works is the method in the book called the explosive child. The main ideas are that all kids want to do well and if they are not meeting your expectations its because they cant not that they dont want to. Also there is another idea that if a kid is giving you a hard time they are having a hard time. Once I put my kids behaviors into those perspectives it changed everything. We do a lot of talking and a lot of empathy and a lot of work on what skills are lagging so that my kids can meet the expectations I have for them. Its a lot harder then anything else I have ever tried but it has worked the best. I am really not trying to be preachy but I think that this can really help a lot of families but people dont know about it.

This article is a great explanation of the method https://www.motherjones.com/po.....eene/

You can also go to Dr Greene's website www.livesinthebalance.org

Aylat

Mon, Aug 20 2018, 2:43 pm

"He's not giving you a hard time, he's having a hard time."

"All kids do well when they can."

The problem is not the behaviour, it is the lagging skill downstream from the behaviour. Don't punish the meltdown, figure out what the child found difficult that caused the meltdown, and address that.

I second the OP, lots of good perspectives, very helpful book.

saw50st8

Tue, Aug 21 2018, 7:07 am

Great book, I think it's really life changing.

If your kid is neurotypical, I recommend "Raising Human Beings" which is Dr. Greene's other book. Same method, different examples.

I found it rather difficult in the beginning to understand exactly how to implement this method, but with time and reading lots and lots of examples, I caught on. There's a great facebook group for that.