Glenbard Parent Series to present 'Parenting the Explosive Child' Feb. 27
On Thursday, Feb. 27, the Glenbard Parent Series Navigating Healthy Families will present "Parenting the Explosive Child: A New Approach for Understanding and Parenting Easily Frustrated and Chronically Inflexible Children." The program will begin at 7 p.m. at Glenbard South High School, 23W200 Butterfield Road in Glen Ellyn.
An explosive child is one who responds to routine problems with extreme frustration, such as crying, screaming, kicking, hitting, destroying property or worse. Children who have frequent, severe outbursts often leave their parents/guardians feeling overwhelmed, worried and desperate for help.
Guest speaker Ross Greene is a clinical child psychologist and pioneer in the treatment of young people with social, emotional and behavioral challenges. He has worked with thousands of explosive children, and he has good news. These kids aren't attention seeking, manipulative, or unmotivated, and their parents aren't permissive pushovers. Rather, explosive children are lacking some crucial skills in the domains of flexibility/adaptability, frustration tolerance, and problem solving. They require a different approach to parenting.
Greene will provide a practical conceptual framework, based on research in the neurosciences, to help families understand the difficulties experienced by chronically inflexible children. He will explain why traditional parenting and treatment often don't work with explosive children, and he will take time to describe what will work. Greene's Collaborative Problem Solving model promotes working with children who are easily frustrated to solve the problems that precipitate explosive episodes and teaching kids the skills they may lack. His strategies are also helpful for kids who may not struggle in this area because adaptability and problem solving skills remain important throughout a child's life.
Continuing professional development units are available for this presentation.
GPS is generously sponsored by the Cebrin Goodman Center, Community Consolidated School District 93 Birth to 5 Community Coalition, Cooperative Association for Special Education (CASE), College of DuPage, DuPage Medical Group, Emmy Gaffey Foundation, Glenbard Early Childhood Collaborative, Holiday Inn/Carol Stream and Prevention Leadership Team of the DuPage County Health Department.
For information, visit www.glenbardgps.org or contact Gilda Ross, Glenbard District 87 student and community projects coordinator, at (630) 942-7668 or gilda_ross@glenbard.org.