92 The Explosive Childpursue your expectations, and live happily with your
child without Plan A? Yes, you most certainly can.
PLAN CAs you read above, Plan C involves dropping a given ex-
pectation completely, at least temporarily. You know
you’re using Plan C if you say either nothing at all or OK
in response to a problem or unmet expectation. So if your
child says, “I’m too tired to do my homework tonight,” a
Plan C response would be, “OK.” If you’ve noticed that
your child is getting into bed without brushing his teeth,
a Plan C response would be to say nothing at all.
There’sanupsidetoPlanC: Ithelps youprevent an
explosion. But there’s also a down side: You’ve dropped
your expectation completely, at least for now. Of course,
as discussed earlier in this chapter, dropping some of
your expectations completely can also be a very good
thing, especially in the case of extremely volatile and un-
stable explosive kids, for it can help such kids be more
available to discuss the frustrations that remain. Some
people rely exclusively on medicine to reduce a child’s
volatility and instability, and for some children medicine
can be indispensable. But many kids can be stabilized and
helped to be more available without medicine by tem-
porarily reducing expectations through use of Plan C.
At first glance, many people come to the quick con-