32 The Explosive Childself-regulate, set goals, and manage emotions. Let’s ex-
amine the role of three specific language skills—
categorizing and expressing emotions, identifying and
articulating one’s needs, and solving problems—to eluci-
date why this might be.
Many explosive children don’t have a basic vocabulary
for categorizing and expressing their emotions. This is a
big problem, for it’s actually very useful to be able to let
people know you’re “frustrated” when you’re frustrated.
Can you imagine feeling all the sensations associated
with frustration—hot-faced, agitated, tense, explosive,
and so on—without being able to let people know what
you’re feeling? Under such circumstances, there’s some
reasonable chance that words other than “frustrated” will
come out of your mouth. (“Screw you,” “I hate you,” “Shut
up,” and “Leave me alone” are some of the milder possi-
bilities.) Worse, if you don’t have the word “frustrated” in
your vocabulary, there’s a pretty surefire chance that
people are going to think you’re something else (“angry,”
“hostile,” “out-of-control,” “scary”). Then they’re going to
treat you as if you’re angry, hostile, out-of-control, or
scary, and you’re going to get even more frustrated.
Some children do just fine at categorizing and labeling
their feelings but have trouble coming up with the words
to tell you what’s the matter or what they need. For ex-
ample, most eighteen-month-old children don’t yet have
the skills to tell us what they need using words. So when