Let's talk problem solving!  Many of us have tried it, but it's so common to get stuck...and to think that the method doesn't work, and then return in exasperation to the methods we'd been using all along.  These often involve coercion, or forcing the child to do something they don't want to do - but what's the alternative?

In this episode we talk with Dr. Ross Greene, who developed the Collaborative & Proactive Solutions (formerly Collaborative Problem Solving) approach in his books The Explosive Child and Raising Human Beings.  I really enjoyed digging into the research for this episode (why do all the papers describing CPS compare its effectiveness to behaviorist-based approaches?) but I ended up really taking one for the team: we didn't have time for all of my questions on the research because I wanted to make sure to address the challenges with problem solving that parents in the free Your Parenting Mojo Facebook group described when I asked them about this topic.

These challenges included:

For more information on Dr. Greene's work, check out his books Raising Human Beings and The Explosive Child.

 

Setting Loving (& Effective!) Limits Workshop

[accordion][accordion-item title="Click here to read the full transcript"]Jen Lumanlan  00:03 Hi, I'm Jen and I host the Your Parenting Mojo podcast. We all want our children to lead fulfilling lives. But it can be so hard to keep up with the latest scientific research on child development and figure out whether and how to incorporate it into our own approach to parenting. Here at Your Parenting Mojo, I do the work for you by critically examining strategies and tools related to parenting and child development that are grounded in scientific research and principles of respectful parenting. If you'd like to be notified when new episodes are released, and get a free guide to seven parenting myths that we can safely leave behind seven fewer things to worry about, subscribe to the show at YourParentingMojo.com. You can also continue the conversation about the show with other listeners in the Your Parenting Mojo Facebook group. I do hope you'll join us   Jen Lumanlan  00:59 Hello, and welcome to the Your Parenting Mojo Podcast. I'm really excited to do a deep dive today on the topic of problem solving with none other than Dr. Ross Green. Dr. Green is the author of the books The Explosive Child and Raising Human Beings, which describe interactions between parents and children. And the books Lost at School and Lost and Found, which look at children's experiences in school. And in this episode, we're going to do a deep dive into the collaborative and proactive solutions, or CPS, method that Dr. Greene developed. And if you're a longtime listener, you'll probably notice some parallels between this and the episode we did on nonviolent communication a year or so ago. These approaches really are key to moving beyond a power-over kind of relationship with your child to a place where you can comfortably share the power in your family and with your child. I'm not saying your child gets to rule the roost and walk all over you. But sharing some of your power with them can go an enormous way to resolving so many of the struggles you're having right now with your child. The key is to know how to do it so your child engages with you in the process. Because if you can do this, you can move beyond needing to set limits on your child's behavior and engage in a truly collaborative relationship with them. If you'd like to learn more about doing this, then I would love it if you would join me for a free workshop that I'm running starting Monday, December 7. It's called the Setting Loving and Effective Limits Workshop. Mostly because I think most folks think that what they need is more limits or better ways of setting limits. And in the workshop, we will help you to set limits that are effective. But we'll also show you how to set way fewer limits than you're setting right now. And at the same time, feel as though you're actually getting to a more cooperative place than you're in at the moment where your child wants to work with you to solve problems. So if you try problem solving as well, and it's fallen flat, we'll also have lots of support to help you work through those challenges. So you can find more confidence, peace and calm in your family. You can find more information and sign up for the free workshop at YourParentingMojo.com/limits. If you're catching this episode a little bit late, we'll actually have a webinar on Saturday, December 12 at 11 a.m. And we'll cover as many of the ideas from the workshop as we can in that time. You can sign up for that at YourParentingMojo.com/limitswebinar. And if you happened to miss both of those, but you know your family needs a lot of help with setting limits and the kinds of problem solving we're going to do today. And a whole host of other things as well. Then I hope you'll consider joining my parenting membership where we do all of this and so much more. You can find information on that at YourParentingMojo.com/parentingmembership. So Dr. Green is here today to start this process by talking through the research on collaborative and corrective solutions. And also talk us through some of the problems that parents in the free Your Parenting Mojo Facebook group told me about when I mentioned that I was doing an episode on this topic. So to formally introduce him, Dr. Green was on the faculty at Harvard Medical School for over 20 years. And he's the founding director of the nonprofit lives in the balance. He's been featured everywhere in the popular press, and he lectures and consults throughout the world when he's not confined to his home in Portland, Maine. Welcome, Dr. Grenee.   Dr. Ross Greene  04:10 Thanks for having me on.   Jen Lumanlan  04:12 And so I wonder if we can kind of dive in at the deep end here a little bit, talking about power and relationships. I'm wondering if you can tell me how do you see power in traditional parent-child relationships? And what about in the relationships between parents and children after they read your books or after you've worked with them?   Dr. Ross Greene  04:30 Well, you know, power has been a big deal in relationships for a long time and particularly between parents and kids. I think that what many people refer to as old school or traditional parenting relies a lot on power. Power, meaning adults telling kids what to do. In other words, I say jump, and you say how high. Unfortunately, somebody very important has their voice lost in that equation. The kid. And if we continue to simply parent that way, then we perpetuate the cycle of power. And I am one who extends my work beyond parents and kids to society at large. I think that in our society, we see many populations that have felt that they have been oppressed with power as the main ingredient. Many populations, many groups of people who have felt like their voices have not been heard, and they have not been included. And so I think that we are reaping what we have sown in the power department, and it ain't good. And I think that at this point in society, a lot of those groups, rightfully so, are saying, "We won't be quiet anymore, we demand to be heard." And I personally think that that is a very good thing. But I especially think it's a good thing as a relates to kids, who in some ways are demanding that not as powerfully as other populations are when it's adults. But the good news is, there's really no downside to hearing kids and to involving them in solving the problems that affect their lives. It's actually, quite frankly, all upside. So what I hope happens after people read my books is that they begin listening to kids better. I think of listening as the purest form of empathy. And that we involve kids in solving the problems that affect their lives and recognize that that actually prepares them for the real world in ways that are a whole lot better than simply imposing solutions on them.   Jen Lumanlan  06:46 Yeah, and it seems a big part of that vision that you have is this reframing of problems from being well, you have a problem with your behavior. And that's what needs to change to this idea of compatibility and incompatibility. Can you tell us how you see that?   Dr. Ross Greene  07:01 Sure. Well, the incompatibility and compatibility language is not original that comes from some very brilliant thinkers who were writing way before I was writing, people whose last names are Thomas and shamisen, Berg, Bell and Gottlieb and Samer off, people who set forth what might best be thought of as what's called Goodness of Fit theory, which was originally a statistical model, but it was then applied to kids and temperament. But it's actually is kind of simple. It basically says that outcome, a person's outcome is the product of the degree of fit or match between characteristics of the individual and the characteristics of their environment. Now, I'm a little bit reductionistic when it comes to that when it comes to characteristics of the individual. I'm talking mostly about skills. When it comes to characteristics of the environment, I'm talking about the expectations the environment is placing on a particular individual. When kids have the skills to meet our expectations, there is compatibility. And we would expect an adaptive outcome. When kids do not have the skills to meet our expectations, there is incompatibility. And then there is what I call incompatibility episodes, otherwise known as challenging behavior, otherwise known as the signal. By my way of viewing things, behavior is just the signal, just the fever, just the means by which a kid is communicating something fairly straightforward. I'm stuck. There is an expectation I'm having difficulty meeting. So if we power through that, and if we only focus on the kids' behavior, once again, the kids' voice is lost, we may improve compatibility that way, but not forever, I can assure you of that. When we are willing to listen to what the kid has to say, involve the kid in the solutions. We are doing nothing less than improving compatibility. But we are also improving our understanding of this kid, improving communication with the kid, and improving our relationship with the kid once again. All good.   Jen Lumanlan  09:23 Yeah, and I think that's so important. And immediately, when I started thinking about that, it reminded me of the zero to three parents survey that they ran in 2015. And they uncovered an expectation gap for parents of young children. And I went back to it and pulled out some stats and it said 50% to 60% of parents believe that children have the impulse control to resist a desire to do something forbidden before the age of 3. 36% think kids under two can do that. 42% believe two-year-olds should be able to control themselves instead of having a tantrum. 24% believe that a one-year-old should be able to do this. So how does this expectation gap kind of interact with intersect with the theory that you're talking us through?   Dr. Ross Greene  10:05 Well, once again, when our expectations are out of whack based on what a kid can actually do, we're going to get challenging behavior, because that's the signal that things are out of whack. And that really is the best way to think of challenging behavior. It's the kids' way of communicating, something is out of whack. Now, here's what's interesting, those are aggregate statistics. But I want to add another layer. Those are statistics about all parents in general, which suggest to us that our expectations for our kids may be unrealistic. But there's another layer to that. And that is the individual kid. Because the individual kid is bringing unique characteristics to the mix as well. There may actually be some one-year olds who are able to control their impulses. I haven't come across many, but maybe there are some. If that kid can do that and the parents are expecting that, then even though the parents' expectations are out of whack as it relates to most kids, their expectations are in line for their kid. And that's really what it comes down to. Yes. The data that you cited tells us that our expectations may be out of whack in general, but what really life comes down to is your kid, your expectations, and whether your kid can meet them, not whether the neighbor across the street, the kid of the same age, and same gender, or same anything can meet them. We're talking about your kid here. And if your kid is exhibiting challenging behavior, your kid is communicating that something is out of whack. Now, the reason that's important is because for a long time, we have viewed tantrums in toddlers as simply them trying to get their own way, trying to exert their will. It changes the color of things quite a bit. When we recognize that challenging behavior is the kid's way of communicating that things are out of whack, and that we have to take a deeper dive into what we are asking of the kid, our expectations, and what the kid can actually deliver the goods on.   Jen Lumanlan  12:24 Yeah, I think there are two ideas that you're getting out here. One is parenting the child that's in front of you, not parenting the average of children or the child you wish you had. And you know, you wish that your two-year-old could not have a tantrum when they're feeling like something's not right. And then, secondly, the view that this behavior needs to "change" is not the child's problem. It indicates a problem in the relationship, a problem that the two of you are having.   Dr. Ross Greene  12:51 So yes, but I needed more specifics than relationship. The behavior communicates that our expectations and the kids' capacity to meet them are out of whack with each other.   Jen Lumanlan  13:04 Yeah, Okay.   Dr. Ross Greene  13:05 And by the way, that's why I've always said, I think this is in the explosive child, probably in raising human beings too. I can't remember what I wrote in what book, but my definition of good parenting is being responsive to the hand you've been dealt. Yeah, as you said, not being responsive to the hand you wish you'd been dealt, but dealing with the child who's right in front of you.   Jen Lumanlan  13:26 Yeah, okay. And so now we're going to get kind of into the meat of the CPS approach. And so we're going to talk through what is Plan A. What is Plan B? What is Plan C? And then I'm going to want to, because I'm super curious in the people who listen to the show are super curious. We're going to spend a bit of time in the theory here. And then we're going to get into some questions that listeners have submitted on ways that this is not working in their families and how we can problem solve that. So firstly, can you please help us understand what is Plan A, Plan B, and Plan C?   Dr. Ross Greene  13:53 Sure. Well, what I have parents do, as part of the CPS model, is proactively identify the expectations that their child was having difficulty meeting reliably. And I call those unsolved problems, also known as problems that have yet to be solved, also known as problems that are waiting to be solved. And that's why those problems are still causing challenging behavior because they're not solved yet. So the first thing I have parents do is make a list of unsolved problems. And that is an indispensable first step. The reason it's indispensable is because we want parents solving those problems proactively, not reactively. Without the list, we're still stuck in the heat of the moment whenever a problem pops up. The list is also important for another reason, and that is that we're going to have to prioritize if our kid has a meaningful number of unsolved problems, problems that have been long standing. You know, many of these problems are three, four, or five years old. We are not talking about the chronological age as a kid, we are talking about how long the kid has...