Proactive Problem Solving For Your Child’s Behavior Challenges

Episode Transcript

Dr. Nicole Beurkens: 

Hi everyone, welcome to the show, I am Dr. Nicole, and today we’re going to be talking about a really effective way of thinking about and supporting children with behavioral challenges. Many parents and professionals think that rewards and punishments and those kinds of approaches are what’s needed when a child is struggling or acting out or exhibiting what we would call inappropriate behaviors, but the reality is that these kids lack some fundamental skills that they need to manage situations and manage life more effectively. And what if, instead of consequences, behavior charts and those kinds of things, kids need adults to understand the root of their struggles and provide them with these skills, options, solutions to manage their challenges more effectively. 

That is what we’re going to get into with my guest today, Dr. Ross Greene. Reading his book, ‘The Explosive Child’ many, many years ago now, totally changed how I thought about behavior, how I thought about supporting my students with behavioral challenges back when I was teaching, well before I was a clinical psychologist, and it was such a different approach than what I had learned in my teacher training and the work that I had done. And his work had helped me in countless ways since, as both a parent and a therapist. So let me tell you a bit more about him. 

Dr. Ross Greene is the New York Times bestselling author of the influential books The Explosive Child, Lost at School, Lost & Found and Raising Human Beings. He is the originator of the model of care described in those books, now called Collaborative & Proactive Solutions (CPS). Dr. Greene was on the faculty at Harvard Medical School for over 20 years, and is now founding director of the non-profit Lives in the Balance, which provides a vast array of free, web-based resources on the CPS model. He has appeared in a wide range of media, including The Oprah Show, Good Morning America, The Morning Show, National Public Radio, Mother Jones magazine, and many more. Dr. Greene lectures and consults widely throughout the world and lives in Portland, Maine. As I said, his work has been so influential for me, professionally and personally over the past 20+ years, I can not wait to share this with you, welcome to the show, Dr. Greene!

Dr. Ross Greene:

Thank you for having me!

Dr. Nicole Beurkens: 

So I’d like to start out by just having you share a bit about how you came to be doing this kind of work with kids. Were you always working with kids? Did you have a particular situation that got you thinking about these kinds of things with children? What was the starting point for your journey with all this? 

Dr. Ross Greene: 

My starting point was that I was a camp counselor, liked working with kids, it was either going to be kids or animals, and I don’t like blood, so that leaves you with kids. And I started in graduate schools with kids with ADHD, I gravitated to them for whatever reason. If you’re working with a lot of kids with ADHD — mostly, quite frankly, because one of the things I noticed with kids with ADHD is that they looked very different depending on whether they were on medicine or not. And what I had been trained to believe was that challenging behavior was because of passive, permissive, inconsistent, non-contingent, inept parenting. But what happened to all that lousy parenting, if medicine makes the kid look completely different? It just didn’t add up. But if you’re working with kids with ADHD, then you are going to be working with a lot of kids who are diagnosed with oppositional defiant disorder, conduct disorder. And those were the ones who really intrigued me, because it also became very evident that kids who were oppositional and not doing what we wanted them to and being non-compliant, which is the main ingredient, weren’t non-compliant full time. They were only non-compliant part time, which is when I started calling it part-time oppositional defiant disorder. Otherwise, they were actually quite compliant and were meeting our expectations, and that’s fascinating, that’s a fascinating thing to hang a disorder on. Can you really have a part-time disorder? And so that’s who I began really specializing in, and that’s when I discovered that the way I had been trained to work with them, which was what most folk do, still unfortunately, ways to reward the behaviors you like. So to see more of them, and punish the behaviors you don’t like to see less of them, and focus exclusively on making the kid comply with adult directives. While that worked for some, it didn’t work for a whole bunch more. And that’s when I had to start getting a little bit creative and start thinking about what we really have here, what’s going on with this kid and what, maybe, we should be doing differently. 

Dr. Nicole Beurkens: 

Yeah, absolutely. And I think that was my experience too, coming out of my teacher training and going into the classroom, and my first job. I got thrown into a job I was completely unprepared for, but excited about dealing with middle school aged kids with severe emotional and behavioral and learning disorders, which you know, in your early 20s, you feel like you can conquer the world and do anything. It was actually great because it taught me so much, but what I learned right out of the gate was, oh my goodness — how I have been taught to think about this is not going to work, and that actually is what led me to find your work, but that same experience of — we need some different, not only tools, but some different ways of understanding what’s actually going on here, right? 

So let’s get into that because where most people think about behavior as kids choosing not to respond or handle things in an appropriate way, and therefore, if we just reward enough of this and punish enough of that, they’ll make better choices. You really have a different take on that and a different way of conceptualizing what’s happening there, so I’d love for you to talk about that. 

Dr. Ross Greene: 

Well, it’s the difference between two mentalities. There is: “kids do well if they can” and there is “kids do well if they want”. Kids do well if they want, basically is the belief that the reason this kid isn’t doing well is that the kid doesn’t want to do well, therefore, our job as adults is to make the kid want to do well. Now why wouldn’t the kid want to do well? Get this: Because doing poorly is working out better for the kid than doing well would. Which is putting it in a certain way, but that is actually a fairly-popular belief system. How would doing poorly be working out better for the kid than doing well would? He’s seeking attention by doing poorly, he’s manipulating us, he’s coercing us into capitulating to his wishes. He’s unmotivated, he is testing limits, right? All things we frequently say about behaviorally-challenged kids, in my opinion, none of which are true, but all flowing from a “Kids do well if they want” mentality and the belief that doing poorly is working out better for the kid than doing well would.

On the other hand, “kids do well if they can” says if this kid could do well, the kid would do well. If the kid’s not doing well, something must be getting in the kids way. Our job: Figure out what’s getting in the kids’ way. And that means two things, and this is what I frequently call the information that’s been missing. We don’t need to have a meeting to figure out what behaviors the kid is exhibiting when he is having difficulty meeting our expectations. We already know, we’re in a meeting for that, right? There are a lot of things we talk about in our meetings that we really shouldn’t be spending a lot of time talking about because they’re not especially productive. 

What do we not spend enough time talking about? The two pieces of information that are frequently missing: What are this kid’s lagging skills? As you mentioned earlier, this is not about lagging motivation, this is about lagging skills, and that’s what the research that has accumulated over the last 40-50 years has been telling us for a very long time, this is not about lagging motivation, it’s about lagging skills. So job one: Figure out what skills this kid is lagging, so we have the right lenses on. Job two: Figure out what expectations this kid is having difficulty reliably meeting. See it’s those unmet expectations or what I refer to as unsolved problems, but those are synonyms, that are causing the challenging behavior that we’ve been so busy rewarding and punishing. 

Now here is the deal: Yes, if you reward and punish a kid’s behavior, you might make a dent in the behavior, but you will not solve the problem that is causing that behavior. But if you’re busy solving the problems that are causing the kid’s behavior, not only does the kid’s behavior improve, the problems get solved. What I refer to frequently as a 2 for 1 sale. All of this, by the way, makes clear this crucial difference between kids do well if they want to and kids do well if they can. 

Dr. Nicole Beurkens: 

That phrase, “Kids do well when they can”, when I first heard that in your work, probably over 20 years ago now, that is what struck me so much to say, well — of course it seems so obvious when you say it, and yet it isn’t because so much of what’s taught and how our systems operate both in schools, in therapy and in institutions, it is geared around the opposite of that, which is “Kids do well if they want to.” I mean that’s how my training was, both in the realm of education and in the realm of psychology. 

Dr. Ross Greene: 

And it’s taken a very long time for that to change, but you are absolutely right, a lot of the disciplinary structures in schools, a lot of the assessment structures in school are oriented around behavior and around “kids do well if they want to”. Slowly, but surely, boy, this has taken a long to change. Slowly but surely, it is starting to change, but the reality is in most schools, what do we assess when we’re dealing with behaviorally-challenging students? We do behavior checklists, we do behavior observations, we do a functional behavior assessment, all so that we can come up with a behavior plan. All focused on what I’ve simply referred to as “the signal”, you fever. Behavior is just the signal, it’s the means by which the kid is communicating something very important, we wouldn’t want to miss this: “I’m stuck. There are expectations I’m having difficulty meeting.” That’s all behavior is and yet, generally speaking, you don’t get sent to the principal because you’re having difficulty completing the double-digit division on the worksheet at math. You get sent to the principle if 97 times later were that problem still unsolved, you push over a desk. Now you’re going to the principle. 

Dr. Nicole Beurkens: 

Yeah, absolutely, and how it really is still so embedded in our educational institutions and elsewhere this punitive model. I mean just the fact that we still use things like detention and suspension, even for little kids, and the fact that a lot of therapies out there, even therapies working with parents to help them do things in the home, it’s all geared around this same thing. And we may use different words for it and whatever, but really at the root, it’s the same thing.

Kids do well if they want to, and if we’re reinforcing the right things and giving unpleasant consequences for the wrong things, then this is going to get better but I think what so many of our listeners can relate to about this is that they know that this doesn’t really make it better. Even if as you said, you get some surface level compliance or, I refer to it as the game of whack-a-mole, you get this one thing taken care of with umpteen meetings and plans and all these things, and you get this one down, and three more pop up over here, because we’ve not actually solved the problem, we haven’t looked at what the real issue is and we haven’t given the kid any additional skills and support in addressing that. 

Dr. Ross Greene: 

That is correct. Now, there are some people out there who take great pride in the fact that they don’t punish, they only reward. Those two are cut from the exact same bolt of cloth. But secondly, I have seen just as many kids lose their minds in failing to achieve the anticipated reward, as I have seen kids lose their mind in the midst of being punished. I don’t distinguish between those two. A lot of folks do, that is a false distinction. It’s also archaic. 

Dr. Nicole Beurkens: 

Yeah, and we know that it’s just ineffective, especially when we look at the big picture of kids’ lives, and I always say to people: I am much less concerned about getting a kid to do thing A or thing B right now. I’m concerned about helping kids grow into being adults who know how to manage themselves, think about and solve problems that come up. That’s what our goal should be, not just doing this target behavior or thing right now. 

Dr. Ross Greene: 

Correct! Plus, a lot of those behavior managing programs, their primary focal point is just compliance. I want you to do what I say. Boy, do we miss a lot that way. The kid has no voice under those circumstances. We don’t learn anything about the kid in terms of why the kid is having difficulty meeting that expectation. It’s largely about power and control. We are not working together, we’re not teammates, we’re not partners, instead, we’re being adversarial, and it’s completely unnecessary. 

Dr. Nicole Beurkens: 

Well, it also can be very damaging to the parent-child relationship, the teacher child relationship… those relationships which we know from everything about developmental psychology research, child development research. Those relationships are the foundation for being able to regulate ourselves emotionally and behaviorally, being able to engage in social interactions in an appropriate way. And yet we kind of throw those relationships under the bus with those more behavioral types of approaches, don’t we?

Dr. Ross Greene:

That’s a very good way to put it. Rewarding and punishing, there are people who try to make the case that rewarding and punishing enhances relationships. Not sure where you come up with that. 

Dr. Nicole Beurkens: 

So let’s get into really your collaborative and proactive solutions model, and obviously, we don’t have time to get into all the details of it, but you’ve now set the stage for how and why we need to be looking at this differently. Let’s talk about what CPS is, how it really is a different and more helpful model?

Dr. Ross Greene: 

Well, there are basically two components to the model. The first thing we’ve got to do is use an instrument that I’ve developed called the Assessment of Lagging Skills and Unsolved Problems to identify the information that’s been missing. What are these kids’ lagging skills? What are his unsolved problems? People can find the Assessment of Lagging Skills and Unsolved Problems on the web, it’s on my non-profit Lives in the Balance. I would say it takes about 45-50 minutes to complete it. The beauty of the assessment of lagging skills and unsolved problems, is as I’ve already mentioned, number one, it helps us get the right lenses on. We’ve got to get the right lenses on with these kids. We lose a lot of kids because we’ve got the wrong lenses on. 

And we’ve got to identify what we’re going to be working on with the kid, unsolved problems. What expectations is the kid having difficulty meeting. And then what the model basically does is once those unsolved problems are identified and once they’re prioritized, because a lot of very behaviorally-challenging kids have accumulated quite a number of unsolved problems over time… you’ve got to prioritize, otherwise you’re working on too many things at once, and then you’ll end up solving no problems at all. And you’ve got to decide how you want to solve those problems. 

And in the real world, I always say that you have three options, and in this model, you are only using two of them. In the real world, those three options are called Plans A, B and C. In this model, you are really only using B and C. Plan C is where you are setting aside a particular expectation, at least for now. Not because you’re giving in, not because you’re giving up, but because you’re prioritizing. As I’ve already said, many kids have a lot of unsolved problems. Once we finally get around to identifying them, we can’t solve them all at once. Plan C are the unsolved problems we have consciously, deliberately, and here is a big word: proactively, we decided we’re not working on this one right now. We’ve got bigger fish to fry. That’s plan C. 

Now, another beautiful thing about plan C besides prioritizing is that it’s also very stabilizing. Any expectation we have removed for now, won’t set in motion a challenging episode because we aren’t even expecting the kid to meet that expectation right now. Now that rubs some people the wrong way, especially those who never want to give up even a fraction of the adult agenda. And also from people who have a very narrow definition of authority. They think authority is when you say “Jump” and the kid says “How high”? What I tell people all the time is, “Boy, are you being an authority figure when you decide that there are certain expectations you are going to remove for now.” Plan C is also useful because it also helps us think to ourselves — can this kid even meet the set expectation right now?

We put a lot of expectations on kids and it causes a lot of challenging episodes on expectations they can not even meet yet. 

 

Dr. Nicole Beurkens: 

And it creates such a tremendous amount of overwhelm, not just for the child but for the adults around the child too. I think it’s such a relief actually, that idea of “I can choose as the adult in the situation, I can choose to have this be a Plan C, because it takes it off the table as something that I need to feel overwhelmed or stressed about that the kid does and so I think that narrowing the field to really just focusing on certain things at a time is not only helpful for the child, I think it’s incredibly helpful for reducing the stress and the anxiety of the parent or the adult. 

Dr. Ross Greene:

Absolutely. A lot of classroom teachers breathe an enormous sigh of relief when you say to them, “You know what? You don’t even have to worry about that right now.” You have not reduced your standards, you have not given up on those expectations, you’ve prioritized. That’s different.” That leaves us with only two other plans, A and B. Both represent a way to solve a problem. For the kid, there’s just one massive difference between them. With Plan A, you are solving the problem unilaterally, with Plan B, you are solving the problem collaboratively. In this model, you are using Plan B. I always like to reassure people, are we allergic to Plan A in this model? No, if a kid is about to dart in front of a speeding car in a parking lot, you’re not doing Plan C. You’re not saying “We’ve got bigger fish to fry here.” You’re not doing Plan B, it’s too late. You’re doing Plan A. You yank on the kids’ arm, you save his life, if he blows up, so be it. But if three weeks later, the kid has now darted in front of a speeding car an additional 15 times and you’ve yanked an additional 15 times — Yes, yanking is working at saving the kid’s life, but now, yanking is not working at solving this problem. You’re going to need a different plan and it’s either going to be Plan C where you are saying, “I don’t think we’re ready for parking lots yet.” Or Plan B, where you are finding out what’s making it so hard for this kid to meet the expectation of staying next to you in a parking lot and solving that problem together. 

Dr. Nicole Beurkens: 

Let’s talk a bit about the lagging and unsolved problems. Can you give a few examples of that, just for listeners who are not familiar with that way of thinking about it? What are some of the things that assessment is looking at, or that we’re thinking about when we think about the kinds of root-level issues that kids are having. 

Dr. Ross Greene: 

Here are some lagging skills, and you’ll notice that lagging skills are more general, unsolved problems are more specific. Some of the lagging skills on the assessment of lagging skills and unsolved problems are things like difficulties of shifting from one mindset or task to another, difficulty persisting on challenging or tedious tasks, difficulty expressing one’s needs, thoughts or concerns in words. Those are very general, those are our lenses, right? That’s the 10 thousand foot view. Those lagging skills take the place of attention seeking, manipulative, coercive, unmotivated, limit-testing. 

The unsolved problems are more specific. The unsolved problems are these specific expectations the kid is having difficulty meeting: Difficulty coming back into the classroom after recess. Difficulty completing the double-digit division problems on the worksheet in maths. Difficulty sitting next to Billy during circle time, those are school ones. Home ones would be: Difficulty brushing teeth before going to bed at night, difficulty turning off the Xbox to come in for dinner. Difficulty turning off the Xbox to go to bed at night. Difficulty waking up at 7AM to go to school. Those are home unsolved problems. You can see that those are much more specific. The lagging skills give us our lenses, the unsolved problems tell us the unsolved problems that we’re trying to solve with this kid.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens: 

Yeah, and I think it’s such a more helpful way of looking at it because out of that, then, can come some actual solutions or ways of working on that that don’t just get compliant behavior in those situations, but actually teach and develop the skills to handle those situations. But also so many more and that’s what I think just makes — in the big picture, makes so much more sense about an approach like this. In a more behavioral or reward and punishment kind of model, every single thing has to be tackled as a separate thing. It’s like that game of whack-a-mole, whereas with this, we’re developing those underlying skills — many things start to improve for the child as a result of that, beyond the just maybe one target that we’re initially working with, right?

Dr. Ross Greene:

That is correct. It doesn’t always work out that way, but yes, it is possible that by helping a kid solve the problem of difficulty coming back into the classroom after recess, we would also take a few giant steps forward in helping the kid come into school in the morning or move from math to English, or — you name it. So yes, by working on one, you are sometimes solving another, but the big difference here is that with reward and punishment programs you are primarily focused on behavior. Behavior is just a signal. But the other thing you know about behavior is that it’s late. And a lot of the worst things we do to kids, with the best of intentions, to “help” them, are late. Restraining a kid is late. Putting a kid in a seclusion room is late. Detention is late, suspension is late, expulsion is late, paddling is late, timeout is late because behavior is late. And those things are all being done in response to behavior. What’s early? The unsolved problems that are causing that behavior. If you identify those problems early and you solve those problems early, now you are in crisis prevention mode, now you’re not in crisis management mode anymore. 

Dr. Nicole Beurkens:

A proactive approach, as opposed to that reactive approach, and that’s such a powerful shift for people to make, whether we are talking about parents, or people in a school setting or wherever else — that shift from thinking about “How do we get ahead of this? How can we help this child navigate this situation before it turns into the explosive behavior” is so important. 

Dr. Ross Greene:

Now to do that, we should probably go through the three steps of Plan B, because to do that, you’re going to need information about what’s making it hard for the kid to meet the expectation you are talking with him or her about. So Plan B consists of three steps. The first step is called “The Empathy Step”, second step is called, “The Defining Adult Concern Step” and the third step is called “The Invitation Step.” The names of the steps don’t matter that much, the ingredients matter a lot. 

The main ingredient of the empathy step is information gathering. Gathering information from the kid about what’s making it hard for the kid to meet the expectation we’re talking with him or her about right now. As I always say, kids have information we badly need. Information about what’s hard, information about what’s getting in the kids’ way. If we do not get that information, we don’t really know what’s getting in the kids’ way, and this problem is going to remain unsolved. We need info — the empathy step is where we’re going to get it. Now, immediately after I say that, a lot of adults think: “What if the kid won’t talk to me?” The kid ain’t talking to you because of Plan A. I’m not talking about Plan A, I’m talking about Plan B. It could take a while, but the kid is going to talk to you. You can gather that information. What if the kid is non-verbal? We do this with non-verbal kids all the time. It’s not that non-verbal kids are not communicating, it’s that non-verbal kids aren’t communicating through our preferred modality: Spoken word. 

That’s the empathy step. Without that information, this problem can’t get solved because the kids’ concerns are not going to get addressed if we don’t know what those concerns are. 

Dr. Nicole Beurkens:

Can you give us an example, thinking about something that might come up at home between a parent and a child, can you just give listeners an example of what that empathy step might sound like?

Dr. Ross Greene:

Sure. It starts with an introduction. The introduction starts with the words, “I’ve noticed that…” And ends with the words “What’s up?” In between, you are inserting an unsolved problem. “I’ve noticed that it’s been difficult for you to brush your teeth before going to bed at night. What’s up?” Now this is a true story, I love telling this story: I was doing a podcast, about a year a go, and the interviewer was telling me about his 3 year-old daughter who was having difficulty brushing her teeth before she went to bed at night, and he didn’t do the empathy step. He thought he knew, and this is one of the biggest mistakes we adults make, we think we know already. So he thought it was the taste of the toothpaste. 15 different flavors of toothpaste later, she was still having difficulty brushing her teeth before going to bed at night, so he finally did Plan B. 

And what did he learn? And this is why I always say the empathy step is where you find out that what you thought was getting in the kid’s way is not what was getting in the kid’s way, I found out that — this was a 3 year-old daughter, by the way. Some people think you can’t do this with a 3 year-old. Yes you can. It turns out that when he was brushing her teeth with the electric toothbrush, it was getting water all over her face. She didn’t like it. So I said to him, “Well, now there is a concern that 15 different flavors of toothpaste would never address.” The solution was that they put a towel around her face when he was brushing her teeth with the electric toothbrush. Then both concerns were addressed. She didn’t want water getting sprayed on her face. He wanted to make sure that her teeth were clean and that she didn’t get cavities. Did he give up any authority in doing that? No. Did he save a lot of time in doing it? Yes. That’s what the empathy step sounds like, but we also then merged into the other two steps. 

The “Defining Adult Concern” step is where the adult is entering his or her concern into consideration. And that usually is — why is it important that this expectation be met? Adult concerns usually follow one or both of just two categories: How the unsolved problem is affecting the kid and/or how the unsolved problem is affecting other people. In the case of the kid with the teeth brushing, he didn’t want her to get cavities, that would be how it affects her, and maybe he didn’t want to have to pay for those cavities, which would be how it affects him. The invitation starts with the words, “I wonder if there’s a way…” Generically, “you’ll want to have a way to solve this problem, and you can say it that way. But if you say it that way, a lot of kids are going to look at you and say, “What problem?” So what you want to do instead is recap the concerns of both parties. Here is what it would have sounded like: “I wonder if there is a way for us to make sure that we don’t get water all over your face when I’m brushing your teeth and also make sure that your teeth get cleaned so you don’t get cavities and I don’t have to pay for them.” You are then giving the kid the first crack at the solution. “Do you have any ideas?” Not because it’s the kid’s job to solve the problem, a child’s job to solve the problem. You all are teammates, but it’s a very good strategy. It let’s the kid know beyond a shadow of a doubt you’re actually interested in his or her ideas. If the kid doesn’t have any ideas, the adult will. That’s the process. And that, by the way, is the process on brushing your teeth with a 3-year-old. It’s the exact same three steps with unsafe sex, the illicit use of substances, truancy, you name it. Three steps.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens:

And what’s so beautiful about that is it not only actually allows for the development of productive solutions, but it also builds this relationship of collaboration and trust that’s so vitally important between kids and the significant adults in their lives. 

Dr. Ross Greene:

Totally. 

Dr. Nicole Beurkens:

And I think it’s important to mention because some people might be thinking: “Well, this kid that I work with won’t respond in that way” or “My kid won’t respond” — this is a process, and especially, as you said, if Plan A has been the plan, what the kids’ experience has been with you as the parent or as the teacher or whoever, it’s going to take some time to build that trust that you truly do want to think with them about this and handle these things in a different way, right?

Dr. Ross Greene:

It can take a while. There are definitely some kids who have had so much Plan A in their life that it’s going to take a while for them to trust you. But I’ve got to tell you: Being heard, finally, which is what’s going on in the empathy step — By the way, let me just reassure adults: Being heard is also going in the “Defining Adult Concerns” step. That’s where the adult is being heard. So the kid is not the only one being heard in this process. But being heard is actually very powerful. These are kids who have been wanting to have a voice and wanting to have their concerns heard for a very long time, and I always tell people: “Listening is the purest form of empathy.” So I actually — most of the Plan B’s that I do with kids these days are with kids that I’ve never met. They don’t trust me, and yet, listening is still the purest form of empathy, and having a voice is very powerful. 

Dr. Nicole Beurkens:

Do you find that one of the challenges for adults in shifting to this mode of approaching these things with kids — let’s even talk about it for parents, is this idea that I think is so ingrained in us, just in one way, shape or form about us needing to be in control, that authority piece? And if we involve the kid in the process of that, if we approach it more as a discussion, a collaborative problem-solving sort of model that somehow that means that we’re not in charge or we’re losing control — do you find that that’s a big barrier to this?

Dr. Ross Greene:

It is, but I also tell people that first of all, control is a delusion. You don’t have control anyways. The best you can shoot for is influence, but maybe even more importantly, generally speaking, I find the more control you shoot for, the less control you have. We adults would be way better off if we were shooting for influence instead of control. We don’t have control. It’s the impossible dream. But you can buy yourself influence, just not through the same methodology that you would have if you were shooting for control. 

Dr. Nicole Beurkens:

Yeah, I like that idea of aiming for influence, as opposed to control, because when we talk about these approaches, even in the clinic with some families, there is this sense on some people’s part of, “Well, but I need to be the parent, I need to be in charge, they need to do what I say when I say it.” And so it is a shift for some people to this idea of “Yes, we can meet the requirements, we can get your needs met and your child’s needs met. This is a more productive way of doing that.”

Dr. Ross Greene:

Yes. But I also think that that’s a very narrow view of authority, a very narrow view of what it means to be a parent, a very narrow view of what it means to be an educator. I’d rather we use the word partner. You are this kid’s partner in life. You want the kid to benefit from your experience, wisdom and values, which is why you have those expectations in the first place. The problem is, if you go about trying to have influence unilaterally, you are not going to have very much influence, and you’re not going to have control either. If you go about trying to have influence collaboratively, you’re going to have influence. 

Dr. Nicole Beurkens:

Yeah, and as you said, control is just the illusion of control, anyway. I want to touch on something that you said, that it occurs to me some of our listeners may be thinking to themselves right now, and that is that you said the child can be non-verbal. There are lots of ways of approaching this because I think some of our listeners, particularly if they have a maybe more impaired child, maybe a child with some cognitive impairment or a child with more significant challenges may think, “Well, that’s all nice if you have a neurotypical kid or a kid who has good communication skills or whatever, but that won’t work for my child. Can you speak to that a little bit? 

Dr. Ross Greene:

Yeah. Don’t sell your kid short. There’s always a way. Your kid is communicating, even if they’re not using words. And people communicate all the time with kids who are non-verbal and kids who are very “low-functioning”. We do it through pictures, we do it through signs, we do it through assisted technology. This is not impossible. And in fact, I’ve got to tell you: Those are the kids who I like working with the most these days because they challenge my skills, you’ve got to get a little bit more creative, but we wouldn’t want to sell those kids short and we wouldn’t count them out on being able to participate in solving the problems that affect their lives. When you count that kid out, you are left with nothing else except being unilateral. It just isn’t so. 

Dr. Nicole Beurkens:

Yeah, I think that’s just such an important point because many parents are told, particularly if their child has a diagnosis of autism or a more significant cognitive impairment, neurodevelopmental disorder, they’re really told from early on, this behavioral approach, this is what we have, this is what works and this is what you need to do, and yet so many parents have misgivings about that. They’re feeling like this doesn’t really seem to be working and yet, they’re told nope, this is what you do for those kids. That’s why I wanted to touch on that because what you’re saying and what I say and what others say — there are other options, that’s not your only option if your child has that diagnosis. 

Dr. Ross Greene:

There are other options and those parents may have noticed already — and teachers, that the option that they were told was the only option, often isn’t working very well. 

Dr. Nicole Beurkens:

Yeah. Absolutely. So helpful to just reframe this for people and to walk through what the approach looks like and just plant the seed in people’s mind for a different way of thinking about and handling these things. I want to make sure that people know where they can find out more about the work you’re doing, the resources you have, this approach?

Dr. Ross Greene:

Well, there are books, obviously, but the website of my non-profit, Lives in the Balance, which is livesinthebalance.org is just filled with a massive amount of free resources to take them beyond what they have just heard. It would take months to get through all of the free resources on that website. That’s the first place that I would start. 

Dr. Nicole Beurkens:

Absolutely, and it is such a wealth of information. Every time I go to the website, there are new things up there, so many, whether it’s things to listen to or watch or download, just a really great variety of things. I really want to encourage people to check that out, and then obviously the books, I’ve got my whole collection here and the others, so just such wonderful resources, whether you are a parent listening or maybe a family member or if you are one of the professionals who listens to the show and is working with kids and schools and therapy settings, child care assistance — all of those, anybody who is spending time with kids can benefit from these resources and from this approach, so I can’t thank you enough for being here with us today, such a helpful conversation!

Dr. Ross Greene:

Thank you, and I want to make sure that we wish everyone to stay safe and be well.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens:

Absolutely, and thanks to all of you for listening to this episode of The Better Behavior show, we’ll catch you back here next week.