Collaborative and Proactive Solutions for Caregivers

In the third of a new series of parent-focused DBSA podcasts, Dr. Ross Greene, author of the highly acclaimed books The Explosive Child and Lost at School, discusses understanding and parenting easily frustrated and chronically inflexible children with DBSA Parent Volunteer Coordinator Julia Small. In the podcast, Dr. Greene explores his Collaborative & Proactive Solutions (CPS) approach, which sets forth two principles: First, challenging behavior in kids is best understood as the result of lagging cognitive skills (rather than as the result of permissive and inconsistent parenting). And second, the best way to reduce challenging episodes is to work together with the child to solve the problems that have set in motion the challenging behavior (rather than imposing adult will or using reward-and-punishment systems). “A major thrust of the CPS model is to get caregivers out of the heat of the moment,” Dr. Greene explains, “out of deciding rapidly is this willful or is this a reaction to an anxiety or a mood trigger, moving away from looking at the kid’s behavior and instead focusing on the problems that are causing those behaviors, and then proactively deciding … is this one of the ones we are just letting go right now, setting aside for now because it’s not a high priority, or is this one of the ones that we’re actually solving collaboratively. That’s the level of analysis that I find is much more helpful to caregivers than in the heat of the moment trying to decide is this behavior willful or a reaction to an anxiety or mood trigger.”