Working with explosive children

Here's an example of how I work with some of the hardest kids to educate.

Harry is an 8 year old boy in grade 3 who is very active. He is also very curious and asks a million questions a day to anyone he happens to be standing beside. What are those men building? Why does that truck have a bucket? Did you see that motorcycle? What's that sound? Why are we going to the library? Can I go swimming?

Some might describe Harry as a bad kid who is disrespectful, defiant and out of control, but I don't. You see the words we use create labels and labels have bias, so I describe Harry as a very active kid who thinks and advocates for himself in an effort to meet his needs. However, because he is lagging skills, he does not advocate for himself in a successful or adaptive way.

Because my classroom is in a hospital, the unit is often locked, so I have a identification badge that unlocks the door so I can come and go. When our class goes for our morning walk, Harry is used to using my badge to swipe and unlock the door. He thinks it's fun.

One afternoon, he asked me for my badge so I gave it to him -- then he asked if he could hang on to it while we went bowling. I said that I trusted him and that he could hang on to my badge for the afternoon. He smiled. I could tell that he liked that I said I trusted him.

Did I trust him? No, not really, but if we waited to trust Harry until we actually trusted him, we would never trust him. Harry will learn to be trustworthy only if we are prepared to trust him even when he is not ready to be trusted.

We went bowling and had a great time, but after we returned to the hospital, Harry began to search his pockets for my badge. A look of panic struck him like a deer in headlights.

"Oh no, I lost your badge."

Deep down I was not impressed, but I had to suppress my frustration and see this less as a crisis and more as an opportunity. "Ok, check your pockets again. Make sure you didn't miss it."

Despite my optimism, we both knew it wasn't there.

"Nope. It's not here. I'm so sorry. I'm sorry I lost your badge. I'm really sorry."

"It's OK, Harry. You only need to apologize once. It looks like we have a problem. What do we do with problems?"

"We solve them," Harry replied with very little confidence.

"So how do we solve this problem?"

"I don't know."

"If it's not in your pockets, where do you think it might be?"

"At the bowling alley."

"Maybe. Could it be in the cab?"

"No. I didn't have it in the cab. I had it last at the bowling alley. We need to go back to the bowling alley, " Harry said with a glimmer of hope.

"That is one solution. I wonder if there's another way of finding out if my badge is at the bowling ally without actually driving there again?"

"We could phone them!" Harry was getting excited.

"Sounds like a plan. Let's go phone them together." We walked back up to the classroom. I looked up the phone number and Harry dialed.

"I wonder what you could say to the bowling alley?" I asked.

"I don't know."

"Well, you could start by telling them your problem."

So I sat next to Harry while he phoned. I had to help him out at first. Basically, I had to script him and he would just repeat after me, but then he got the hang of it and knew what to say without my help. First he asked them to check the arcade, but it wasn't there. Then he asked them to check where he took off his shoes, but it wasn't there. Lastly, he asked them to check the fifth lane where we bowled and they found it!

Harry was so excited, he high fived me and was about to hang up before I stopped him and asked, "what should we do now?"

"Can you bring it to the hospital?" Harry impulsively asked the person from the bowling alley.

I started to laugh because he was so darn cute but I cut him off and said, "No, no, no. Tell her that I will drop by later and pick it up."

He finished by saying thank you.

John Dewey once said, "We don't learn from experience. We learn from reflecting on experience." This is why it's important for Harry to experience this kind of problem solving, and it is equally important to guide him through reflecting on this experience. So we reflected:

"How did we solve this problem?" I asked.

"We worked together."

"How did we work together?"

"We talked."

"Did we cry, scream, yell or get angry?"

"Nope."

"Would those things have helped us solve this problem?"

"Nope."

"Did I get mad? Did I blame you?"

"Nope. Nope."

"Did you solve this problem by yourself?"

"No. We helped each other out."

"That's right. We had to work together by communicating."

We high fived and he left.

***

At first glance, this story might appear to be uninteresting, but here's why it's so important:

• It would have been easy for me to see this as an inconvenient problem; however, the real challenge is to see the opportunity in this problem. Because Harry lost my badge, we now had the opportunity to work together in solving a very real problem that has a context and a purpose.

• Harry is explosive and has a very difficult time solving problems. Working with Harry to solve his problems like this may be the only hope we have of reducing the frequency of his misbehavior over the long haul, and our only hope for helping him grow into a caring citizen.

• The next day, another problem came up but this time someone wronged Harry. He exploded and pouted. He blamed and yelled. So I asked him if he could remember when he lost my badge. Of course he did. I asked him if I blamed and yelled at him when he made a mistake. His expression changed -- he calmed down and I could tell he was picking up my point. I asked him if he could treat others in a way that he like to be treated. He was agreeable. He still needed help problem solving but he was less apt to explode.

• Can you see how reminding Harry of my expectations that he should have taken better care of my badge would have been at best unhelpful? The problem is not that he doesn't know my expectations -- the problem is that he lags the skills to successfully meet my expectations -- so we use this very real unsolved problem to teach the lagging skills.

• Can you see how punishing Harry for losing my badge would be completely unhelpful and more likely to make things worse? There are many reasons why punishments fail, and in this case it would have done nothing more than make Harry mad and distract him from solving the real problem and distract me from teaching him. It takes courage not to punish, and it takes real effort to see misbehavior as an opportunity for the teacher to teach and the student to learn.

Here's another cool story on how to work with children who are hard to like and hard to teach.

More on solving problems collaboratively with Ross Greene

I spent the day with Ross Greene learning about solving problems with children collaboratively. Here is what I learned from Ross Greene approach:

• emphasis is on solving problems rather than on extinguishing or replacing behaviors
• problem solving is collaborative rather than unilateral
• problem solving is proactive rather than emergent
• understanding comes before helping... indeed, understanding is the most important part of helping

There is a big difference between believing that children will do well when they want to versus believing kids do well if they can.

When we argue that kids do well when they want to, we make up theories about why they are choosing to do poorly:

• they are seeking attention
• they are manipulating us to get their way
• they are not motivated
• they are testing limits
• they avoid things they don't want to do

There are many reasons why the list above doesn't properly explain why kids don't do well. Consider this; what person on this planet does not:

• seek attention?
• want to get their way?
• have trouble getting motivated?
• test limits?
• avoid doing things they don't want to do?

We all do these four things. We all want to get what we want.  We all seek attention. We all have trouble. We all avoid stuff we don't like. The big news isn't that kids do these things -- the big news is that while all successful adults do these things adaptively, children with challenging behaviors do all of these things maladaptively.

Why are challenging kids challenging?

At first glance, we might say that the child's challenging behavior is working for them to get what they want, or avoid what they don't want. But if we take a big picture examination of their challenging behavior, we will see that in fact it is not working for them because they are likely constantly in trouble. Ross Greene puts it this way:

Doing well is always preferable to not doing well.

The desire to do well can not be used to differentiate between successful children and children with challenging behvaviors. All children would prefer to do well. The difference between successful children and children with challenging behaviors are skills or lack of skills.

The Assessment of Lagging Skills and Unsolved Problems details a lengthy list of the most common skills challenging children tend to lag. More generally, these skills can be organized into these categories:

• Executive skills
• Language processing skills
• Emotion regulation skills
• Cognitive flexibility skills
• Social skills

Keep in mind that these categories are so overlapping that to think about them as independent would be foolish.

Some people like to lean on a diagnosis to explain why children are challenging, but this is potentially dangerous. Using a diagnosis to explain a child's challenging behavior is circular thinking. For example, little Johnny is losing his nut because he has Oppositional Defiant Disorder and he has Oppositional Defiant Disorder because he loses his nut. We do not want to use a diagnosis as a gate keeper for giving kids the help they need.

When are challenging kids challenging?

No child with challening behaviours are challenging all the time. They are only sometimes challenging. Children with challenging behaviors are only challening when their environment demands their lagging skills which creates unsolved problems.

Ross Greene puts it this way:

Challenging episodes occur when the cognitive demands being placed upon a person outstrip the person's capacity to respond adaptively (best conceived as "incompatibility episodes").

Why are there more behaviourally challenging kids now than there have ever been? The answer is complex, but consider this -- we are demanding more sophisticated and more mature skills from children earlier and sooner than we had in the past. We demand very young children to use their words and sit still for very long periods of time. Diagnosis implies that the problem resides inside the child, scares off people from helping and distract us from focusing on identifying and teaching the skills the child lags.

What do challenging kids do when they're challenging?

This question is not as important as we might think. Focus too much on a child's behavior and we'll never find the unsolved problem that is causing the child so much difficulty.

So what now?

Ross Greene tells us to:

1. Identify lagging skills

2. Identify unsolved problems

3. Solve problems and simultaneously teach skills

Stop wasting our time

Too many good intentioned professionals sit in long, boring meetings where they talk about things that they can do nothing. Too many meetings are consumed by theorizing, storifying and hypothesizing. Caring, good intentioned professionals love their theories, stories and hypotheses  The problem with spending our limited time, effort and resources on theories, stories and hypotheses is that they do nothing to help the people who work with challenging children.

You can find all of my posts on rethinking classroom management and working with children to solve problems here.

Are children in control of their misbehavior?

When faced with working with children who are the hardest to like and educate, some adults like to pronounce that:

Children are in control of their behaviour. They choose to either behave or misbehave.

I've often heard this as a kind of Aha! moment -- as if this statement told us something we did not already know about a child who has difficulty navigating their day.

While it's true that some children in extreme cases may not be able to control their behaviour, this is far from the default. For the most part, every child is in control of their behaviour. But focusing on the idea that children are in control of their behaviours and are choosing to behave or misbehave can lead to a predictable and unfortunate mindset:

If we focus on the idea that children are choosing to misbehave and be unsuccessful, we might be tempted to frame this as a motivation problem which we believe can be solved with rewards and punishments. If we apply the right kind and amount of carrots and sticks,  we can make kids make better decisions.

It's at this point that I use some of Dr. Ross Greene's work to help me reframe this mindset. Like Ross Greene, I believe that children will be successful if they can -- this differs greatly from the mindset above which tends to believe children will be successful when they want to. The point here is that children don't go bad -- they get lost, and it's our job to help them find themselves.

My experience working in both a mainstream middle school, a lower socio-economic K-8 and a children's inpatient psychiatric assessment unit tells me that misbehavior is not the problem -- it is a symptom of a much larger problem that tends to get ignored because we are busy snuffing out the misbehavior. 

Like Ross Greene, I frame a child's difficulties not necessarily as a choice that needs to be convinced otherwise -- instead, I see a child's difficulties as proof that the child is lagging skills, and it's our job to help teach them those skills.

Are children in control of their misbehavior? 

Who cares. 

We are far better of spending our limited time, effort and resources using misbehavior as a symptom that helps us identify the lagging skills that are creating unsolved problems for the child and the adults in their life.

Working with children when they are at their worst

I teach explosive children in a children's psychiatric assessment unit. There are 8 beds on the unit and I have a very small classroom. Here's an example of how I work with children when they are at their worst. Jasper is an explosive 11 year old boy who is verbally offensive and physically abusive. He's hard to like. Let me be crystal clear. He's very hard to like. But does that change how I treat him? Absolutely not. I had a couple days to develop a relationship with Jasper before this incident.

Here's what happened.

I was quickly finishing my lunch in my classroom before taking my 5 students, who are inpatients on a children's psychiatric assessment unit, swimming. As I scarfed down the last bite of my sandwich, I heard some yelling.

When I walked towards the crowd of students and staff, I could hear one of the staff yell at Jasper to go to his room. Jasper yelled back, stating that no one could tell him what to do. As I walked closer, Jasper spotted me. He walked straight at me and reported in a mostly calm and collected manner that, "Curtis made a joke about me wearing speedos and that was mean". He then promptly walked to his room and sat on the floor in his doorway.

I walked to the nurse's station where most of the staff was collecting when someone told me that Jasper had hit Curtis. As I polled the crowd, their expressions all said the same thing: "There's no way Jasper can go swimming now." I stated that I needed a minute to work with Jasper and Curtis before all of us would go swimming.

I walked over to Jasper who was still sitting on the floor sulking. In order to talk with him (rather than down on him) I sat on the floor with my legs crossed, just like him and said, "You look sad, what's up?"

Jasper looked up at me and barked, "If he ever makes fun of me like that again, I'm going to fucking kill him. I mean it. I'll fucking kill him."

My response was three simple words, "I believe you." It is tempting to argue with Jasper and tell him that he isn't allowed to kill anyone, but I knew this wasn't the hill I wanted to die on right now -- there was a more important problem that I need to address so I prioritized my attention and mostly ignored this threat. (If you are familiar with Ross Greene's approach than this is what Plan C looks like) It's also important to note that while it is true that I did believe Jasper felt like killing Curtis, I did not believe for one second that he could or would actually do it.

"Do you remember what you said to me before you came to sit over here?"

"No."

"Jasper, I was impressed."

He looked up at me and was surprised to hear me talking about something I was impressed with. He stopped crying, wiped a tear and asked, "What do you mean?"

"Jasper you came over to me only moments after the heat of the moment and with a very calm tone, no swearing or yelling, you gave me an accurate description of what happened. I am impressed."

He looked down again but didn't say anything.

"Jasper there's one other person in this unit that you should have said that to."

"Joe, there's no other adult here that I could have said that to. You are the only one who helps me instead of giving me trouble."

(Now this isn't exactly true, but it is Jasper's perception so it is his reality. And again, this isn't the problem I wanted to address right now, so I chose to use Plan C and ignored it).

"Jasper, I wasn't talking about an adult. Jasper, I'm going to say something really strange. Are you ready?"

He looked up and said, "Sure".

"I think you should have said it to Curtis."

He stared at me.

I waited.

He stared some more.

I waited.

He still just stared at me.

I waited longer. I could tell he was thinking, in fact I could almost see the smoke coming out of his ears. He was really perplexed by my suggestion. I'm usually pretty good at wait-time, but even I couldn't take this staring contest any longer, so I broke the silence. "What do you think about that, Jasper?"

"Well... huh... that's an interesting idea."

His reaction told me that he honestly had never even considered this as an alternative to hitting. "How can we fix this problem?"

"He could say sorry, but sorry won't make the pain go away. You know for me words hurt a thousand times worse than physical pain. I have a swing at home and none of my friends can swing on it because it hurts their nuts, but I can swing on it all day because I have an abnormal tolerance for physical pain, but words stab me in the heart. They hurt so bad."

It took every ounce of self-control not to laugh at his explanation, but I was able to hold back. "I believe you, Jasper. I can see that Curtis's words hurt you. And you're right, an apology won't take away the hurt. But an apology will do something different. It will plant the seed of a new feeling called forgiveness that, if you let it, will grow larger than the hurt. But remember, 'sorry' is not a word -- it does not come from your mouth, it comes from your heart. People also like it when others ask if we are ok. It's kind of weird, but even when we are hurting, it makes us feel better to know that other people care. Have you ever noticed that?"

"Yeah, I have."

"Jasper, if Curtis apologized to you and you could tell that he really meant it, would that help to solve this problem?"

"Yes, and I think I would like him to ask me if I'm ok."

"Cool. Let's do that in a minute, but first, we have one more problem that we need to solve."

I could see some of the excitement rush out of Jasper's expression as he hung his head again. It looked like he was preparing himself for trouble.

"Jasper, you hit Curtis."

"Actually, I hit him twice." (I find this fascinating because when an adult yelled at Jasper that he wasn't allowed to hit others and that he needed to go to his room, he denied hitting anyone. And yet when Jasper sees the adults less like punishers and more like teachers he is prepared to correct me and admit that he hit Curtis not once but twice).

"How do we make this right?"

"I could apologize... but remember words hurt way worse than physical pain. They aren't the same."

"Jasper, do you remember your friends on the swing? What if Curtis is less like you and more like your friends? What if he is the opposite to you and he has an abnormal tolerance to words but physical pain hurts a thousand times worse?"

He stared again, but this time I could really tell that a light bulb had just turned on. "Well, I suppose that could be possible. I think I should say sorry."

"Remember, 'sorry' isn't a word."

"Actually, at this point, I'm feeling pretty bad about what I did. I want to apologize and mean it."

"What else could you do?"

"I could ask him if he's ok."

"I bet he would like that. You ready to try it?"

"Yes."

"Ok. You wait here and I'll get Curtis."

I walked over to Curtis where he was talking with another adult and still rubbing his head. "Curtis, can I talk with you about how we can make things right?"

"Sure." Curtis was quite calm. He's a little more reasonable and a little less explosive than Jasper.

"I think we have a couple problems here."

"Yeah, I shouldn't have made that joke."

"No, you probably shouldn't have, but Jasper shouldn't have hit you, either."

"No, he shouldn't have. You know I was just kidding around. I see Jasper joking around with others all the time and I just thought he could take it, but I guess I was wrong."

"Yeah, it's tough isn't it. I know that I've had times where I thought someone would appreciate my jokes but then realized they were hurt by them. It's not easy getting a read on how others will respond. So how can we make this right?"

"I could apologize."

"Really? That's interesting, because I was talking to Jasper and he's feeling really terrible about hitting you and he wants to apologize, too."

"Really?"

"Yeah, really. You want to go talk with him with me?"

"Sure."

When we came together I asked who wanted to go first and they both tried to start. Noticing that they cut each other off, they both offered to let the other go first. It was pretty cute.

Curtis started, "Jasper, I'm sorry about that joke I cracked. I thought you were a jokester so I thought you would take it."

Jasper replied, "Yeah, I am a jokester but there's a funny thing about me, I can give jokes but I can't seem to take them very well."

At this point, I actually laughed a little because of how accurate Jasper's self-reflection truly was. I said, "Looks like you found something we need to work on together."

"Yeah, I guess I did," answered Jasper.

"So are you ok?" asked Curtis.

"Yeah. And I'm sorry for hitting you, Curtis. Are you ok?"

"Yeah, I'll be ok."

I could tell that both boys meant it and that both had planted the seeds of forgiveness. I could tell that we were ready to move on so I asked, "you boys ready to go swimming?"

Both boys said yes, and we all went swimming.

***

When I got back from swimming, I had a couple staff members who were a little unsure as to why I let Jasper go swimming. Here are some of the arguments I made for why punishing Jasper would have been at best unhelpful and at worst harmful towards our ultimate goals for him:

• It was a lot of work to get Jasper to think about more than just himself and to empathize and apologize. Can you see how all this hard work would have been destroyed had I then punished Jasper by not letting him go swimming? Invoking the punishment would have encouraged Jasper to revert to thinking only about how this situation affected him. I'll put it another way: Punishing Jasper by taking away swimming forcibly isolates him from his peers, in front of his peers, and isolating a child who struggles with social skills is like banning books from a child who struggles to read.

• Punishment ruptures relationships.There is a very good chance that Jasper would grow to resent Curtis because had Curtis not cracked the joke, Jasper could have gone swimming. There is also a good chance that Jasper would resent me for invoking the punishment. Can you see how rupturing relationships with punishments is one of the last things Jasper needs? He already has very few meaningful relationships, let's not make things harder for him than he already has it.

• Punishment teaches Jasper a lesson: You can get your way with people who are weaker than you are by hurting them. Can you see that Jasper understands this lesson already all too well? Can you see that Jasper's working model for relationships is already built on a foundation of coerciveness, manipulation and power? Can you see how punishment would only perpetuate this vicious cycle? It's time to drop the archaic strategy that says when kids do bad things, we should do bad things to them.

• Jasper doesn't have a lot going for him. He tells us that he hates himself and that he wants to die. He's already in a psychiatric assessment unit. Jasper experiences life as punishment everyday. How will taking more things away from him help?

• Some people fear that by letting Jasper go swimming, we are teaching him and others that hitting is ok. This is a fear that is mostly fabricated by a deeply disturbing, distasteful and distrustful view of the nature of children. Not one of the children who witnessed Jasper hit Curtis would have said that going swimming made hitting Curtis right. Not one. They all understood that Jasper has difficulties working with others and that he is still learning how to navigate his day without explosions. If I punish Jasper, it does indeed teach everyone a lesson, and that is that you are only accepted when you are acceptable, and this is a recipe for disaster for children who have learned to see themselves as unacceptable on a daily basis. 

Collaborative Problem Solving with Curtis

After spending time with Ross Greene and learning about Collaborative Problem Solving, I have learned more about how to work with children to solve problems together.

Here are the three steps that I tend to follow when collaboratively solving problems with children:

1. Empathy and collect information

2. Define the problems

3. Invitation for solutions

The goal of the empathy step is to gather information so as to achieve the clearest possible understanding of the kid's concern or perspective on a given unsolved problem.

The goal of defining the problems is to make it clear to everyone that both the adult's and child's problems need to be addressed.

The goal of the invitation for solutions is to work together to come up with solutions that are mutually agreeable and durable.

During the empathy step, it's the adult's responsibility to be proactive, specific and neutral. The Empathy step needs to be free of:

• judgements


• defensiveness


• solutions


• hypothesizing


• theorizing


• story telling

To do this we need to engage in a conversation (Plan B) with children that starts with an observation about an unsolved problem ("I've noticed that..."), along with an initial inquiry ("What's up?) It's very important to note that the unsolved problem needs to come from the Assessment of Lagging skills and Unsolved Problems (ALSUP). Here's an example:

Using the Assessment of Lagging Skills and Unsolved Problems, Curtis's parents identified one of his lagging skills as:

Difficulty managing emotional response to frustation so as to think rationally.

This is code for he's explosive.

After identifying the lagging skill, it's important to identify a highly specific example of when this occurs. This is called an unsolved problem:

Curtis experiences difficulties waking up in the morning and going to school.

There are three steps to Collaborative Problem Solving, and to kick off step one (empathy), I frame my question like this:

We've noticed (insert unsolved problem). What's up?

If after asking this question you get the feeling like the kid has no idea what you are talking about, then it's possible that the unsolved problem that you have identified is not specific enough, or that you've identified a problem that is not relevant to the child. If they becomes defensive, there's a chance that you are not being neutral or judgment free.

Here's an example of a Plan B meeting I had with Curtis and his parents. Because Curtis's parents were so new to Collaborative Problem Solving, they felt more comfortable with me taking the lead with Curtis. They watched and learned. Here's how it went:

"Hi Curtis, thanks for joining us. Do you mind if we talk together?"

"Ok."

"I know that sometimes teachers do more talking at you than talking with you, but I was hoping that you might talk almost as much as me during this chat."

"Ok."

"Would you agree that things could be better with your family?"

"Yes, definitely."

"Curtis, we've noticed that you've been having difficulty getting up in the morning and going to school."

Before I could even finish my sentence, Curtis said, "Oh, yeah. Totally." This confirmed to me that we did an excellent job identifying a relevant unsolved problem.

"What's up?"

Curtis looked down and tried to sink into his chair.

I waited.

I waited.

And I waited.

Wait time is always important. It's been said before that teaching is mostly about listening and learning is mostly about talking -- too many teachers talk too much -- myself included. If it takes an adult a couple seconds to think of a response, then it will likely take some kids five times as long. However, with saying all that, Curtis wouldn't look up, and he didn't appear to be close to saying anything, so I chose to break the silence.

"When do you have a hard time waking up?"

"All the time. I'm not a morning person. Neither is mom."

We laughed. Which was really important because you could feel some of the anxiety and apprehensiveness in the room retreat. Most of it belonged to Curtis, some belonged to his parents.

"So Tuesday mornings are just as bad as Saturday mornings?"

"Oh, no. Not at all."

"What's the difference?"

"Saturday's are fine. Tuesdays are bad."

"Why"

"School."

"School?"

"School."

"What about school?"

"I don't know. You know. It's school."

"Pretend I was home-schooled and I don't know about school."

"School sucks."

"School sucks?"

"Yeah. You know."

"Tell me about it."

Silence.

"When you said school sucks, what was the first thing you thought of."

"My teacher. Mrs. Smith."

"Does school always suck?"

"No."

"Tell me about a time when Mrs. Smith is cool."

"If I'm sitting quietly, in my desk, doing my work."

"Tell me about a time when Mrs. Smith is not cool."

"Pretty much the opposite. When the class is loud and not doing their work."

"What does that look like?"

"I'm sitting in my desk and I stop working and I play with my pencil."

"You play with your pencil?"

"Yeah, kinda like this." He started fiddling with a pencil.

"Oh, you do those cool pencil tricks that I can't do?"

We laughed. "Yeah, I guess I try."

"So when you do that, you get in trouble?"

"Yeah, I get ticks."

"You get ticks?"

"Yeah, Mrs. Smith gives you a tick."

"Mrs. Smith gives you a tick?"

"Yeah, she puts a tick on the board. Each tick is a minute."

"Each tick is a minute?"

"Yeah, for every tick, you get one minute of detention."

"So if you're sitting in your desk, playing with your pencil and not doing your work, you get a tick?"

"Sometimes."

"Tell me about when you get a tick."

"I'm not doing my work and Mrs. Smith yells, 'GET OUT'." While he said this, he took his pointer finger and made an aggressive circle through the air and pointed it at the imaginary classroom door. He was re-enacting how Mrs. Smith would throw him out of the classroom door as if he clung to the end of her pointer finger.

I replicated his finger wag and said, "so she would say 'out', like this." I made sure to whisper 'out'.

"No, she yells."

I replicated his finger wag and said, "so she would yell 'OUT', like this." I made sure to yell 'out.'

"Yeah."

"Then what?"

"Then I go out in the hallway."

"Tell me about that."

"She yells at me some more."

"What does she say?"

Silence. He looked down. So I waited.

And I waited

Again, despite my best intentions of giving him time to think, it didn't look like he was able to say anything, so I asked, "do you tune her out?"

"No, I hear her, it's just that it's really embarrassing."

"Why is it embarrassing?"

"She's yelling at me."

"In private?"

"Depends. When she kicks me out, it's in front of the whole class. When we are in the hallway, it might be just her and me, but sometimes others walk by."

"Does that bother you?"

"Yes. It's embarrassing."

"Are you more embarrassed if this happens in front of your friends?"

"No, it could be anyone."

"In front of a stranger might be as bad as in front of your best friend?"

"Yes. It's just embarrassing. I don't like it."

"So she yells at you in the hallway. Then what?"

"I go back into class and do my work."

"Do you get a tick for getting kicked out?"

"Sometimes."

"How often do you get a tick?"

Pause. "About once a week."

"More than once a week?"

"No. I don't think so. I get a tick about once a week. Timmy and Kayla get more ticks than me."

"How often do they get ticks?"

"Like once a day. They get loud and Mrs. Smith yells. I don't like all the yelling. Plus we all get detention."

"You all get detention? So you get ticks to?"

"No it's their ticks, but each tick is one minute of detention for the whole class."

"Wait a minute. Let me get this straight. If Timmy and Kayla get ticks, the whole class loses their recess."

"Yeah." The colour in Curtis's face told us almost everything we needed to know about how he felt about this.

"Curtis, do you remember how we started this whole discussion."

"No, not really."

"I asked you about your difficulties with waking up to get to school. Now I'm wondering if all this stuff that we've been talking about might have something to do with your difficulties."

"Yeah, it totally does. When I'm going to bed the night before school, I have to take my Melatonin for my anxiety. I have a hard time getting to sleep because I'm thinking about everything that I know is going to happen at school the next day."

"When you say anxiety, what do you mean?"

"I get butterflies in my stomach like when you are in a car going up and down hills really quickly."

"When do you get them?"

"The night before school."

"At supper time?"

"No, just before I have to go to sleep. I don't want to go to sleep because I know I have to go to school when I wake up."

"Ok, let's pretend we are in a perfect world and somehow it is true that Mrs. Smith doesn't use the tick system anymore. Would you get butterflies the night before?"

"We need the tick system to control how loud the classroom gets."

"Ok, let's keep the tick system, but this time, if Timmy or Kayla get ticks for being loud, let's pretend that doesn't affect you. You don't get detention for their ticks. Are the butterflies gone?"

"No."

"Ok. Why is that?"

"I would still be worried that I would get a tick and still lose my recess. I really need my breaks at school. I love going outside and playing baseball with my friends. I really need my breaks from sitting in class all day."

"Ok. Let's pretend you couldn't get detention for the ticks. Are the butterflies gone?"

"No."

"Ok. Why is that?"

"I still don't like all of Mrs. Smith's yelling."

"Ok. Let's pretend that there's no yelling, and you can't lose your recess. Are the butterflies still there?"

Silence.

He was thinking.

"Hmm. No. I don't think they are."

"I wonder if there is a way for us to make that pretend world come true so that you can go to bed without the butterflies, get up in the morning and go to school?"

Again, Curtis hung his head and sunk into his chair. I could see he was not optimistic about our chances of making any of this come true, so I asked, "I wonder who we need to talk with about all this?"

Curtis looked up, "my parents?"

"Do they have anything to do with your butterflies?"

He hung his head again, "no." But a moment later, he shot his head up and exclaimed, "my teacher!"

"I think talking to Mrs. Smith about all this would be a great idea. And the great news is that your parents tell me that Mrs. Smith really wants to help. She said she would do almost anything to help make things better for you."

Curtis was shocked, "she said that? Really?"

"Yup. That's what I heard."

"Cool."

"Would you like it if I helped you have a conversation with her just like the one we had today?"

"Sure. That sounds good."

***

After the meeting, I asked the parents what they thought. Both were beaming with excitement when they said that they had never heard any of this information. The mom got tearful as she explained that she had never heard so much of the background behind Curtis's behaviour from him. Too often the only response she ever experienced from Curtis was verbal and physical explosive behaviour.

When I hinted that the discussion went too long (about one hour), the mom said that she could have sat and watched for four hours because she had never seen or heard Curtis be so open about what was really going on. More than once, the mom commented that she doesn't have the words and skills to have this kind of conversation with her son. My first response was to tell her she doesn't have the words or skills yet. I gave her a copy of Ross Greene's The Explosive Child and they are buying a copy of Lost at School for Curtis's teachers.

Later in the day, I asked Curtis what he thought of our meeting. He said that he liked it because he thought that he might have a chance to talk with Mrs. Smith about these problems.

For Curtis, going to school has been a problem for years. An argument could be made that focusing on the problems Curtis is having this year with Mrs. Smith has nothing to do with why this has been a problem for so long.

This line of reasoning is kind of right but mostly wrong.

It's true that Curtis did not have a problem with Mrs. Smith or her tick system in previous years (she wasn't his teacher) and yet he still had a problem with going to school. It's probably also true that, if nothing changes, Curtis will continue to have the same difficulties next year when he has a different teacher with different expectations.

The common denominators here are not his teachers. The common thread here is that Curtis is lagging skills that would allow him to more successfully navigate through his day. It's likely that he's had difficulty managing emotional response to frustration so as to think rationally for a long time. By working with him to solve both his, his parents and his teacher's unsolved problems we indirectly teach him skills. (The truth is the adults learn skills, too) So when Curtis gets a different teacher next year with a new set of expectations that might cause further problems for him, he will have a better chance of working with his teacher in a functional, rather than dysfunctional, manner.

Even if these problems are in reality no more than 1% of the real problems plaguing Curtis, but he perceives them to be 99% of his problems, then this is a critical step in making Curtis an ally in our pursuit towards collaboratively solving problems. After the meeting was over, I asked Curtis's parents which part of our meeting was more beneficial -- the part with or without Curtis -- they quickly and unanimously said that the discussion with Curtis was far more productive than the part of the meeting where Curtis was absent.

Without the child, adults can only guess as to what the child's problems really are -- but the truth is we are usually wrong. Without the child, adults can only ever unilaterally develop solutions which translates into the adult imposing their will (Plan A) on the child. If either of these methods worked, you wouldn't be reading this post right now.

***

Here's a list I find useful when doing the empathy step and collecting information step. If you look through my discussion with Curtis, I think you'll see examples where I use each ingredient:

INGREDIENTS FOR EMPATHY AND DRILLING FOR INFORMATION

• questions that focus on the who, what, where and when about the conditions of the unsolved problem

• differentiate between why the problem occurs under some circumstances and not others

• breaking down the problem into its components. For example, if it looks like the child has problems during English class, ask questions to clarify which part of English class is problematic (reading, writing, group work, individual work) If it's reading, then ask questions that clarify what part of reading (out loud, silent)

• reflective listening and clarifying statements: "How so?" "I don't understand" "I'm confused" "Can you say more about that?" "What's hard about that?"

• asking the child what s/he's thinking in the midst of the unsolved problem

• summarizing what's been learned so far

• "tabling" some concerns so as to permit considerations of others. "What if the floor wasn't dirty, could you then sit on the floor with the class?" "If we removed Elijah from group, would that solve the problem?" "Would that make it easier for you?"

Solving Problems Collaboratively in the Classroom

Here's how I used Ross Greene's Approach (Plan B) with a student.

Dylan is a very active grade 2 boy who was reading The Lorax on the iPad. Dylan can't read independently yet and that's ok. He's very young. The good news is that he sometimes still gets excited about reading with an adult. The iPad works well because it allows him some autonomy while it reads to him. Plus it's interactive which is great because it keeps Dylan engaged. (Please note that the iPad does not replace reading with an adult -- it merely supplements)

After he finished the book, I showed him how to take screen shots of his favorite parts of the book. He placed them in Keynote and, with some assistance, he wrote a couple sentences that explained what was happening in the picture.

After three pictures and three text boxes, Dylan made it clear that he was ready for a break, so I sent him for a walk down the hall. When he came back I had him choose a little journal for him to keep. I asked him to write down his name, the date and something about what he did this morning.

All of a sudden, Dylan crossed his arms, knitted his brow, hung his head and huffed. It took me all of a half second to see something was wrong. It's at this point that too many adults engage in Plan A. Plan A is where the adult places an expectation on the child and when the child doesn't comply, the adult imposes their will to make them comply.

In Dylan's case, my problem was that I wanted him to write in his journal but he wouldn't. Plan A might take any number of forms including threats, bribes, punishments, consequences and other forms of manipulation and coercion.

Plan A solves the problem, right?

Well, sort of but mostly no.

Plan A does solve a problem. Plan A is the best way to solve the adult's problem while almost always completely ignoring the child's problem. Because Plan A never bothers to engage the child, the best it can ever gain us is short-term compliance. We gain expediency and efficiency at the cost of sustainability.

This is as unacceptable as it is ineffective.

Plan B is where we engage collaboratively with the child to solve problems. Here are the steps:

1. Identify the lagging skill and unsolved problem.

2. Engage the child in an empathetic conversation in an attempt to gather information about their perspective of the problem.

3. Identify both problems (yours and theirs).

4. Invite them to come up with solutions and agree on one that is mutually satisfactory and durable.

Here's what Plan B looks like for Dylan:

After I resisted Plan A, I quickly identified Dylan's lagging skill: he has difficulty handling transitions and shifting from one task to another. The unsolved problem here is that Dylan is having difficulty starting his journal writing after reading on the iPad.

Here's how I started the conversation:

Hey Dylan, I've noticed your having difficulty starting your journal writing, what's up?

I waited.

Dylan avoided eye contact.

I waited some more.

Dylan still looked away.

I waited even more.

Then Dylan shifted in his seat and dropped his crossed arms. He wasn't avoiding me. He was thinking. It was really important that I say nothing so that he could think. Dylan then said something that made me go aha!

I'm hungry.

This aha! moment made sense. It was 20 minutes to twelve and even I was getting hungry.

There is only one person in this world who could provide me with this invaluable piece of information, and that person is Dylan. If I don't take the time and effort to engage in a conversation with him, then I guess I could hypothesize and theorize why he's having difficulty (he hates writing or me) -- or I could skip all the speculation and just ask Dylan for what's up (he's hungry).

Quick sidebar: If I speculate about what Dylan's problem is, I'm likely to unilaterally impose a solution which will likely solve my problem while ignoring his which will likely lead to more unsolved problems, leading me to impose more unilateral consequences. In other words, Plan A begets Plan A.

Once I had my aha! moment, I asked Dylan:

I wonder if there is a way for you to write in your journal without being hungry.

I waited.

He said nothing.

I waited longer.

After I watched him think in silence, Dylan said:

I can wait until lunch.

Sometimes kids are great at telling us what we want to hear. Sometimes this is true because they have grown accustomed to having their needs trumped by adults. Keeping this in mind, I decided that Dylan's suggestion was neither mutually satisfactory (I don't think he really believed he could wait) nor sustainable (I didn't really believe he could wait) so I said:

That's an idea, but are you sure you can wait? What if you got a super quick snack now and then came back and wrote in your journal?

His smile told me all I needed to know about whether this solution was mutually satisfactory. And it was proven durable when three minutes later he returned from his snack and went straight to his journal.

For those who say this sounds like too much work, I'll say this: while it's true that learning how to do Plan B takes a long time, this post took me longer to write than my actual interaction with Dylan.

Lagging Skills and Unsolved Problems

I spent the day learning about Ross Greene's approach for working with children. We talked a lot about how children will be successful when they can and it is our job to first identify the lagging skills and unsolved problems that are causing difficulty. 

One of the tools Ross Greene's approach uses is the Assessment of Lagging Skills and Unsolved Problems. Using this tool, I wrote a sample case formulation or what could be an Individual Program Plan based on Ross Greene's approach.

Sample Case Formulation

or

Individual Program Plan

A summary of some key lagging skills, perhaps those that are contributing to challenging behaviour most often or maybe those on which caregivers can most easily agree:

Nolan has difficulty managing his emotions in response to frustration so as to think rationally... isn't very good at appreciating how his behaviour is affecting others and recognizing how he's coming across... and difficulty empathizing with others, appreciating another person's perspective or point of view.

Emphasize that these lagging skills are especially problematic in the conditions (unsolved problems) in which they are demanded by the environment. Specify some of these conditions:

Nolan tends to run into difficulty when these lagging skills are demanded. So he has a lot of trouble shifting from computer time during language arts to putting the computer away and going to physical education. It's very hard for him to learn cooperatively with his classmates... he often has difficulty compromising on ideas with others without pushing his ideas on others and getting very frustrated. And then he can't figure out why others are mad at him. When playing floor hockey, Nolan has difficulty negotiating the interpretation of the rules with his peers such as offsides, goals and high sticking. Has difficulty coping and forgiving others for wronging or hurting him by accident without getting very angry.

Underscore that challenging behaviours occur in response to these unsolved problems, that the manner in which the adults are presently going about trying to solve them is making things worse and solving no problems durably, and that the unsolved problems are highly predictable:

These unsolved problems cause Nolan to become quite frustrated, and that's when he is likely to exhibit challenging behaviours, like crying, hitting, isolating himself from others and swearing. When we remind Nolan of how we expect him to act - or reprimand or punish him for not meeting those expectations - it only makes things worse... and doesn't help Nolan solve any of the problems over which he's becoming upset. Fortunately, since his unsolved problems are highly predictable, we don't need to try solving them in the heat of the moment.

Check to ensure that there is a consensus and that the case formulation (or Individual Program Plan) accurately summarizes the deliberations of the group:

Does this sound like a good summary of what we've been saying about Nolan?

Point out that the goal of intervention is to solve these problems collaboratively so they no longer precipitate challenging behaviour and so that lagging skills are taught, at least indirectly:

Our goal is to begin solving some of these problems with Nolan's help, so that he's involved in helping us understand what's getting in the way for him and he's also involved in coming up with solutions that will work for him and for us. Once the problems are solved, they won't set in motion challenging behaviour any more. And if we solve the problems collaboratively, then Nolan will start to learn some of the skills he's lacking.

***

I see all this as an important shift in mindset. It is so tempting to focus on a child's behaviour and to theorize, hypothesize and develop stories around why those behaviours are occurring, but none of this is helpful in supporting the child develop the skills they need to better navigate their day. Instead, we are far better off using our limited time, effort and resources to identify the skills children lag along with the situations and unsolved problems that are demanding these lagging skills.

Once we identify the lagging skills and unsolved problems, we jump into Ross Greene's approach for working with children.

Ross Greene is coming to Calgary

Ross Green

WHO: Ross Greene

WHAT: Collaborative Problem Solving Advanced Training

WHEN: May 9-11

WHERE: Calgary, Alberta. Executive Royal Inn.

WHY: Because children will be successful when they can, we need to move away from "doing things to" children and move towards a "working with" approach.

HOW: For more information on registration check out this page.

Here are a couple posts I've written about Ross Greene's book Lost at School:

Ross Greene's approach for working with children

Ross Greene's Lost at School

Alfie Kohn's interview with Ross Greene

Here are all of my posts on rethinking discipline.

Solving Problems Collaboratively: The Ross Greene Approach

Ross Greene's book Lost at School has played a critical role in how I frame my conversations and interactions with students who are having a hard time navigating through their day. It's important to note that this requires a shift from "doing things to" kids to "working with" kids. At best the former can get us temporary compliance while the latter can bring authentic engagement.

To do this, I find myself using Ross Greene's three steps to Ross Greene's approach for working with children:

1. Empathy
2. Identify the Problem
3. Invitation to solutions

Empathy

Children have to believe that we care about them before they will care about what we have to say, and one of the best ways to express empathy is to suspend our judgement and listen to the child. This might be as simple as asking "What's up?" While the child is offering their answer, you might find it helpful to clarify their concerns by echoing what you hear them say by saying, "I'm hearing you say..."

When an adult and a child enter into a conversation, the disparity in age by definition creates an imbalance of power. Despite conventional wisdom, this is not the time to increase your adult power; on the contrary, I've found it quite necessary to reduce my adult power and ensure that the child feels like I am not trying to enter into a power struggle by imposing my will on them.

Because I believe that children should experience their successes and failures not as reward and punishment but as information, I find it very helpful to start off my conversation with "I'm not mad..." or "You're not in trouble". Sometimes I find it helpful to add "I'm a teacher, not a punisher. I'm here to help you learn, not punish you".

Because empathy is not a word, it's a feeling, this step will require more time and effort than it takes to simply say "I care". Our best intentions are always trumped by the child's perception; that is, we often may find ourselves ready to move on to the next step before the child is convinced we are in fact empathetic.

Identify the Problem

The key to this step is understanding that there are usually two problems that need to be identified and eventually solved - one is the adult's problem and the other is the child's problem. Adults are great at identifying the problem we want to solve, but we aren't all that great at identifying the problem that concerns the child. Our problems can be obvious, but I've found that a child's problem can be quite elusive until we actually take the time and effort to engage them in a conversation about what truly is troubling them.

The child must feel like you care about solving their problem as much as you care about solving your own.

Invitations to Solutions

Adults are great at unilaterally imposing solutions in search of a problem and not so great at remembering that there are two problems that need a solution that is mutually satisfactory and durable. One way to initiate this with a child is to say, "I wonder if there's a way..."

Don't get discouraged when the first attempt at the solution fails. These things take time, effort and collaboration. Solutions can fail for a couple different reasons:

• Sometimes kids suggest unsustainable solutions. 
• Sometimes adults suggest unsustainable solutions.
• Sometimes kids feel compelled to agree to solutions that are not really satisfactory to them.
• Sometimes even good solutions need practice or minor adjustments.

For some kids, all this is totally unnecessary, but for kids who lag the necessary social, emotional and behavioral skills to get through their day without explosions, Ross Greene's approach for working with children gives them a chance.

Kids don't go bad -- they get lost

There's a big difference between believing "kids will do well if they can" and "kids will do well when they want to".

If we believe kids do well when they want to, we will likely engage in manipulative schemes filled with rewards and punishments. The problem with rewards and punishments is that the kids who have the most troubling behaviours are those who have already had their share of bribes and threats. It should be more clear now than ever that doubling the dose of carrots and sticks isn't working.

In short, this form of discipline is broken.

If we believe kids do well if they can, then we understand this isn't a motivation problem -- it's a lagging skills problem. When a child has trouble reading, we engage in teaching them the reading skills they need in order to read -- and so, when a child has trouble behaving, we engage in teaching them the emotional, social and thinking skills they need in order to behave.

If a kid is illiterate, we figure out what skills they are lagging and we teach them those skills. We don't see illiteracy as a motivational problem, we see it as a lagging skills problem. And yet, when we see a kid misbehaving, conventional wisdom tells us to bring in the reinforcements in an effort to spur on their motivation to behave.

It's time we taught behaviour like we teach literacy. It's time we saw misbehaviour for what it truly is -- a lagging skills problem.

Kids don't go bad -- they get lost.

And it's our job to help them find themselves.

For more on this, I totally recommend Ross Greene's book Lost at School.

Ross Greene's Lost at School

Dr. Ross Greene

I am reading Dr. Ross Greene's book Lost at School and I am fascinated by how progressive and practical the Ross Greene approach is for helping teachers to help the most troubled students.

At the heart of Ross Greene's philosophy is that kids will do well if they can. The point being is that we all aspire to be successful, but sometimes we lack the skills in order to be so.

Some of the hardest children to like are the ones who need us the most. They need us because they lack the necessary emotional, social and thinking skills necessary to navigate their home and school environments successfully.

Far too often, the conventional wisdom around troubled kids is that they lack the motivation to be successful -- or in other words, too often our philosophy is built around the misassumption that kids will do well only when they want to. When misbehaviour is framed as a motivation problem, we assume that it makes perfect sense to bring in the reinforcements which include rewards and punishments and bribes and threats.

If rewards and punishments worked, we would have solved misbehaviour a long time ago. But alas, this flavour discipline is broken -- we need a new narrative.

I'm looking forward to using Greene's Assessment for Lagging Skills and Unsolved Problems (ALSUP) as a means for identifying the underlying lagging skills that are creating unsolved problems.

While it is true that many adults feel absolutely certain that they know exactly how to solve misbehaviour problems, most adults do not spend the necessary time and effort collecting information to establish the underlying causes of misbehaviour. Hence why so many adult interventions for misbehaviour are solutions in search of problems.

Because I teach in an inpatient children's psychiatric unit, I can see Collaborative Problem Solving becoming an important part of my work with children.

If you have any experience using any of Ross Greene's work in your interactions with children, I would love to hear from you.