KindlED
The KindlED Podcast explores the science of nurturing children's potential and creating empowering learning environments. Powered by Prenda, each episode offers actionable insights to help you ignite your child's love of learning. We'll dive into evidence-based tools and techniques that kindle curiosity, motivation, and well-being in young learners. Do you have a question, topic, or story you'd like to share with us? Get in touch at podcast@prenda.com.
KindlED
Season 1 Top 10 | #7 Collaborative Problem Solving
We're continuing summer break with #7 of our Top 10 Season 1 episodes.
Have you ever wondered if there's a better way to address challenging behaviors in children without resorting to punishment? On this episode of The KindlED Podcast, Kaity and Adriane revisit a groundbreaking conversation about collaborative problem-solving.
Their conversation dives deep into the developmental expectations placed on children and the need for age-appropriate support.
This episode also explores:
- parenting challenges and triumphs
- the power of patience
- the importance of modeling positive behavior
- technology's place in our kids' lives and how to support their digital exploration effectively
- and so much more!
So tune in, forget everything you thought you knew about discipline, and discover how to guide your kids through life's tumbles with empathy and understanding.
Got a story to share or question you want us to answer? Send us a message!
About the podcast:
The KindlED Podcast explores the science of nurturing children's potential and creating empowering learning environments.
Powered by Prenda Microschools, each episode offers actionable insights to help you ignite your child's love of learning. We'll dive into evidence-based tools and techniques that kindle young learners' curiosity, motivation, and well-being.
Got a burning question?
We're all ears! If you have a question or topic you'd love our hosts to tackle, please send it to podcast@prenda.com. Let's dive into the conversation together!
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Welcome to the Kindle Podcast. I'm Katie. This is Adrienne, my lovely co-host, and today we are super excited because we are re-releasing one of our favorite episodes. This is a deep dive that Adrienne and I did around collaborative problem solving, which is a concept that's taught by Dr Ross Green, and it comes from a book called Raising Human Beings, which, if you have not read, what are you doing with your life? And the book I read was the Explosive Child.
Speaker 2:So I didn't even read Raising Human Beings. So he has written a lot of books and talks about what did you say? I said what are you doing with your entire life? Because I just told everyone else hey, I've read his work. I've read his work.
Speaker 1:I'll give you a pass. I know you were here for the episode too, so I think you've got the gist of it. I'm teasing. Adrienne has taught me so much about collaborative problem solving and is definitely an expert in it. What were your favorites about this episode, adrienne? Your favorite moments?
Speaker 2:So at the time, I was able to use the ALSUP, which is what Dr Ross Green uses, to help you. It's like a tool to use for CPS, which is collaborative problem solving, and ALSUP stands for assessment of lagging skills and unsolved problems, so you can truly get to the root cause, because we could be like, oh, why is a child doing this? And then we make all these assumptions or it's based on our own biases or whatever that may be, and so this gives you very clear lagging skills that the child may have. And so I was able to provide it to my son's school and they were able to do this and we got such a better result of the behavior going away versus getting bigger by applying consequences and punishments, because that was their first go-to, because, again, a lot of schools don't have the tools or the skills or the understanding of how to use these types of things. So that is my favorite part is actually applying what we do on the podcast in real life.
Speaker 1:Totally, I was just talking to a mom, literally two days ago, and she was telling me about the situation with her daughter and she was like I just don't know what to say and I was like I know what to say because of Ross Green and because of collaborative problem solving Like I love the script. It's just so easy to remember and so simple and so like authentic feeling. It's not, it doesn't. It doesn't seem like you're reading a textbook. So I just love how practical it is and how easy it is to get that idea. I mean, I'm not saying it's easy to start doing this, but once you're able to shift your paradigm around what your role is in like kind of a problem solving situation and seeing behavior as an unsolved problem, is just so foundationally helpful because then you I don't know it's just so empowering for the child and it's empowering for you. It's easier for you to stay calm and to stay curious and I just love it. All right, let's get into it. This is episode 35, collaborative problem solving. Enjoy, you have a baby who's learning how to walk right. I just love it. All right, let's get into it.
Speaker 1:This is episode 35, collaborative Problem Solving. Enjoy, you have a baby who's learning how to walk right and this baby falls down. Is this a behavior that we want to encourage, adrienne? No, we don't want kids to fall down. No, falling down is terrible. This is not a behavior that we want to see. Failure. So should we consequence the baby? Should we reward the baby? Should we ignore the baby?
Speaker 2:None of these things make sense because the baby does not know how to walk.
Speaker 1:Yet it's like part of the developmental sequence to fall and get back up and fall and get back up and to walk with a little bit of support and then need less support. Right, it's part of the developmental sequence to have this seemingly non-preferred behavior, right? Hi, and welcome to the Kindled podcast, where we dig into the art and science behind kindling the motivation, curiosity and mental wellbeing of the young humans in our lives.
Speaker 2:Together, we'll discover practical tools and strategies you can use to help kids unlock their full potential and become the strongest version of their future selves. Welcome to the Kindled podcast. My name is Adrienne Thompson and I'm here with the fabulous Katie Broadbent, and we are going to talk about something that has been completely life-changing and has helped me so much in my parenting and when advocating for my kids. So, katie, what are we going to talk about today?
Speaker 1:Yes, today we're going to talk about something called collaborative problem solving, and when I first learned this it was a big 180 for me and how I talk to kids, so super excited to share that with you. We've talked about collaborative problem solving a little bit when we did episode 29.
Speaker 2:Yes, Our favorite books, episode 29. There's a lot of books on that list, but this one is definitely one of our favorites.
Speaker 1:So it's called Raising Human Beings by Dr Ross Green. It's incredible If you've not read this book. Like what are you doing here? Just go now, run, get the book, read the book. It's so, so good.
Speaker 1:And in this book he talks about collaborative problem solving and what he calls plan A, plan B and plan C, and we're going to get into all of that, but first we kind of want to just start off with a conversation around what behavior is, Because all of this that we're doing with Kindle and with Prenda, and if you're working with kids in the classroom, there's this idea that we really need to help kids learn right. But in order to access the learning centers of the brain and to be able to communicate and get kids focused and doing the right quote, unquote right things that are productive from our perspective, we need them to be able to behave first. So and what we mean by behave is very subjective, right? So we want to stop before we get into the solution of collaborative problem solving and talk about what behavior is. So, Adrienne, what do you think most people think of when they think of the word behavior? How do most of us define that? What's funny?
Speaker 2:is when you say that word I have this visceral reaction because, after learning what behavior actually is and what our society and culture has told us what behavior is, I always use it in little quotations and I'm like she's not using her quotations when she's saying behavior. I think what a lot of people think behavior is bad behavior. Good behavior it's when a child is acting the way that you want them to, or when you have control over a child. If they're doing something that's challenging or doesn't feel good to your nervous system, or they're doing something that you're not wanting them to do, we call that bad behavior. We call that misbehavior.
Speaker 1:So something that's funny about the word behavior is that if a teacher calls a parent and says, hey, we need to talk about your son's behavior, that's never a good thing, right, Like behavior. The word just even has this like heavy connotation to it. That means that it's going to be misbehavior or bad behavior, all of the things that you're talking about and I think that behavior is actually just stuff that kids do.
Speaker 2:I looked up the definition. You want to hear it the way in which one acts or conducts oneself, especially towards others, which is what behavior is. But, like what you said, if you get a call or an email from the school, we need to talk about your child's behavior. It is never positive. However, we look under this lens, it's just how they're conducting themselves. So do they not conduct themselves in positive ways too? Or is it only we? Only we hyper focus on the unwanted behaviors and the behaviors that don't feel good to us as adults.
Speaker 1:So then the next question I would ask is what is discipline? So what do you think most people think discipline is?
Speaker 2:I think most people think discipline is punishment. Yeah, that's so true. So if a child is behaving in a way that doesn't feel good, they're having misbehaviors or unwanted behaviors, then in order to correct that behavior and get them to stop, we need to discipline, aka punish or consequence or do something to this child so they don't do it again. However, if we pull back and go, okay, what actually is discipline? Do we want to look up what the definition of discipline is too? Go for it. I'd love to hear that. So it's the practice of training people to obey rules or a code of behavior using oh, this is okay. This is super interesting to me. It's saying the practice of training people to obey rules or a code of behavior using punishment to correct disobedience. So maybe that's where this is coming from. But then that's the noun version of discipline and here's the verb train to train someone and to teach. What do you think?
Speaker 1:about this. Yeah, that's really interesting. That's surprising that punishment is like in the definition. That's really interesting. To me, behavior is just a very neutral stuff. Kids are doing things kids do, and then discipline is stuff that adults try to do to get kids to do better stuff.
Speaker 2:Right, so that's a little convoluted but like we need to get that into the dictionary.
Speaker 1:I'll call Oxford and just tell them that there's a new, new definition on the street. So behavior is stuff kids do. Discipline is stuff adults do to get kids to do better stuff. Um, and a lot of the time this creates a really adversarial, negative kind of we have the word power struggle, right, a child wants to do something. The adult does not want them to do it. They coerce, compel, punish, force. You can't actually force them to do something, right, but you can make their lives very miserable. You can make them very afraid. You can give them lots of treats and prizes if you want to have positive reinforcement to get them to comply, to want to, even if they don't want to. But they'll still acquiesce to your requests, right?
Speaker 1:So this creates this very adversarial environment and relationship between adults and children, which is not pleasant for adults or children. None of us want to be angry, none of us want to feel like, oh, time to wake up and control and compel the kids into doing all of this stuff. But sometimes that's what it feels like, right. As a parent or a teacher, you just get in these modes where it's like, wow, every moment of my day is really just focused on getting that kid to do better stuff Right. It's overwhelming and it's exhausting.
Speaker 1:It is, it is, and we typically have three main go-tos and I call these the equations for discipline. Okay, they're kind of like theories, so I want to share kind of some common equations or hypotheses that I think most adults believe and that drive a lot of our adult discipline or our attempts to get kids to do better stuff right. So the first one is consequencing. So or we've talked about this as punishments you can have a positive consequence technically, but we'll talk about negative consequences or punishments here. So the theory is that if you take a behavior and then you add so behavior plus a consequence or a punishment, the theory is that that will equal improved behavior or the kid doing better stuff.
Speaker 2:Or I also feel like we consequence, because it's almost well they're getting what they deserve yeah, totally. So it's not just we think that they're going to do better, but also they did this, so it deserves a consequence, regardless of if it's going to teach them or not. And what ends up happening, though, is sometimes it teaches them the wrong thing or not to behave in the way that we want.
Speaker 1:Yeah, totally, it can absolutely backfire, you're right, but it's, it's our theory that, yeah, there's definitely this like feeling of justice, right, that needs to be served, almost, even if it's not going to benefit the child. We feel, we believe that it will, and that if we don't discipline them with consequences, then they're going to learn that they can quote, unquote, get away with whatever they want and that they'll be spoiled, et cetera, et cetera. And that is a very valid, understandable belief, right, that feels very real in your body when you're like, oh, that kid did that, like he needs to get what for, like he needs to like, because what's happening is that their behavior is activating your nervous system and you want to stop the behavior. So you feel this like very strong, like I need to act right and justice is a very real thing, right, we as society, like humans, want justice, right, and sometimes justice is the right thing to do, and especially like societally, like I'm not. This is not a commentary on whether or not we should not punish people, and we're not talking about people going to jail. We're talking about the child, adult, teacher, teacher, child relationship, where we're dealing with a still developing nervous system, is still developing brain that isn't necessarily aware and capable of behaving all the time. So that's what we're going to get into.
Speaker 1:Okay, so that's the first hypothesis. Behavior plus consequence equals improved behavior questionable, but feels valid, right. So the next one is behavior plus a reward will improve the behavior, right? We've talked about like I feel like that that like maybe 20 or 30 years ago was like really we were really focused on negative consequences and then the pendulum swung. It's like let's just be positive, let's do positive reinforcement, but really it's like the same side We've talked about this punishments and rewards. We talk about this a lot, but that's a very valid hypothesis. If you're, if you're an adult who's trying to get kids to do better stuff, then reward is going to be one of your go-to things, right? So the third one that I see a lot is to ignore behavior. If I just ignore it, then it will go away as well. So those are kind of our three main approaches consequencing negatively, rewarding positively and ignoring. Do you see any others or do you feel like that kind of sums up, like the main three?
Speaker 2:I can't think of any others that we try to coerce or try to change Isn's behavior. Isn't that funny?
Speaker 1:That, out of all of the parenting strategies and like all of the here's what to do with kids and millions of books, it's like essentially these three things and as you were going through them, I'm like oh, that book talks about that one.
Speaker 2:That book, you know there's a book called Duct Tape Parenting. Oh, my gosh, what? Literally, putting duct tape on your mouth on your mouth, not the child's mouth, oh, you scared me. On your own mouth, to not talk, to ignore the behavior, to not like, add fuel to the fire. Does that make sense? Okay, um, it was not abusive or anything that uh, but it was more so as a parent. If we ignore, these behaviors are going to go away. But if we look under at behavior under the lens of oh, they have an underdeveloped brain, they have an underdeveloped nervous system, they need us as their guide, then ignoring doesn't make sense either.
Speaker 1:Okay, let's get into that. We've we've mentioned, and kind of hinted at this like kids to have developing nervous systems, right. So I want you to imagine that you have like a I don't know like 12 month old, 13 month old baby. This is when kids are learning how to walk, unless you're like an advanced toddler and you're like eight months old, whatever, kids develop at a very different, differing ages, and that's okay. But you have a baby who's learning how to walk, right, and this baby falls down. Now is this a behavior that we want to encourage, adrian? No, we don't want kids to fall down. Falling down is terrible. This is not a behavior that we want to see.
Speaker 1:It's dangerous, though, right, they could get hurt. We don't want to see this behavior. Could they could get hurt. We don't want to see this, this behavior. So should we consequence the baby? Should we reward the baby? Should we ignore the baby?
Speaker 2:None of these things make sense because the baby does not know how to walk yet, so all of those things doesn't make sense.
Speaker 1:Falling down is not actually a terrible dangerous thing, Like I'm sure they can get. You know, kids get bonked when they fall down, but it's like part of the developmental sequence to fall and get back up and fall and get back up and to walk with a little bit of support and then need less support, right, it's part of the developmental sequence to have this seemingly non-preferred behavior, right?
Speaker 2:I was just imagining though, like a baby falling and you looking in their face and like you failure. How dare you fall? And it would be absurd for us to do that.
Speaker 1:That is disrespectful, to like the baby's disrespecting you, right, like that's like. The main trigger I hear from lots of parents is like, oh, their behaviors are so disrespectful. So then I have to act, right, I have to discipline harshly. That seems silly to us, because nobody perceives a baby falling down as disrespectful, right, but there are other behaviors that we do tend to label that way. So let's do another one.
Speaker 1:Okay, so say you have a toddler, they're two, three, they're in their high chair and they're crying. Okay, what should we do here? Why are they crying? I don't know, they're probably hungry, right? So if they have this unmet need, should we consequence them for having that need? Should we reward them?
Speaker 1:It seems laughable, ignore the need, like it seems so absurd in this contest. Because learning how to communicate, like I mean, ideally the child would sit quietly and say more please, or they would like do their little signs, or whatever. They would have communication skills to like express that they have this need, right, but they don't have those skills and so they're using what they have, crying to express their need. And it's just like so obvious to us that consequencing, rewarding or punishing or ignoring in these situations is one, just completely ineffective, right, and two just bizarre, like it just is. Like all of your intuition just revolts against doing things like this.
Speaker 1:But then let's say we have a fourth grader or fifth grader who has a cell phone in their pocket and they're supposed to be working and they pull their cell phone out. Do we have this same like now? Do we want a consequence? Heck yeah. Do we want a reward if they can control the phone usage? Do you want to give them a reward? Yeah, that makes sense. Do we want to ignore this? We don't. This wouldn't be really one that we would ignore, huh, but we might. We might ignore it to hope that it would go away.
Speaker 2:Yeah, or I think I like recently, maybe just yesterday my seven-year-old getting very upset because he was being left out and being talked to and not a nice way, and so I pulled him aside and he looked right at me and said shut up. So in that moment did that trigger you?
Speaker 1:No, I'm actually fine.
Speaker 2:Okay, good. In that moment, though, did I want to consequence him? Did I want to, you know, reward him if he didn't say shut up again, like all those things? Yes, instead, I had to really ground myself and go okay, what is going on here? What is the root cause? Why is he telling me to shut up? Why is he saying I hate you? It's because he's feeling really left out and he's feeling really hurt. So let's help him uncover that and let's approach it at that level, instead of just throwing consequences and rewards, because that's not going to discipline, it's not going to teach a better behavior.
Speaker 1:Let's go back to our kids, our babies who's falling down and our toddler that's crying right. So what are the intuitive actions as an adult, if you see a baby fall down, like what do you do?
Speaker 2:naturally, you go in, you help them? Yeah, typically go over and help them up or try to help them walk, put their little hands and fingers and give them assistance.
Speaker 1:So to me, what this looks like is I'm just like playing this out in my head and I think, like well, I would. I would make some sort of like empathetic comment, right. So I'd be like, oh no, you fell down, like I see you, and then that might've hurt, you bonked her head Right, and maybe you would recognize their intentions, like, oh, you were trying to climb over this big block or the couch. You were trying to come to me like you know that you wanted this good thing to happen and it didn't quite go your way, but you had a good intention. And then, like you mentioned, you might maybe give them a little finger to hold on to, or you might move some things out of their way, or something like that.
Speaker 1:You'd, you'd provide what I like to call supportive practice and then, over time, you they don't need that as much, right, like they gain competence without you. And then you're always this is something that we don't really see um, or call out a whole lot, but we're constantly providing models to kids, right, like I'm walking around on my two feet, not falling it down, and that's fair, so natural. Like I don't think, like well, it's time to model walking to my baby. Right, that's just part of life. We don't like call that out very often, but the baby's constantly seeing like everyone else seems to be walking around without falling over and that seems to be very useful and talking and all those skills as a child?
Speaker 1:Yes, right, and I want to become like these people. So, um, they're using that model as, oh, as a scaffold for their own development, right, so we can take this new kind of path, this empathy, recognizing the intention, providing supportive practice, reducing that support, providing a strong model. We can take that into our inappropriate technology use. Right, because really, what's going on in this? This example of this fourth or fifth grader using their phone, which is way too young to be having a phone, just FYI.
Speaker 2:Why is that too young, though? Let's talk about why because I think that goes along with this is understanding what they're capable of and what they're able to handle at that age. The reason why it's not appropriate for them to have a phone is because it is way too overstimulating to their brain. They don't have the self-control. They are lagging a ton of skills at that age, and that's why you know we make that funny comment but there is a reason why they should not have a phone at that age.
Speaker 1:We need to make sure, like the lagging skill going on with the toddler learning to walk is a gross motor skill, the lagging skill with the crying kid is a communication skill right, and the lagging skill with a child who is using technology at an inappropriate time is really inhibition right. It's like so tempting, like that thing buzzes and you don't know if it's like a friend texting you or like there's so many notifications that it could be like it's just going to drive your brain crazy. And as an adult with a fully formed prefrontal cortex, you can be like, yes, I want to know, I want to check that notification right now, but I know it's an inappropriate time and I can manage my behavior because I have the skill of inhibition. I've developed that right. So why then are we going to punish consequence or ignore something like inappropriate technology use, when really it's still a lagging skill right, it's still part of the developmental norm, right.
Speaker 1:And in the same way that a baby falling down is not disrespectful, a child lagging a skill, lagging the skill of inhibition or lagging this, lagging the skill of emotional regulation, like in your story, like they're having all of these feelings and like that's gonna come out and kind of like a yucky, forceful shut up right.
Speaker 1:And if they had the skill of inhibition and emotional regulation they could say they could regulate themselves and be like you know what? I'm really upset right now, but I'm not gonna yell at my mom, but they don't have that skill right. So it's not disrespect, in the same way that falling down when you're learning how to walk is not disrespect. So if we can learn to see the stuff kids do, their behavior, as really just evidence and information for where they're at developmentally, then we can calm our nervous system down because it doesn't mean anything more than that. Right, it doesn't have to mean disrespect, it doesn't have to mean they're mean or anything like that. And we've talked about this behavior being chemical over character before and when you can let that go and understand this is mostly just brain stuff and development. It's not like my son or daughter's morality or their character.
Speaker 2:Right, and our behavior too. So many times I hear parents say, well, I flew off the handle and I don't like that. I did that. Well, a lot of that was probably chemical as well, or not having like a strong vagus nerve, and something that I thought of as you were talking is I believe this comes from Dr Mona Delahook. She wrote the book Beyond Behaviors she talks about the expectation gap is that we expect a fourth, fifth grader to behave basically like an adult or even teenagers. We label teenage behaviors when actually they're behaving exactly how they're supposed to behave. With all of the things going on with their brain, their neural connections and you know the synaptic was pruning and all the things that are happening in the adolescent brain, it makes sense. However, we have these expectations for them to act far beyond their age, especially, I feel, like four or five, six year olds, because they're speaking now they can communicate clearly with you. So then we have this expectation for them to behave in ways that their brains are just not capable of behaving.
Speaker 1:Dr Green also talks about this expectation gap. So anytime you have an unmet need or a lagging skill that makes it so you cannot meet the expectations of your life, you have an unsolved problem, is what he calls these moments where it's like, if you're having difficulty controlling your technology use during fifth period math, that's an unsolved problem. Right Doesn't mean you're lazy, doesn't mean you're bad at math. Like doesn't mean anything, it's just like oh, we don't have the skills to handle this expectation. What are we going to do about that? Right? So he actually introduces this idea and it's so simple. I love it. But there are three plans. There's plan a, plan B and plan C and this is all in this book, um, and there's also we'll we'll link um some really good YouTubes of him explaining all of this and demonstrating Um, and if you know Ross green, we really want to have him on. So hopefully we'll do a follow-up of like you'll get like real raw screen. This is like poor man's raw screen. Katie and Adrian.
Speaker 2:Yes, and he wrote another book. In the book that I read, I did not read Raising Human Beings, that's what it's called, right, I read the Explosive Child and it's a super quick listen and that it also has CPS in it as well, and all these same things. If you have a child that has really big feelings and really big emotions, this is extremely helpful. Book by him as well.
Speaker 1:I love that because sometimes, when you hear how like simple do I mean it's not simple, there's some complexity to it, but just how logical I'll say this all is, you'll think, like that'll work with some kids, but my kid's an exception, my kid's different. Like this kid's outrageous, this kid's out of control. Like these techniques that we talk about are all developed to help the most extreme child's behavior and so just have faith and trust that these techniques, like they're not just for like the easy wins, like this, they were built to handle whatever you are seeing. Um, okay, so I'm going to go over the plans real quick. Okay, so we'll we'll do a deep dive into a few of them, but just a quick overview. Plan a, essentially so you have an unsolved problem, you have a behavior issue, right, and so you can do plan A, which is a unilateral, adult decision. So, for example, I'll do one that makes a lot of sense and then maybe one that doesn't make a ton of sense. So you are in a parking lot and a kid darts in front of an oncoming car and you make a adult, unilateral decision to grab their arm and pull them out of the way, right, really good use of plan A. We didn't want to have it stop and have a discussion. We didn't want to, like, table the issue till later Like we need. There was a safety issue and we needed to act. That's a really good use of plan A. Maybe a not so great use of plan A.
Speaker 1:An opportunity where we could do one of the other plans which we'll go into would be something like two kids are fighting over a toy or something like that and we go in there super hard and we're like all right, this toy is causing a fight, I'm just going to take the toy away, right. So, problem solved no more toy. Awesome, adult made the decision. But what happened there is that we lost an opportunity to develop lagging skills. So this is where we get into plan B, and plan B is called collaborative problem solving and it is a script or framework for help working alongside kids to come to some hypotheses, some solutions about their unsolved problems, right.
Speaker 1:So we're going to go into this deeply for the rest of the episode, but I'll also tell you about plan C, which is just tabling the issue for now. Right, if you have, in any given child's life, they're going to be a whole host of unsolved problems and lagging skills, right, and we need to prioritize these and we can really only handle dealing with maybe one or two at a time. And so if we're going to plan C something that just means we see that it's an unsolved problem and a lagging skill and we're just not prioritizing it right now, which means we're going to mostly drop the expectation for that, for the child to handle that situation. Well, right, we're going to keep the child out of that situation or we're going to modify the expectations in some way so that they can manage, so they can get through that time of the day, but knowing that in the future we're going to eventually address it, okay. So plan B, let's talk about it.
Speaker 2:Let's do it, okay. So we're going to talk about what plan B is, and there's a little script and all the things, and I've heard this, I read the book years and years ago. Have used this Katie, I've heard her present on this topic, but I had to really use it with my teenager like two weeks ago, and I was like wait, what's the script again, how do I say it? And I was trying to memorize it. I do have to say, though, it really worked, because I did not start out with plan. I know how to use plan B, but did I start out that way? No, because it wasn't natural to me.
Speaker 2:With this particular child, with my explosive child, absolutely, we've been doing CPS, but this other child, I just had never used this model with him, and I first started with what are you doing? How can I get you to stop behaving this way? I'm at a loss. You're, you know you're at a loss. And then I stepped back and said, oh, I could use this, I could use plan B right now. And I went and got my script and, can I tell you, it opened up for a whole different conversation, and we actually got somewhere.
Speaker 2:And we're going to go through the steps, and I do have to say you might not get through them all with one sitting. It took us. We were on step two for a couple of days, and so let's talk about what the steps are. Take us through it, okay. So we have step one, which is empathy. We talk about this a lot. Whatever child has any kind of behavior or any relationship really want to start with empathy and validation, and so the script for this one is I'm noticing that when, blank, you're having a hard time, what's up? Oh yeah, that makes a lot of sense. I would behave that way too, or I would do that to come up with stories of whenever you felt that way. We want the child to put their guard down and to feel like you are on their side, you are on their team, you are team child, and that's going to help us whenever we want to come to a solution together.
Speaker 1:Okay. So inherent in this step one is a few internal adult beliefs that I really want to focus on here. So if you're going to go to a child and ask them like, what's going on? Like, so if you're going to go to a child and ask them like what's going on? Like, I see this which one is not a nonjudgmental approach. This You're not saying you always or you never, or when you do this this happily, you know. You're just saying hey, I'm noticing that you have a hard time in this situation. What's going on for you? I'm just curious and I'm not judgmental, right?
Speaker 1:This whole conversation presupposes that I don't know the answer. Right, because we can see things and be like oh, it's obviously because of X, y and Z. Here's how they're feeling, and we can just write in what they feel and think and what they're experiencing. But it takes a lot of humility to think maybe I'm wrong about that, right?
Speaker 1:And adults, I mean, we're so cool, we know everything. We've been around the block a few times Like we. It's easy for us to be like I know exactly what's going on here and to just pause and be like maybe I don't. And I will tell you. So many times I've gone into this and and, and the child has actually told me what's going on. I'm like I had no idea that. That's like what was driving this, or like those feelings. You know that experience is like all of it and I'm just like I'm so glad I asked, cause if I had come in here, plan a style and just like assumed that I knew everything, I would have been missing so much of the backstory and so much of the compassion and empathy that, like just hearing their side of things engenders in you.
Speaker 2:Um's just so, so important to do this and the noticing piece is stating facts, not judgment, really trying to go okay, I'm noticing this, is that correct? And asking them if it is what's happening and then they can correct you. But like, actually, this is what's going on, what Katie said. It's amazing when to really feel heard and understood what that does to our connection too. It just strengthens that connection. So whenever our kid misbehaves I'm going to use it in my air quote they are going to want to come to you for help instead of run away, because you have a fear-based relationship instead of a connection-based relationship. Step two is this is when we state the adult concern. So the script for this one is here's the thing when this happens, it blank. So when this happens, what are some do's and don'ts for this blank, katie, because I was thinking of some and I'm like, oh, maybe that's not what you should say.
Speaker 1:So I think it's important to realize that in any situation where that involves multiple people, everyone has valid needs and wants, right, and so a conversation that goes really well before this is a conversation about what is a need and what is a want, and how, when we live together, when we have a classroom together, we need to create a space where everyone can get their needs met. Like, we all have an individual need for personal safety, right. I might, as a micro school guide, have a need for the school to feel like a an effective learning environment for everyone, right. So your needs like this attempt at like curiosity and empathy, is not meant to like railroad or like ignore all of the expectations, right, we want to get all of the expectations out on the table in a really non-judgmental, caring way. So I would say something like here's the thing. Like let's take a real example. So maybe you know someone's being disruptive in class. We'll say, like you're talking a lot in class, you know whatever a lot means. There's all sorts of judgment that I just like packed into that little statement. But we'll say I'm noticing that when it's independent work time, you're having a hard time not talking to your neighbor, what's up? And they're going to say something like, oh my gosh, this kid next to me, we both like bugs and nobody in my whole life talks about bugs with me. And like that's the only time I get to talk to this kid about bugs. And now you're thinking like, oh, wow, like if I loved something and I could only talk about one person, like I would totally feel the impulse to um, to talk to them. And, knowing that this kid's soul keep with our like fourth, fifth grader, like it's going to have an inhibition problem, um, not even a problem just like a normal developmental lack, a lagging skill. Here we're going to come into this with like a ton of empathy. So that is going to set us up neurologically. It's going to be like calming to our nervous system. Like this makes sense, this isn't a threat to me, I'm not. Like this isn't a problem, and so our whole conversation is just going to feel way safer to the kid. So then I'm going to voice my adult concerns. Here's the thing when this happens, it's really distracting for everyone around you, and I have a need to create a classroom or a micro school where everyone can learn during this time. Right? So that's a very valid adult concern. I'm not asking the kid necessarily to care about that as much as I do, right, but it's still a valid need.
Speaker 1:So then, after this, we're going to move on to step three, where we put it on the kid to find a mutually satisfying solution, some solution, some future, hypothetical future where everyone's needs are met. So that sounds like saying something like what do you think we could do to solve this issue? So everyone has their needs met, and obviously, if I'm talking to a four-year-old, I'm not going to use the word issue. You know like you can, you can, so everyone's happy.
Speaker 1:You're going to talk, talk at the child's level, and then you've put the problem back into the court of the child. So now they're the problem solver, not the problem maker, right? You could have come into the situation and been like you're making all these problems and I'm going to solve them, right, but then when that child goes through life and has problems, he's looking around and be like who's going to come in here and solve this? Right life and has problems, he's looking around and be like who's going to come in here and solve this? Right, cause I'm the problem maker and adults or other people, they're the problem solvers, right, so we want kids to be the problem solvers here. Um, so what might this sound like in your experience? What does this typically sound like when you ask a child to?
Speaker 2:be the problem solver here? Yeah, and sometimes they may not. Or I think of like recently we got stuck here, he's like I don't know, because he also was not in a nervous system state where he had.
Speaker 1:Can I jump in right there? This is a really important note, because you don't want to have plan B conversations when people are not Like in the moment, when you've just had an altercation or something.
Speaker 2:It's not the time for this and I thought he was calm though, and I thought he was calm though. And I thought he was calm. That's the thing is like okay, I came in with empathy, he was in a calm state. So but I can tell when we got to step three though, he just was still in defensive mode, so it didn't seem like he was. So it's just like, okay, I have to go back up to step one, give more empathy. So I think that's important to note. So it's not like he was still fired up and it was not apparent he was in a sympathetic state. But I can tell when we got to step three he was not ready to come up with any kind of solutions. So then I just said, okay, we'll visit this again tomorrow. And I remember in the Explosive Child book he did have scripts Do you recall what those are on if a child can't come up with solutions?
Speaker 1:Drilling yeah, he calls that drilling and there's I think there's like 10 different approaches to drilling. If a kid says I don't know, or if they won't talk to you, or things like that, I would be too much to like go through right now in this episode, but we can.
Speaker 2:We can find a link that has like all the drilling tactics and we'll put that in the show notes.
Speaker 1:A few of them that I know off the top of my head are something like do you want to hear what other kids have done in this situation?
Speaker 1:And then it's like, sure, so I'm just giving, I'm just starting the brainstorm now by giving you some ideas, and then it kind of turns it into a multiple choice where the child is still going to be like, yeah, that's the one that's going to work, or let's, let's take that one, but then let's tweak it like this Right, so that's one way you can go about it. Um, you can also do something like do you want to hear what I would do in this situation? Or, but you want to. You want to keep it as kid centric as possible. So, um, he goes through all of these things in the book, even if a kid won't talk to you. Essentially, if the kid won't have this conversation, they're giving you a lot of information about your relationship essentially, and you have to do a lot of beforehand relationship work to get to a place where a child will have this conversation with you and open up and tell you what's going on with them.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and if the child is not used to being the problem solver and so the problem maker, it's going to take time. Like I said, with this particular child, I wasn't used to using the CPS model with him and I mean, our connection is great. It's just I didn't feel like it was a need until it got to a place where, okay, we're just having the same problem over and over again, a place where, okay, we're just having the same problem over and over again. So this was new to him. He was not used to coming up with the solutions. He was used to us just like coming up with them together, and so I was really trying to resist just giving him the solutions again and then the next time. So we had to revisit this. A week later he was more apt to give some solutions because this wasn't a new thing for him. So this is a skill in itself, right.
Speaker 1:And that's the big thing about plan B is that it is the only option plan A, plan B, plan C that actually solves the root cause of helping the kid develop the lagging skill. And not only are they developing the skill of being the problem solver, but they're going to be able to think through their behavior in a completely different way because it wasn't slapped on top of them Like this is the solution. It's like they generated it. If you've ever seen the movie Inception, it's like the dreamer has to create the dream. This is honestly just a basic constructivist learning science theory approach where it's like if I created this solution, I'm going to be way more likely to stick with the plan and it's going to be my solution, right, and then that is a completely different cognitive load, like loop that I've just been put through, rather than here's the solution. Please comply or else.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and Dr Green has. This awesome tool is called the ALSEP, which is the assessment of lagging skills and unsolved problems. A L S U P. I had to use this.
Speaker 2:The principal knew at this point, knew me and knew that I would throw a bunch of research at her, or connection connection, a connection let's. You know, do not use punishments and rewards. So she came to me first and said hey, I didn't even talk to him about this. We've had this issue over and over again. What should we do? And I remember the ALSEP and I sent her the whole packet so you can use this with your schools too.
Speaker 2:She was asking me, like what else can we do? I said we need to identify what the lagging skills are, and there's a whole list of lagging skills and looking at it, I was able to point out three right away. This is what's happening here, and what's challenging and we mentioned this earlier is we have this expectation for older kids. Well, they should be behaving in this way. He's 14. However, no, he has a lagging skill, a difficulty empathizing with others, appreciating another person's perspective point of view, or difficulty appreciating how his or her behavior is affecting others. Then that gave the principal language and gave her understanding of okay, this is a lagging skill. What can we do as a staff? And then, what can you do at home so that we're both supporting the child, instead of it being very different in the different environments?
Speaker 1:Just like feel how different this is to actually go through this lesson. We'll link this in the in the show notes for you guys. I'm just going to read a few of them Difficulty handling transitions, shifting from wine mindset or tasks to another. Difficulty persisting on challenging or tedious tasks, a poor sense of time. Difficulty maintaining focus. Difficulty considering the likely outcomes or consequences of their actions or their impulsive Right, so you can just get this and um go through here and be like, oh, obviously you know you can kind of diagnose this, but you don't know why until you talk to the child Right, and so that um, all of this kind of the lagging skill moving into really being able to say, really describe what the unsolved problem is, and I'll go through that equation really quickly.
Speaker 1:But um, so essentially to get the unsolved problem is and I'll go through that equation really quickly, but um, so essentially to get the unsolved problem, you have to figure out the lagging skill and then the the unsolved problem starts with the word has difficulty, has difficulty. Let's pick one, um maintaining focus. And then you're going to put it in a specific setting, because they probably don't have a difficulty maintaining focus when they're playing video games for four hours.
Speaker 2:It's when they're doing a non-preferred behavior or when they're doing a preferred behavior, so yeah, when it's a non-preferred, then yes, you're going to see some of these behaviors show up.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so has difficulty. Lagging skill situation very specific situation, not like. Has difficulty maintaining focus while doing homework. Like what type of homework? Like what? Like get really specific. Because then what happens is if we, if we don't get specific enough, then we can't really solve the problem. Like say, they're having a hard time focusing on their history because maybe there's like an underlying um like reading comprehension issue or something like that, and it's not, it doesn't affect their math. So if we just said homework, then we wouldn't really be able to get, get at the root of this, right. So we want to understand the very specific situation and when we solve this problem for a very specific situation, that the unsolved problem, the lagging skill that we've developed, is going to generalize to all other. You know, similar unsolved problems, similar situations, unless there's a different driving cause. Maybe maybe we're still seeing a homework difficulty, but for a different subject. It's for a different reason, right, and so solving the one won't necessarily generalize to all of the homework problems being gone, because there's different drivers. But it's only through this very careful work that we can get from.
Speaker 1:Why can't you just be like more, more like your brother? Why can't you just stay focused? Like you can't place on the soccer team until you sit. Like all of this stuff that we, we discipline, trying to get the kids to do better stuff when really there's just lagging skills, trying to get the kids to do better stuff when really there's just lagging skills, unmet needs, unsolved problems, that when we take this really formulaic, systematic, logical approach we don't feel upset as much. The kid feels like oh, I am, I can be a solution maker and I can learn to manage my life. Kids, ross Green's whole thing is kids do well if they can. And if if you've ever thought to yourself like the kid just doesn't want to succeed here, like he likes, you know it's like that's. That's probably not true. It takes some humility to see that. But like the kids really really do want to do well, they want to meet your expectations. They want to win at school, they want to win at home. They really want their lives to go well.
Speaker 2:We want to make sure we don't fall into the trap of developmentally like, oh, at this age they should be doing this. And then episode 25, we dive really deep into this with Todd Rose, and the episode is called Embracing Individuality, and he wrote a book called the End of Average. And also we have an episode 20, which is on neurodivergent learners, and so we need to make sure we don't fall into the trap of well, they're five, so this shouldn't be a lagging skill. No, it's like look at that individual child that's in front of you and we can fall into the trap of well, they have ADHD, so they can't do this, you know, and so we could fall into that trap either way is instead of let's look. I love this framework so much because we can get extremely specific. Like Katie said, we want to include as many details as possible that's related to the who, what, where and when, so we can be extremely specific on what this lagging skill is not. You know our judgment of what we think should be happening.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and doesn't that give you like a sense of hope too, where it's like, oh, we're just going to solve this one situation, right, and we're going to work together here and and instead of like I have a huge problem with inhibition, it's like we're just going to focus on this one. It just seems so doable to me. So, going back to our example of a kid being distracting in school, uh, you know, he might think like well, maybe we can have a special time where we talk about bugs. We're like, you know, I can talk about to this kid about bugs at a different time, and it's, you know, they're going to suggest some things, um, some, some things that are going to work and some things that aren't going to work. And your job in this part of the conversation is really to be like I don't see how that gets my need met, right, like, maybe his conversation is, or his, maybe his suggestion is, instead of math, we'll just learn about bugs, and everyone will just learn about bugs. And you'll be like, well, like we still need to learn math, like that doesn't solve my problem. So, like, give it back to him, like, try again, um, until he comes up with a? Um, a solution that is actually mutually satisfying.
Speaker 1:And then when you, when you land on a, on a plan, you're going to say something like that sounds great, let's write that down. So we were like really clear on what the plan is. And then you can even ask like, do you think you're going to be able to stick to this plan or do you feel like you're going to need some support from me? And then what does that look like? What does support for me look like? Like, if we get off plan, if I notice that we're off plan, what do you want me as your teammate in helping solve this unsolved problem? What do you want me to do? And so they might be like oh, if you notice me off plan, like maybe you could just like wink at me twice, or like maybe we could have a secret code word, or like maybe, you know, you could just remind me, or whatever.
Speaker 1:Um, so then, as soon as you're off plan in real life and you do that, it's not like, it's like you're still on plan because you, you, you, you planned to get off plan Right, and so then you made a plan to get back on plan, right. So so then it's like, oh, we're just, we're just doing what we planned. We're still on the same team. This isn't doesn't become adversarial. Um, this is just my support person and we have this common goal now that we've established and, um, that's how this can move forward.
Speaker 1:And you can also schedule a check back where it's like, hey, we're gonna try this for a week and then we're gonna have like a little conversation, maybe Friday after class, to see how it went, to see if we wanna change the plan or if we wanna stick with the plan or if this problem has just been solved and we don't need our plan anymore.
Speaker 1:And if you schedule that ahead of time, then it just de-risks like, oh no, they want to talk to me about this again. You know, like, so we just plan to get off off track, like figure out how we're going to solve that, and then pre pre-plan a check-in. So it's like this is just our schedule, this is all just part of the plan. So if you do those, those two or three things as a follow-up, then you can change the plan. You can. You know you're giving your future self a little wiggle room to tweak things and to give them the support that they need without making them feel like I can't do this and I was completely incompetent. You know, it's like you just build in that support.
Speaker 2:So there's so much going on here. We are helping them learn skills on their own. There's probably critical thinking incorporated here. There's just so much learning. And then also for us to allow the child to start solving problems on their own and not just swooshing, whooshing coming in and because swooping and not swooshing I knew it was something like that.
Speaker 2:Um, so yeah, there's a lot going on here and said and it just feels so much better because there's less frustration on our end and maybe there's, you know, frustration on their end, but then they're able to work through those big feelings and we can meet them with empathy and validation.
Speaker 1:Okay, Well, that is collaborative problem solving. I hope that was helpful to everyone. Please get the book. Please read We'll. We'll post some links to videos and things like that. We are not Ross Green, although we try to be like him in every way.
Speaker 2:So if this episode was helpful to you, please like, subscribe and follow us on social at Prenda learn. If you have a question for us that you'd like us to address, all you have to do is leave a comment and email us at podcast at Prendacom. You can also join our Facebook group, the Kindled collective, and subscribe to our weekly newsletter, the Sunday spark. And again, if you know Ross green, send them our way. We would love to interview him on the Kindle podcast.
Speaker 1:Love it Awesome. The Kindle podcast is brought to you by Prenda. Prenda makes it easy for you to start and run an amazing micro school based on all the principles that we talk about here on the Kindle podcast. If you want more information about becoming a Prenda guide, go to Prendacom. Thanks so much and don't forget to keep kindling.
