Part of a permanency series featuring the voices of child welfare and mental health practice, voiced by PACC alumni

Ed Morales, MPP, MSW, LICSW

Guest Blogger: Ed Morales, MPP, MSW, LICSW

Kids do well if they can, not because they want to.

It’s a simple idea: if he could do well, he would do well; if she could do well; she would do well. It’s also an idea that has the backing of over fifty years of research into our neurobiology. Unfortunately, conventional approaches to discipline and parenting are slow to catch up, and despite the evidence, many of us turn to carrot and stick approaches to raising kids: reward them with material things when they comply, and punish them by taking material things when they go astray.

These conventional approaches, though, are missing a key piece that’s vital to the development of our kids: skill building. We can punish our way to compliance, but compliance isn’t the same thing as ability, and punishments don’t build skills. What’s worse: for kids who have experienced the tremendous grief, loss and trauma associated with adoption and the permanency spectrum, conventional approaches to discipline can be particularly damaging.

So what are parents (and permanency professionals) to do?

Collaborative Problem Solving is an approach to discipline that a) reduces challenging behavior while b) maintaining parental authority, c) pursing a parent’s highest priority expectations, and d) building skills that will help our kids in the long run. It’s built on the premise that every challenging behavior usually has a pretty good explanation and presents an opportunity to build skills. Even better: collaborative problem solving is an approach that any parent can learn to use with any kid, even the most challenging kids.

In its simplest form, it’s a three-step process that looks like this:

  1. Clarify the child’s concern or perspective, with an observation and a question.
    “I’ve noticed that there’s been a little trouble when it comes to getting to the bus on time, what’s up?”
  2. Share the adult perspective
    “That makes sense, and the thing that I’m thinking about is…”
  3. Collaborate on a solution that works for both the kiddo and the adult
    “I bet there’s a way we can make sure we meet your need AND my need, what ideas do you have?”

How does that look in practice?

When my youngest daughter moved in, I tried to feed her good healthy food. One of the first nights she was with us, I made raw kale salad. Yum, right! Wrong. She balked. She wouldn’t eat it. I did what I was told to do, and advised her that she wouldn’t get her dessert if she didn’t eat her veggies. She took all her kale, put it in her mouth and then excused herself to go to the bathroom. She came back a few minutes later and the kale was gone. She ate it, right? Wrong. It was in the sink. So we sat down and had a conversation about kale salad at dinner, and I learned that her view is that raw vegetables, and especially raw kale, is really gross. And she learned that I want her to grow up to be big and strong, eat healthy foods sometimes, and try new things. Our solution? We agreed that fruit with every meal was the ticket. It’s healthy, it’s not vegetables, and I can say that I’ve never seen any pineapple in the sink.

Now, it looks easy on paper, but it can get complicated real quick. The two challenges most parents have are shifting away from trying to convince their kids to try their adult solutions to coming up with new solutions that address both kid concerns and adult concerns; and overcoming the fear that they’re giving up all their authority as parents. On that second point, parents keep all of their authority when using the model. A solution isn’t a viable option if it doesn’t work for both the kid and the parent, and if things go south, parents can always revert back to what we call Plan A – enforcing their will, at least until they can try to collaborate again.

The challenge is to keep seeing our kids as working as hard as they can, and to keep trying even when it gets really tough, and it will definitely get tough. Even if the collaboration is rocky, the shift in thinking from will to skill alone can mean profound changes not just in parenting relationships, but for anyone who works with kids. In 2013, we gathered all the school resource officers in New York City  for a two hour collaborative problem solving session, and then set them loose. That year, there was a nearly 60% decrease in in-school arrests. How we see our kids makes a world of difference.

If you’d like to learn more about Collaborative Problem Solving, MNAdopt is hosting a four week parent series on Tuesday evenings at a Twin Cities location to be determined. You can learn more at MNAdopt.org, or at our website, socorro.care.