Illusions are the truths we live by until we know better. – NANCY GIBBS.
We all want our own way; some of us have the skills to get our own way adaptively, and some of us don’t.
Behaviorally challenging kids are challenging because they’re lacking the skills to not be challenging.
If the only time a child looks as if he has bipolar disorder is when he’s frustrated, that’s not bipolar disorder; that’s a learning disability in the domains of flexibility and frustration tolerance.
The essential function of challenging behavior is to communicate to adults that a kid doesn’t possess the skills to handle certain demands in certain situations.
An explosive outburst – like other forms of maladaptive behavior – occurs when the cognitive demands being placed upon a person outstrip that person’s capacity to respond adaptively.
Solving problems together? Yes, indeed. You and your child are going to be allies, not adversaries. Partners, not enemies.
Challenging kids are lacking the skills of flexibility, adaptability, frustration tolerance, and problem solving, skills most of us take for granted.
In the CPS model, holding a kid accountable means that the kid is participating in a process in which he’s identifying and articulating his own concerns or perspectives, taking yours into account, and working toward a realistic and mutually satisfactory solution.
QUESTION: Isn’t it the parents’ job to make their child behave at school? ANSWER: Helping a child deal more adaptively with frustration is everyone’s job. The parents aren’t there when the child has challenging episodes at school.
The reason reward and punishment strategies haven’t helped is because they won’t teach your child the skills he’s lacking or solve the problems that are contributing to challenging episodes.
Your energy can be devoted far more productively to collaborating with your child on solutions to the problems that are causing challenging episodes than in sticking with strategies that may actually have made things worse and haven’t led to durable improvement.
If you respond to a child who’s having difficulty putting his emotions aside so as to think through solutions by imposing your will more intensively and “teaching him who’s the boss,” you probably won’t help him manage his emotions. Quite the opposite, in fact.
A common belief about behaviorally challenging kids is that they have learned that their challenging behavior is an effective means of getting their way and coercing adults into giving in, and that their parents are passive, permissive, inconsistent disciplinarians. If this view hasn’t led to improvements in your child’s behavior, you may want to try on some different lenses: your child is lacking skills rather than motivation.
There are three options for dealing with those unsolved problems: Plan A refers to solving a problem unilaterally, through the imposition of adult will. Plan B involves solving a problem collaboratively. Plan C involves setting aside an unsolved problem, at least for now. If you intend to follow the guidance provided in this book, the Plans – especially Plan B – are your future.
The school discipline program isn’t working for the kids who aren’t doing well and isn’t needed by the kids who are.
Challenging behavior occurs when the demands being placed upon a child outstrip the skills he has to respond adaptively to those demands.
He’s manipulating us. This is another popular but misguided way of portraying behaviorally challenging kids. Competent manipulation requires various skills – forethought, planning, impulse control, organization – that behaviorally challenging kids often lack.
When is challenging behavior most likely to occur? When the demands being placed on a kid exceed his capacity to respond adaptively.
Now you know: these skills don’t come naturally to all children. We tend to think that all children are created equal in these capacities, and this assumption causes many adults to believe that behaviorally challenging children must not want to do well. Now you know better.