Dr. Stuart (00:00):

We need to teach parents what to do concretely because it’s wonderful for us to have this discussion about, it’s about skill, not will. And you need to shift your thinking. And kids do well if they can. Well, that’s all wonderful until your kid’s thrown a massive tantrum somewhere and you’re starting to lose your cool as well, and you’re like, well, that was a lovely podcast, but what the hell, right? So you have to couple this with concrete strategies that are effective.

Dr. Sarah (00:33):

Most of us were taught that when kids misbehave, it’s because they’re not trying hard enough. And our job as parents is to motivate them to do better. But what if that’s not actually accurate? What if challenging behavior is less about willpower and more about lagging skills the kids have not yet developed? I am so excited to be joined this week by Dr. Stuart Ablon, an award-winning psychologist, a professor at Harvard Medical School, and the founder and director of Think:Kids at Massachusetts General Hospital. He is one of the world’s leading experts on challenging behavior, and the author of several books, including Changeable: How Collaborative Problem Solving Changes Lives at Home, at School, and at Work. In our conversation, we explore why building secure attachment and emotional regulation begins with how we respond to our children. We talk about how collaborative problem solving can reduce power struggles and strengthen relationships, and the simple steps you can take to put this approach into practice so your kids develop the skills they need to truly thrive.

(01:38):

And I’m thrilled to share that Dr. Ablon and his team have created a free online course for parents and caregivers that walks you through collaborative problem solving. It’s available in both English and Spanish, and you can access it completely free with the code securelyattached. I will link the course and the code in the episode description so you can easily grab it wherever you’re listening. So whether you’re parenting toddlers, teens, or kids, somewhere in between, this is a conversation that will change the way you see your child’s behavior and give you tools to respond with both structure and compassion.

(02:17):

Hi, I’m Dr. Sarah Bren, a clinical psychologist and mom of two. In this podcast, I’ve taken all of my clinical experience, current research on brain science and child psychology and the insights I’ve gained on my own parenting journey and distilled everything down into easy to understand and actionable parenting insights so you can tune out the noise and tune into your own authentic parenting voice with confidence and calm. This is Securely Attached.

(02:47):

Do you ever feel like a broken record just repeating yourself over and over again wishing your child would just cooperate so everything didn’t turn a battle. If that sounds familiar, you are not alone, and that’s exactly why I created my free workshop from Battles to bonding, overcoming Power Struggles. In this workshop, I’ll help you understand why the strategies you’ve been using to either avoid or win a power struggle just aren’t working and why they likely never will. And you’ll learn the real problem that leads to power struggles in the first place and how to break out of that frustrating cycle. I will walk you through my framework for mapping out your child’s challenging behaviors and how to build a personalized toolbox of strategies for your unique child and the specific struggles that you face most often. This is not about quick fixes or about winning the battle, it’s about creating more cooperation, more connection, and more confidence in your parenting. You can get instant access to this free workshop right now by clicking the link in the episode description or by heading to drsarahbren.com/powerstruggles.

(03:55):

Hello everyone. Welcome back. I am so thrilled we have Dr. Stuart Ablon on today. Thank you so much for coming on.

Dr. Stuart (04:12):

My pleasure. Thanks so much for having me. It’s great to be here.

Dr. Sarah (04:15):

I am very excited for this conversation. You do a lot of work with families that really, they live in a very special place in my heart, in my work, so I really like anybody who’s dedicating their life to working with those kids that are so often misunderstood, feels like just a kindred spirit to me. So I’m very, very excited to hear all that you have to share today. For people who aren’t so familiar with your work or don’t know about the work you’ve done with collaborative problem solving and building skills for kids, can you tell people a little bit about how you got into this work and some of the things that you’ve developed along the way?

Dr. Stuart (05:08):

Yeah, sure. Absolutely. So I think I got into this work probably very early on, even as early as high school to be frank, when I had an internship working as a direct care staff member on inpatient psychiatry unit with kids who were hospitalized because they were either at risk of harming themself or someone else, and I had absolutely no idea what I was doing. I was a senior in high school, I was thrown in the middle of this chaos there, and I was really struck by both how out of control the kids were and how much we relied on trying to motivate them to sort of pull it together and how these two things didn’t quite jive for me that these kids were in incredible pain and if anybody was motivated to get out of this unit and have their life going better, it would be these kids. And so why were we spending less time trying to motivate them to behave better and we missing something? I went off, I went to college, went to graduate school, and I had the good fortune in graduate school of sort of a split life where on the one hand I worked with kids with what we call externalizing disorders or challenging behaviors. But on the other part of my existence in graduate school, I was studying therapy, different forms of therapy and what type of therapy worked for what type of situation and what these active ingredients in therapy were.

(06:45):

And I spent all this time analyzing recordings of therapy sessions and it was fascinating for a while, but really what it came down to at the end of the day was that there was only one really consistent predictor of therapy going well and being effective, and that was the degree of helping relationship between the therapist and the client. And this has been shown by tons of research at this point, there’s only one reliable predictor of helping people to change. It’s the degree of relationship between helper and help be. And so I was again struck by, well wait a second, with kids who exhibit a lot of challenging behavior, how are you going to go about forming a helping relationship with them if that’s the most important ingredient in change? If you frame their behavior as a result of they’re not trying hard enough to behave well, and so those two things don’t go well together, how are you going to form an empathic relationship?

Dr. Sarah (07:40):

Right. It’s hard to build an alliance with someone if they feel like even if the delivery is in a very warm package.

Dr. Stuart (07:50):

That’s right.

Dr. Sarah (07:50):

They feel like you’re judging them.

Dr. Stuart (07:53):

Yeah, well, you’re a clinician. We know when you say the word alliance, a therapeutic alliance is something that’s born of empathy and a lack of judgment. So you can’t build that relationship when you are looking at a kid’s behavior through a lens of judgment and blame. So all of this was happening in the background for me. And then I was very fortunate to come back to Massachusetts General Hospital where I had worked as a research assistant for my training, my postdoctoral training, and I met a guy by the name of Dr. Ross Green, and we started a collaboration that spanned a decade or so and he was writing a book called The Explosive Child at that point. And really he was coming at it from a different lens, which was a neuropsychological lens, which was all this information that was coming out, all this research that showed that kids who exhibit challenging behavior struggle with all kinds of neuropsychologic skills, neuropsychologically based skills. And so you put those things together and all of a sudden you have the beginnings of what then was developed into an approach that we named collaborative problem solving. And I’m sure we’re going to get into the details of exactly what that is together.

Dr. Sarah (09:06):

Yes, I think that’s so cool to hear that part of the story. And I don’t think I realize, I mean, I never heard you talk about this early experience and the early graduate school experience of this parallel of both working in a system that was operating off of a pretty behaviorism heavy model while studying psychological treatments that were probably more relational in nature. And just personally, I’m very similar to my experience. I was in grad school, I was working at Mount Sinai Beth Israel, and I was doing research for the Brief Psychotherapy research project looking at different types of therapy relationships. And the variable that always predicted outcome was therapeutic alliance. So I’m like, yes, we found the exact same thing, but then I was in trainings where they were teaching us all these behavior management skills.

Dr. Stuart (10:07):

Correct.

Dr. Sarah (10:08):

And I was like, these things don’t go together.

Dr. Stuart (10:11):

Exactly. You can’t build a therapeutic alliance when the tools you are using are based all upon power and control. To be really blunt, we’re talking clinically now, but for parents, it’s the same thing. Whether you’re a parent or a teacher, you’re trying to develop a helping relationship with your child or with your student, and that’s really hard to do if you’re trying to control their behavior by leveraging the power differential that you have that’s just not going to get it done. How do you develop a helping relationship through empathy, through understanding, through collaboration, through reducing a power differential? That’s how you develop a helping relationship.

Dr. Sarah (10:55):

And it’s hard though, because I’m a parent and I work with lots of parents and I genuinely, I am very much a student. I’m so interested in the psychology of parenting, and I really do feel like parents have it kind of coming at them both directions. They’re hearing from people like us saying, Hey, it’s about building this relationship. It’s about regulating, regulating yourself, co-regulating with your kid. It’s about building trust and this long-term skill building.

(11:26):

And that makes sense and they like that, but they’re also getting from so many old deeply entrenched communications that are so embedded in our society and internally that it’s so hard to fight this super old world behaviorism based beliefs that you are failing as a parent if you can’t control your kid. And if they’re not well behaved, it is a referendum on your parenting. And obviously we’re trying to dispel that, but even parents who consciously know that’s not true feel that pressure. And it’s so hard. I work with so many parents who are like, yeah, but I have to get them to do the thing.

Dr. Stuart (12:04):

Which is true. I mean, here’s the thing, right? As a parent, I’m a parent of three myself, right? No, you can’t just be in a constant place of empathy and not have expectations that you pursue with your child and hold them to those expectations. That’s not possible. So I think that there’s these sort of warring worlds of tough love and what has more recently been called gentle parenting. And what I want to talk about today with you all and your listeners is an alternative to both.

Dr. Sarah (12:39):

Yeah.

Dr. Stuart (12:39):

An alternative that actually helps you pursue expectations that is very clear about what those expectations are that provides structure, that the adults are indeed in charge and at the same time is relational and leads to kids developing independent skills. So it doesn’t have to be an either or, but you can’t just oscillate between sort of punitive parenting and permissive parenting, and that’s not going to get the job done.

Dr. Sarah (13:10):

Agreed. So let’s talk a little bit about this. I think it’s very important. I think we’ll get into the sort of nuts and bolts of collaborative problem solving, but I think to really understand the essence of it, and what you kind of just said is you have to sort of break the mold. You have to think about it from a completely different vantage point. It’s not I either give in and I let them rule the roost, or I take charge and I make them do what has to be done, just my job. And even if I don’t like that, that’s my job, I feel like I have to do it. It’s like you are introducing a very different way of looking at the issue.

Dr. Stuart (13:50):

Yes, yes.

Dr. Sarah (13:51):

Can you talk a bit about that?

Dr. Stuart (13:52):

Yeah. Well, and here we have to honestly give thanks to kids who exhibit a lot of challenging behavior because those kids don’t let you get away with harsh, punitive, tough love. It gets ugly. But also on the other hand, if you’re overly permissive, that’s going to cause all kinds of problems as well. Now, when you say sort of breaking the mold here, one of the things I should be clear about is that there is a half a century of research at this point that has shown beyond the shadow of a doubt that being able to manage and control your behavior requires skills.

(14:33):

And that’s true of children. It’s also true of us adults too in our relationships in the workplace, et cetera, that our behavior is driven much more by skill than it is by will. We have long believed that you just need to supply proper motivation and kids are going to behave well. In other words, that kids do well if they want to. And our job if they’re not doing well is to make them want to. And what our approach suggests is a different way of thinking. And the philosophy is kids do well if they can, not. Kids do well if they want to. And what that suggests is if a kid could do well, they would do well because look, show me the kid who prefers doing poorly to doing well. That’s ridiculous. We all want to do well, kids and adults alike. But what the research has shown us is when kids are struggling to do well, struggling to manage their behavior, they don’t lack the will to behave well.

(15:26):

What they’re struggling with are skills. Skills in areas like problem solving and flexibility and frustration tolerance. And we can dive a whole level deeper if we want into more clinical descriptions, but at the base of it, those are the kinds of skills we’re talking about. And that’s a mindset shift to understand that this is about skill, not will, but one of the things I say to parents all the time is it’s the same kind of shift that we finally come to when it comes to things like learning disabilities that we used to horribly misunderstand with tragic outcomes. We used to think that kids who struggled to decode words phonetically who struggled to read, who we now have, dyslexia, for instance, a learning disability, we used to think those kids just weren’t trying hard enough and it couldn’t have been further than the truth. Those kids were trying harder than anybody else to read because it wasn’t coming naturally to them. We made that shift. Thank goodness, as a society, we haven’t made it. When it comes to behavior, we still assume behavior is all about effort and motivation, and that’s not true.

Dr. Sarah (16:33):

And they’re conflated too in a lot of ways because that kid with dyslexia who’s struggling to decode words is the same kid who’s also probably getting increasingly more and more frustrated using all the gas in their tank to try to get through the day academically. And when all these other sort of things are coming at them, they don’t have a whole lot left to stay regulated. And so they’re also the ones that are getting up and messing with the kid next to them or making disruptive things happen in the classroom because they’re deflecting or they’re struggling, they’re trying to get out of something.

Dr. Stuart (17:14):

I always like to say, behavior doesn’t come out of the blue for no reason. It happens when the demands put us upon somebody. The situation, the antecedent trigger, whatever you want to call it, exceeds the skills that somebody’s able to bring to bear in that moment. And you’re absolutely right. If a kid has limited frustration tolerance, if that’s something they struggle with and decoding words is hard for them, they’re going to get frustrated when they’re trying to read. And then if they have a hard time managing frustration, that’s going to exhibit itself in some form of challenging behavior as well.

Dr. Sarah (17:47):

And so I think you’re right. We’ve been learning this for, well, probably 50 plus years now, but I feel like it’s, and it is starting to trickle in to schools and families and parenting. I know it’s more mainstream. I mean, there are other podcasts like this and there’s lots of people who are doing this kind of work to get parents to understand, oh, right, this is about supporting my child’s capacity to regulate, and that takes time and practice and repetition in the right environment. And I’m not teaching in the heat of the moment because they’re thinking brains off. But I still feel like there’s so much that we know that isn’t, it’s not yet everywhere I see this in, I feel like sometimes it’s a bit of an uphill battle to break.

Dr. Stuart (18:38):

And the way I think about it is this, that it takes a long time to change conventional wisdom. I mean, I’ve been doing this work for 30 years or so and I’ve seen a change over time, but there’s still a lot of progress to be made. And that’s just to shift thinking because once knowledge emerges and you sort of question conventional wisdom or even replace conventional wisdom.

(19:04):

It then takes a while for people’s actions to change as well. And I think we’re in that period now where mindset has shifted, but actions haven’t necessarily. And part of that honestly also is that we need to teach parents what to do. Concretely wonderful for us to have this discussion about, it’s about skill, not will. And you need to shift your thinking. And kids do well if they can. Well, that’s all wonderful until your kid’s thrown a massive tantrum somewhere and you’re starting to lose your cool as well, and you’re like, well, that was a lovely podcast, but what the hell, right? So you have to couple this with concrete strategies that are effective. And I’m a researcher and a clinician, so when I say strategies that are effective, there’s strategies that don’t just sound good but have been studied and have been shown to be effective with very challenging kids, which being a part of a teaching hospital, we study everything we do to try to make sure that this approach that we’re teaching is actually effective for people.

Dr. Sarah (20:15):

And that’s a really good segue into let’s concretize this because I think we have a pretty self-selecting audience here who are saying, I already kind of buy into this. You don’t have to convince me, but actually, how do I really actually make it happen in real life? Because I can talk about this stuff. I can guide parents and families and help create individualized plans in my practice. And I also in the moment with my own kids, am coercing and threatening and losing my cool. It happens. You have to really practice this a lot to be able to use it in the hot moments because we get hot too.

Dr. Stuart (20:58):

Of course, we’re human. And one thing we know about that word you used before, which is sort of regulation or dysregulation, is they’re both contagious. So if a kid is getting dysregulated, the adult’s going to go right there with ’em. Now conversely, the challenge is if we as adults as parents can stay regulated, that’s contagious too. And that can help our kids stay regulated. And ultimately that’s how this sort of term of co-regulation, that’s how kids learn to regulate themselves eventually.

Dr. Sarah (21:29):

Yeah. How can I share my calm nervous system with you? I have to first get in touch with it, turn it on.

Dr. Stuart (21:37):

And actually, let’s be clear before we get real concrete with folks here, the mindset that we’ve been talking about, kids do well if they can. My kid’s not pushing my buttons. My kid is trying their best to manage the situation at hand with the skills they have. That mindset, this is about skill, not will actually helps us parents stay regulated because then you’re not taking it personally, then you’re not feeling like there they go, disrespecting me again, trying to push my buttons. You don’t get into the same power struggle if you approach this from an empathic vantage point. So that gives you a headstart on regulation. But again, now you need some concrete actions to take.

Dr. Sarah (22:22):

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(23:43):

So can you walk us through collaborative problem solving, or maybe even what would in a moment where you might have to pull that out of your toolbox, what are the pre-steps? How would you know? Okay, this is an opportunity.

Dr. Stuart (23:58):

The first thing on a very basic level that we teach all parents is pick any problem you have that occurs any expectation. A kid’s not meeting anything they’re doing, you don’t want ’em to do or not doing, you want them to do any age. At the end of the day, you only have three options. And in our approach, we call these your three plans. We call ’em plan A, plan B, and plan C. We call it plan A. When you try to impose your will to make your child do what you want them to do. We call it plan B. When you try to collaborate with your child to solve the problem at hand, and we call it plan C, when you decide, you know what, I’m going to drop it for now, I’m going to drop my expectation, or I’m just going to solve this the way my child wants it solved not forever, but for now. And those are the only three options you have at the end of the day. So we just like to equip parents with that framework so that you can be mindful of, alright, in any given situation, I’ve got three options and they achieve different goals like plan A, you want to try to impose your will. Well, first of all, sometimes you can’t, but even if you can, it may get ugly on you, but there might be times where you’re saying, that’s my only choice or that’s what I am choosing to do and I’m prioritizing getting my expectation met come hell or high water.

(25:17):

Now if I flip to the other side of things, plan C, what I call dropping an expectation, well, you might choose to do that just to avoid an escalation just to calm things down. For now, maybe it’s a case of timing. This isn’t the time to try to work on this problem, so I’m just going to try to diffuse it for now. And by the way, important clarification, using plan C strategically as a parent is not giving in. Giving in is actually when you try to impose your will usually, and you can’t pull it off and so you bail, in other words, failed plan A, leading to bailing, you could call giving in, but using Plan C strategically, proactively, you’re in charge still, you’re not giving in, you’re making a mindful decision, but that’s not going to solve the problem. Problem’s going to be back to greet you another time, you’re not getting your expectations met.

(26:10):

So again, there’s times to use it, but it has its limitations just like plan A and you can probably guess plan B is the thing that we spend most of our time teaching people how to do. And it is not the average of A and C, it is trying to pursue your expectations aggressively so you’re not dropping them but in a way that keeps the kid calm at the same time and has two additional benefits that neither plan A nor plan C has. And that is building skills and building relationship. So you’re not just trying to solve the problem and decrease the challenging behavior, you are simultaneously building skills in relationship. And so we teach people those are the three options. Pick any problem, you got those three, A, B, C, what are your goals? What are you trying to accomplish? And if you’re trying to use plan B because you want to solve this problem once and for all, you want to decrease the challenging behavior, but you also want to build relationship and skills, well then we’ll walk you through what those three steps look like.

Dr. Sarah (27:12):

Most people have an idea you haven’t met using collaborative problem solving with parents to learn cartoon collaborative problem solving.

Dr. Stuart (27:18):

Yes. Well look, the last thing I want to be accused of is trying to impose collaborative problem solving on people. I found many times in my career, I found this early on by the way, that trying to use plan A to get people to use plan B does not work very well. It is awfully ironic.

Dr. Sarah (27:37):

It’s so funny. I find a lot of times I’ll have one parent who’s so ready for plan B, and then I have another parent who’s like, I am really ambivalent about letting go of plan A in either form in the I’m holding onto plan A hard or I’m very ambivalent about using Plan A. So I bail a lot, right? And if I really were to switch my strategy, that means I would have to deal with conflict and I’m not ready yet. And so yeah, I usually have one parent who needs a little bit more support in getting to a place where they’re ready to go into a collaborative problem solving approach. And when they get there, if they get there on their own, because if I just say that you have to do this, or if the other parent is like, you have to do this, and I side with that parent, it never works ever. They have to, no, it never works. See the magic on their own.

Dr. Stuart (28:39):

The person who is holding out of, they’re sticking with some plan A or some plan C, they have a good reason. I mean, this is another guiding philosophy of mine is that even if I don’t like how somebody is handling something, I remind myself they always have a good reason for why they’re handling it that way. And that’s what I need to understand. And most two parent households, by the way, what I see is what I call the AC split, which is one parent does a lot of A, and one parent does a lot of C. And to be honest, they’re both pissed at each other.

Dr. Sarah (29:14):

Yes, I talk about this a lot. I say those parents are holding up one end of the house and they’re terrified to let go because they’re afraid if I step in one step towards the middle, this whole side of the house is going to collapse because you’re not helping me hold it up. And so it’s like you both have to do both.

Dr. Stuart (29:32):

Yeah, I mean the plan, a parent is like, Hey, somebody’s got to hold this kid accountable. And the Plan C parent is like, somebody’s got to keep our house calm here. And they’re both right. And so what I’m trying to help them see is maybe there’s a way those don’t have to come at odds. Maybe it’s not a choice of holding a kid accountable or keeping ’em calm. Maybe you can do both at the same time. But to your point, that requires work from both people in that scenario.

Dr. Sarah (29:58):

And most parents, I think when invited to that conversation, again, and I know we keep bearing the lead, we will tell you how to do collaborative problem solving. But when you approach that sort of split with this kind of like, okay, you have needs, you have reasons for this, let me understand them. What are your concerns? How do we problem solve for those other parent? What are your concerns? How can we validate those and understand them and try to solve for those? And now we’re both working on a plan. It is very meta how to support parents and supporting a child through this process is a lot of the same thing.

Dr. Stuart (30:42):

Absolutely, absolutely. And that’s why when I am working with families, if I’m struggling to understand a parent’s perspective or point of view, I’m constantly reminding myself, parents do well if they can. It’s like kids, we’re all doing the best we can to handle what’s being thrown at us with the skills we have. And that might be happening for this parent. And this parent’s got good concerns and I need to understand what those are all about. But to your point, yeah, let’s get to plan B. Let’s talk about how to do it.

(31:14):

So you already pointed out something really important, which is first of all, there’s a couple different times to do it, okay? There’s also different forms of it. There’s individual collaborative problem solving, doing it with one kid. There’s group maybe with siblings or with a whole family. But timing is also very important. There’s in the moment we call that emergency collaborative problem solving or there’s proactive, collaborative problem solving. And proactive is always preferable when possible and especially when parents are first learning this. Because what you can do when you try to solve a problem proactively is you can remove a little of the heat, a little of that dysregulation. And the way we do that is the first thing I often do with families is have them make a list of the predictable situations in which the challenging behavior occurs. And by the way, they are always there. I’m sure you’ve heard with families, you’ve worked with the notion of like you never know when they’re going to blow. It happens out of the blue. I’m always walking on eggshells. There certainly can be that feeling, but there are predictable triggers.

Dr. Sarah (32:18):

Yeah.

Dr. Stuart (32:18):

I always say to people, give me your kid’s age and I can list the top five triggers without even knowing your child in all likelihood. So first we identify what those antecedents are. And then we decide, okay, well how do you want to handle those A, B, or C? Let’s make a list together. And of course, as we just talked about, people are going to disagree some and we’ve got to collaborate and figure out so that we’re aligned A, B, or C. And let’s pick one or two places where we want to start this collaborative problem solving process, which means for now, everything else is going to be either A or C, but we’re going to start plan B. And by virtue of picking something to work on proactively, we can catch a kid when they’re calm, when they’re regulated, and we can prepare the parent or parents and there’s nothing like a calm kid and prepared adults to make for better problem solving and a dysregulated kid and an unprepared and soon to be dysregulated adult as well.

(33:16):

So pick our spots to begin with, but however you do this, what we like to share with people is there are three ingredients to the process only three, which seems like a simple recipe, but it’s more complicated than it might seem. The first ingredient we call the empathy ingredient. And we’re very clear to point out that empathy does not mean just showing you care or that you are sorry that they’re upset or something like that. No, this is the real definition of the word empathy, which means to understand. So in the first ingredient, we teach parents to work hard to understand their child’s concern or perspective or point of view about whatever problem they’re trying to solve. Or it might be just what’s hard about the situation that you’re trying to work on together. And we teach very concrete ways for parents to become detectives to drill down and try to patiently understand what their child’s perspective is. You can imagine this goes a lot better proactively than in the heat of the moment.

Dr. Sarah (34:19):

Because also I could see a kid in the heat of the moment jumping around, this is the problem. No, this is the problem. No, this is because they’re really just trying to say, I’m mad, nothing feels good. And so the logic, this requires some prefrontal cortex thinking, brain activation, they need to be able to have some degree of, let’s put this in order. Let’s understand what happened. Let me see it from your perspective. That’s not available in the heat of the moment.

Dr. Stuart (34:54):

So here’s the interesting thing. So I totally agree. And here’s the interesting thing people often think, so you really can’t do collaborative problem solving until a kid is common accessible so that you can talk to their frontal lobe. But that’s not actually quite accurate because people often forget that one of the most powerful human regulators we have is empathy. Being listened to being heard, being understood is one of the most regulating things for us humans. I can speak personally to this, I’m sure you can as well. When somebody really listens to you, it changes your blood pressure, your heart rate, your skin conductance, it regulates you, allowing you to have access to the smart part of your brain.

Dr. Sarah (35:43):

Yes.

Dr. Stuart (35:43):

So when we teach parents to try to drill down and become detectives, it’s not just by asking questions and taking guesses and stuff like that, it’s also reflecting what they’re hearing from a child and reassuring the child that they’re not about to try to do plan A, because that looming in the background is the most dysregulating piece of this. And when you can communicate to a child things like, Hey, I’m just trying to understand, I’m not going to try to make you, I know there must be an important reason that you’re frustrated right now, and I just want to understand what that is. Those things are regulating in and of themselves and that can open the door to a child being able to fill you in more. And when they can fill you in and you understand that regulates.

Dr. Sarah (36:33):

That makes so much sense. But I would even say even in the heat of the moment, what you’re distinguishing here is heat of the moment and dysregulation in the heat of the moment. If a child is dysregulated, we’re not going to get very far. But you can regulate even in the heat of the moment.

Dr. Stuart (36:52):

Absolutely, absolutely. And sometimes we miss opportunities. I say to people, we’ve studied this, I spent about five years studying this of what makes for good empathy in this first ingredient that we’re talking about now. And it came down to four things. It came down to questions, guesses, reflective listening. In other words, reflecting back what you’re hearing from your child and reassurance. And I can tell you one of the biggest missed opportunities in the heat of the moment is people think they don’t have anything to reflect, but a kid may be yelling something like, I hate you. Why are you making me do this? That’s something to reflect right there.

(37:33):

You can say something like, okay, sounds like this feels really stupid that I’m making you do this right now and maybe I don’t need to make you do this right now. Let me understand. I said I hate you. You’re feeling like you hate me right now. I hear you, and it’s because you’re saying this is super stupid right now. And I understand what’s stupid about it, that reflective listening and some curiosity and questions that can regulate and bring the heat of the moment back down to a reasonable place where the conversation can proceed. And one of the nice things about this is if as a parent you’re listening to this and you’re like, sounds good, I’m not sure this would work with my kid. Collaborative problem solving started as a clinical treatment for kids not only diagnosed with oppositional defiant disorder, but diagnosed with severe mood disorders as well. And we first use this in inpatient psychiatry units, residential treatment facilities with the most traumatized kids and juvenile detention and correctional facilities. And that’s where we studied the effectiveness. And if you can regulate kids in those settings, you can use it to regulate our kids in our homes as well.

Dr. Sarah (38:45):

Can I ask a question about that? Because I’m curious. I was thinking about that I have a kid who can get real, real explosive and there are times when in the heat of the moment, this isn’t the proactive collaborative problem solving this isn’t before the next explosion. I leverage those times a lot. That’s my primary in part of a parenting I try to index on. But obviously in the heat of the moment, we still have to do parenting. And when I, sometimes it can land and sometimes it can’t. And I do think, I’m curious with the kids that you were working with who have really significant profound regulation disorders and complex trauma histories that are just the hardest to help feel safe, were you finding it to be more successful to do some of these interventions in the before moments, first before you introduced it in the heat of the moment, did you build skills around this in calmer moments? So they had some reps in before it was as effective in the heat of the moment.

Dr. Stuart (40:06):

And let me clarify though who they are because it’s not just building in the reps for the kid, but it’s building in the reps for the adult because it’s just easier to do this proactively and you start to build some relationship and some trust in the relationship and the process. But what I find is you need to be trying this proactively and in the heat of the moment because there’s a fundamental sort of truth about skill building, which is that getting skills trained in one environment to transfer to another environment is really hard.

(40:42):

Which is why when you practice things, only when things are calm, they don’t often translate to the heat of the moment. And there’s basic principles of neuroplasticity, how our brains change that actually explain this, but what does that mean? It means if you want to teach a child how to manage their emotions, for instance, emotion regulation skills in the heat of the moment, you need to practice in the heat of the moment. So you’ve got to do some of both. But I guess what I’m trying to say is even with some of the most traumatized kids with severe lagging skills in these areas, we’ve been able to show that in the heat of the moment, aggressively targeted tactical empathy can reduce regulation enough that thinking can rise more to the fore and then you can proceed with the process. And when I say proceed with the, I mean go beyond the first ingredient.

Dr. Sarah (41:35):

Yeah. So we’ve talked a lot about empathy and I’m sure people will have more questions and we’ll get into it. But this next step, you’ve set this foundation, you’ve allowed the child to feel seen and safe enough to let down a little bit of this heat and lean in because they feel safe enough to lean in. What’s the next step?

Dr. Stuart (42:01):

Well, so if you’ve got their concern on the table, it’s now time to move to the second ingredient, which is where you put your concern or perspective or point of view on the table what it is as a parent, you are worried about, in other words, why you’re bringing this up in the first place, if you didn’t have a concern at all, you should be using plan C, but you’ve got a concern. And what distinguishes plan B from plan A is instead of you imposing a solution that satisfies or addresses your concern, you’re raising your concern alongside your child, you’ve clarified theirs, now you raise yours.

Dr. Sarah (42:39):

Right? So in the example you were giving before where this kid is like, I hate you, don’t make me do this, this is stupid. And the empathy piece, knowing, identifying and validating their concerns that they’re bringing up and putting them on the table. You think this is stupid. You don’t see any reason why I should be making you do this?

Dr. Stuart (42:58):

And you want to gather more information about why they think that’s the case. And only once you’ve done that, now it’s time for you to raise your concern about if you think there’s an important reason that you’re having them pursue this in the first place. And the reason I’m doing this with my hands here, Sarah, that this is, you know what plan you’re using. If you only have one set of concerns on the table and it’s the adults, you’re headed right for plan A.

Dr. Sarah (43:21):

Got it.

Dr. Stuart (43:22):

But if you only have one set and it’s the child, you’re headed right? For plan C. When you know you’re doing plan B is you must have both concerns on the table. And there’s a reason we start with the kid’s concern because we regulate them first. If you start with your concern, it’s going to smell like plan A and they’re going to get dysregulated, start with their concern, regulate them, share yours. And by the way, don’t expect them to say, oh wow, thank God I was really hoping that you would fill me in on your concern and thrilled that you have one as well. I’m eager to take it into account. No, they’re going to think a second. You raise a concern that maybe you’re going to default to plan A. And so they may get dysregulated again and you’ll just go right back and reregulate them by saying, whoa, hold on a second. Here’s what you told me. I heard you and I just have a concern too. And when they’re with you and you have two sets of concerns at the table, then and only then do you move to the last ingredient, the third one, which is where you invite them to problem solve with you. It’s where you ask them to collaborate. You’re going to brainstorm potential solutions and what kind of solutions, solutions that work for both parties.

(44:28):

Not just them or not just you. It’s not collaborative problem solving just because invited them to the table to work on a problem together. Collaborative problem solving is inviting them to work together on a problem and solve it in a mutually satisfactory way. And that’s going to take some brainstorming. And the thing I always tell parents is give your kid first crack at it. If you’re trying to help them build skills, don’t just show ’em how to do it and hope they watch. And it’s like you wouldn’t teach a kid how to ride a bike by just watching you ride around on one and then say here, now you do it. No, they have to get up on the bike. So you’re going to say, so what do you think? Do you have any ideas for how we could solve this so that it works for both of us? What you said, and here’s what I said, give ’em first crack at it. And by the way, they’re either going to have a good idea, a bad idea or no ideas. And depending on what you hear, there’s a different direction you can go in with each of those.

Dr. Sarah (45:22):

So maybe walk us through that. How do we stress test this with parents, right? You’ve got a kid who is really frustrated, really entrenched in their whatever’s, made them upset. Maybe this is a kid who isn’t particularly flexible in their thinking. We’re talking about those lagging skills, cognitive flexibility, low frustration tolerance, low perspective taking, low emotion, regulation, low. So all these things are challenging for them. You’ve gotten them to the table, they feel enough of a sense of empathy and safety from you that they’re willing to say, I don’t like that you did this and I don’t want to do this thing. But you say, okay, got that. I am a little concerned about this piece of it. Let’s say homework for example. I am just trying to think, it might be easier to visualize this.

Dr. Stuart (46:24):

Yeah, it’s be much easier if you use an action example.

Dr. Sarah (46:26):

You got an 8-year-old has to get some homework done. It’s not an area that they’re particularly interested in or feel confident and competent in. They want to avoid it. They get very frustrated and you’re trying to, you’ve been having just fights about getting home and doing some homework all the time. You’ve tried leveraging the sticker chart, it worked for a couple of weeks and then it failed. And then now you’re just back at fighting. You finally come to a head and you’re like, this isn’t working, this strategy of me just trying to make you do this and us fighting all night long, it’s no fun. I don’t want to do this. You don’t want to do this. Help me understand. This doesn’t feel so easy for you to come home and do homework right away.

Dr. Stuart (47:20):

So that’s going to be what’s most important is trying to gather information about what do you think it is? And by the way, you’re a detective here, you can use educated. So do you think it is that, and some kids, by the way, will have excellent communication skills and may be able to tell you right away, but others not. It’s one of their lagging skills. And so you might have to do a lot of guessing. It might be, do you think it’s that you’ve spent all day in school working really hard and you’re so excited to get home and not have to do all that stuff? And then here I am saying, okay, basically go back to school and you’re just like, oh God, I need a break. Or do you think it is that actually even if you had a break, when you get down to doing it, it’s really hard to get started and to know what to do.

(48:06):

So you’re just like, I don’t want to do this, I don’t know how to do it. Or do you think it’s some of both? And so this is you being a detective and the whole thing is going to hinge on identifying what their perspective and their concern is to be able to craft a reasonable solution of the problem. Because if it’s the kid needs a break before having to go back to school by doing homework, that’s going to send you down the road of certain solutions. Whereas if it doesn’t matter when they do it, they have a hard time without the scaffolding of the classroom and the teacher getting going, it’s going to be need to be a totally different range of solutions.

Dr. Sarah (48:43):

That actually makes me think of a really important piece of this, which is yes, we want to show our children that we can empathize with their position and that’s super important for having them feel like they can come to the table and collaboratively problem solve with us, but also they know better than us what the problem is. And if we are constantly focused on what the solution should be to the behavior to make the behavior stop, do the homework or whatever, clean your room or don’t hit your sibling, whatever it is, we, we’ve missed a lot of the kind of keys, like the clues that will help us determine what the solution should be.

Dr. Stuart (49:27):

Yes.

Dr. Sarah (49:29):

The behavior is, I often find the behaviors, I call them like red herrings, they’re a distraction because they’re not actually identifying the problem.

Dr. Stuart (49:38):

Correct.

Dr. Sarah (49:38):

50,000 different problems could activate that behavior. And so we need to figure out with the kid what is making you engage in this behavior or avoid engaging in a behavior. And they actually are the best people to tell us.

Dr. Stuart (49:53):

Yes, but they’re only going to tell us if they have the skills to be able to do so and if they trust that telling us is actually going to lead them somewhere. I’ve worked with so many kids who feel like this is a futile exercise. We’ve been through plan a 1 billion times, why would I want to fill you in on what’s going on with me when you’re just going to end up trying to force me to do this in the end?

(50:16):

And I have great empathy for when kids feel like this is not really worth it. So that’s why as parents, what we really need to work hard to do is to suspend judgment and instead try to be curious. You probably heard the phrase be curious, not furious, which is a good one. But I actually prefer the be curious, not judgmental advice. Don’t assume what’s going on and come running in with solutions. Be curious, open-minded, remember your kid’s doing the best they can to handle this situation with the skills they have. Try to figure out what’s hard for them and understand their point of view.

Dr. Sarah (50:56):

Are there any strategies you’ve seen helpful for parents who have been entrenched in a plan, a power struggle with their kid for a long time and the kid has now really you’re describing been like, I don’t buy this. I think this is just another attempt to be controlled.

Dr. Stuart (51:10):

Yeah, you don’t blame them, right?

Dr. Sarah (51:12):

Yeah. How do parents get out of that though and reset with their kid?

Dr. Stuart (51:16):

Yeah, so look, there’s no magic to it, right? The proof’s going to be in the pudding, right? I mean, you’ve got to demonstrate that you’re really changing how you’re trying to do things, especially if you go and you try to agree to a solution and the solution doesn’t work. If you revert immediately to plan A, you prove…

Dr. Sarah (51:35):

Taking it three steps back.

Dr. Stuart (51:37):

So what counsel parents to do is if you feel like, wow, I’ve been coming at this the wrong way perhaps with my kid for a long time, and I work with a lot of parents that when they come to see their kid through the lens of skill, not will they feel horrible. They feel like, gosh, I’ve really misunderstood my kid for a long time and they feel like they may have caused a lot of damage. And I always tell them, what matters now is what you do about this moving forward. And the first thing you can do is you can have a conversation with your kid where you explain what you just explained to me where you can say to them, you know what? I’ve been trying to force you to do things. I think I thought you just weren’t trying hard enough. And I think I was completely wrong about that, or at least I’m open to the fact that I was wrong about that and I feel really bad about it and I want to try to do something different with you. I want to try to handle things differently and I don’t expect that you’re going to believe that I’ve really changed right away. If I try to do something different, I know you’re going to be skeptical, but please try to bear with me. I want to try. I want to do things differently.

Dr. Sarah (52:44):

That repair is so powerful. And so I think people may be under appreciate how that one conversation could shift. I mean, it might be something that has to be revisited, but there are adults who, if their parents said that to them today, it would change the trajectory of that relationship forever.

Dr. Stuart (53:10):

No, it’s massive. I mean, honestly, just describing it gives me goosebumps myself as a dad and reminds me of a father that I worked with who added a piece to this. I helped him figure out how to have this conversation. He added this piece with his son where he said to his son, and you know what? If you find that I’m going back to the ways that I did before, I want you to tell me. And he would tell him, and it would stop dad in his tracks when his kid was like, there you go again, dad, you told me. And it would literally stop him in his tracks, reset him and he’d get back trying to collaborate with his kid.

Dr. Sarah (53:46):

So this is not just a more effective strategy to solve problems in the family, it’s also a mechanism by which we reset the relationship and can actually build a more secure attachment inside of this family system.

Dr. Stuart (54:06):

You got it. And this is, look, our research has shown that when parents practice this process with kids, kids actually develop neurocognitive skills. They get better at problem solving, flexibility, frustration tolerance, emotion regulation, all of this. But we’re sort of coming full circle here because the other thing that invariably gets better is the relationship between parent and child. And remember, what’s the number one predictor of helping anybody to help to change anything about their behavior? It’s the degree of helping relationship in place.

Dr. Sarah (54:39):

That’s so powerful. So if parents want to learn more about these strategies, right? Did we cover every, I mean, we can’t cover everything. Everything, but did we get through the key?

Dr. Stuart (54:52):

I think we got through the core parts. I mean, parents are going to have lots of questions, tons of questions about how it applies to their particular family, particularly when it doesn’t go well, what do you do? Or what do you do if I try this? My kid won’t say a word. Things like that.

(55:10):

And look, it’s not magic. I mean, I have heard magical transformations from parents shifting their mindset and trying some of this, but generally it’s hard work. And that’s why I think supporting parents through this is crucial. It’s not just learning, it’s supporting people practicing. And we have a number of ways that we do that. I’m fortunate to direct a program at Mass General Hospital here in Boston called Think Kids, where we run live parent classes, but we also run trainings. We have asynchronous trainings for parents, all kinds of things and ways for parents to connect with one another to support each other. And that’s all at our website, which is think kids.org. And there’s other ways for people to start. If you just want to think about, okay, what are some of the skills that my child might be struggling with?

(56:05):

You can go right to my website, which is my name, stewart alon.com. There’s a little quiz. You can take it about yourself or about a child, and it’ll ask you a bunch of questions about skills across five different domains of thinking, and it’ll give you a sense of where your strengths and weaknesses are, and that is a good way to lead into learning some of this as well.

Dr. Sarah (56:26):

That’s so great. We’ll put links to all of that in the show notes so people can connect with that. Thank you so much. This was, I wish we had five more hours. I could dig in more questions.

Dr. Stuart (56:39):

My pleasure. I was just thinking to myself, Hey, if reflecting upon this you feel like, Hey, we missed this or that, let’s hop back on and record some more. Or maybe if this hits a good note with your audience and you want to do more, take questions from people or compile questions and we can get into some of that, I’d be more than happy to join you again. It’s really fun having this conversation with you, and I’d love to take it deeper if there’s an opportunity.

Dr. Sarah (57:08):

Yes. And I’m going to invite everyone listening right now. If you have a question that you want Dr. Avalon to build upon or give it example, play it out. Go to dr sarah bren.com/question, and you can put in your question right in there, and we’ll compile a list and maybe we can get Dr. Alon to come back and we can dig in deeper. I take this even further into practical applications for this, which would be so cool.

Dr. Stuart (57:37):

Had love that chance, love that opportunity. So please, I hope folks do write in some questions, and I hope this is helpful so far. It’s been a pleasure talking with you.

Dr. Sarah (57:45):

Such a pleasure. Thanks so much for listening to this episode of Securely Attached. Don’t forget, you can take Dr. Ablon’s course for parents and caregivers on collaborative problem solving in both English and Spanish for free by using the code “securelyattached” just go to the episode description, wherever you’re streaming to get the link and the code for that. And I’ll also add a link for my free workshop on overcoming power struggles where I walk you through the exact strategies I use with families in my practice to turn conflict into cooperation. You’ll find that link in the episode description as well, or you can just go to drsarahbren.com/powerstruggles to get instant access.

(58:28):

So check out those free resources and while you’re there, go ahead and hit Follow on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you like to listen so you never miss an episode with hundreds of shows in our library, there’s a good chance we have covered the exact parenting challenges you are facing right now. Following the show is one of the best ways that you can support the podcast, and it allows me to keep creating free resources like these for parents just like you. I will see you back here next week, and until then, don’t be a stranger.