“Yeah, but part of the reason he’s pretty severe is because no one’s ever figured out what’s really going on with him,” said Debbie. “There’s this form on the website that’s really eye-opening. It helped us understand Jennifer better, and it helped us nail down the problems that get her upset.”
“Geez, you’re really pumped up.”
“All I know is, it’s the first time Kevin and I have been on the same page about anything related to Jennifer. It makes it obvious why all the stuff we’ve been doing hasn’t worked. We’ve been focused on the wrong things! You really need to fill out the form!”
“OK, I’ll check it out. But I’m not getting my hopes up,” said Sandra.
Debbie paused. “OK, so don’t get your hopes up. But check out the website.”
Sandra was too tired and angry to do anything that night. A few nights later, she looked at the ALSUP on the website, but became a little confused when she tried to identify Frankie’s unsolved problems and called Debbie.
“I tried filling out the ALSUP,” said Sandra.
“Good for you!” said Debbie. “Well?”
“I didn’t get very far.”
“How come?”
“Well, the lagging skills were easy enough to check off. But I couldn’t quite figure out the unsolved problems.”
“We had trouble with that, too. It’s easier to think of the behaviors than the problems that are causing them.”
“Exactly! How’d you do it?”
“Well, I’m no expert of course, but every time I thought of a behavior, I thought of the situations in which the behavior occurs. The situation is the unsolved problem.”
“So, like screaming. Frankie screams all the time.”
“What’s he screaming about?” asked Debbie.
“Everything.”
“Yeah, but what exactly? What’s an example of something he screams about?”
“He’s screaming because I want him to turn down the volume on his music.”
“He doesn’t have earbuds?”
“No, he’s always losing them. He screams about that, too.”
“Those are good ones.”
“Good what?”
“Good unsolved problems,” said Debbie. “All you have to do is try wording them with the word ‘difficulty’ in front. So, like, ‘Difficulty keeping track of his earbuds’ would be one. And ‘Difficulty keeping his music at a reasonable volume’ might be one, too.”
“I think I get it,” said Sandra. “So, he’s going to have a ton of problems, isn’t he? I mean, he screams about a lot of things.”
“Jennifer had thirty-five unsolved problems. The good part is that once you identify the problems you can start solving them. That’s what we should have been doing all along.”
“So, have you tried solving any problems yet?” asked Sandra.
“Not yet . . . we might give it a go tonight. Say, what happened at the school meeting?”
“They’re not throwing him out of the program yet,” said Sandra. “They just wanted to send him a message.”
“A message?”
“Yeah, a message. Like he needs more messages. The only message they’re sending him is that there’s one more place he doesn’t belong.”
Here’s a partial list of the unsolved problems Sandra identified for Frankie:
Difficulty playing music in the apartment at a reasonable volume
Difficulty keeping track of earbuds
Difficulty completing the geography worksheets for homework
Difficulty completing the double-digit division problems on the math worksheet for homework
Difficulty reading the assigned passages from To Kill a Mockingbird for homework
Difficulty keeping room clean
Difficulty putting clothes in laundry hamper
Difficulty waking up for school in the morning at 7
Difficulty getting ready for school in time to catch the bus at 7:45 am
Difficulty coming straight home from school
PRIORITIZING
One last thing before this chapter ends. As you’ve already read, while a long list of unsolved problems can be overwhelming, you’re not going to be trying to solve all of them at once. In fact, trying to solve all the problems at the same time is a very reliable way to ensure that none get solved at all. So, you’re going to need to do some prioritizing. You’ll need to decide which of your unsolved problems are high priorities and which ones are lower priorities. Your top priority is safety, so any unsolved problems that are setting in motion unsafe behaviors should be a high priority. Unsolved problems that are setting in motion concerning behaviors with great frequency could be high priorities as well. And unsolved problems that are having the greatest negative impact on your child’s life or the lives of others could also be prioritized.
So, once you’ve identified your child’s unsolved problems, prioritize your top three. Those will be the ones you start trying to solve first. The rest will end up on the back burner for now.
The back burner? Isn’t that giving in?
No, it’s not giving in.
Isn’t that giving up?
No, it’s not that either. It’s the recognition that a lot of unsolved problems have piled up over the years and that they aren’t going to be solved in one fell swoop.
You’re now only one chapter away from learning about how to solve the problems you’ve prioritized and put the rest on the back burner. But we’re going to spend one more chapter thinking about why the strategies you’ve probably tried already haven’t worked and may even have made things worse.
5
The Truth About Consequences
For a very long time, the prevailing view—we’ll call it the conventional wisdom—of the cause of concerning behavior in kids has gone something like this: somewhere along the line, kids with concerning behavior learned that those behaviors bring them attention or help them get their way by convincing their parents to “give in.” A common corollary to this belief is that concerning behavior is planned, intentional, and purposeful (“He knows exactly what he’s doing! He knows what buttons to push!”). According to the conventional wisdom, how did the child learn these things? He learned them because his parents are passive, permissive, inconsistent, inept disciplinarians (“What that kid needs are parents who won’t back down and make sure he knows who’s the boss!”). Parents who become convinced of this often blame themselves for their child’s concerning behaviors (“We must be doing something wrong!”). Finally, if you believe that these behaviors are learned and are the result of poor parenting and lax discipline, then it follows that they can also be unlearned with better parenting and tighter discipline.
In general, the quest for better parenting and tighter discipline includes the following components:
Providing the kid with lots of positive attention for good behavior and eliminating all attention associated with concerning behavior (so as to reduce the likelihood that he will seek attention by exhibiting concerning behavior)
Issuing clearer commands
Letting kids know that compliance is expected and enforced on all parental commands and that he must comply quickly because his parents are going to issue a command only once or twice
Maintaining a record-keeping and currency system (points, stickers, checks, happy faces) to track the child’s performance on specified behavioral goals
Delivering adult-imposed consequences, in the form of rewards (such as allowance money and privileges), loss of attention (in the form of ignoring and time-out), and punishments (such as loss of privileges and grounding) contingent on the child’s successful or unsuccessful performance
Convincing the child that his parents won’t give in or back down in the face of concerning behavior
At first glance, these components seem pretty reasonable, yes? But let’s consider each ingredient and why you’d want to look before you leap:
Your child’s concerning behaviors are not for the purpose
of seeking attention. As you’ve read, those behaviors simply indicate that your child is having difficulty meeting certain expectations. If you ignore that—because you’re trying to deprive your child of negative attention—you’ll deprive yourself of the opportunity to learn more about what’s hard for your child and of the opportunity to solve the problem.
If your child is unclear about your expectations, then issuing clearer commands would be a great idea. But the vast majority of kids with concerning behaviors are well aware of their parents’ expectations and equally clear about how they’re expected to behave. Lack of clarity isn’t what’s getting in the way.
It’s fine for you to expect compliance from your child, and you’re already getting compliance on the expectations he’s having no difficulty meeting. Demanding rapid compliance with expectations your child is having difficulty meeting—and adding adult-imposed consequences to the mix—just throws fuel on the fire.
It’s not a tragedy for you to track your child’s progress on specific goals, but if you’re tracking behavior then you’re making it quite clear that you’re focused solely on your child’s signals, not on solving the problems that are causing those signals.
Adult-imposed consequences—whether rewards or punishments—are well-suited to ensuring that your child is motivated to do well. But if kids do well if they can, then your child is already motivated. The vast majority of kids I’ve worked with over the years had already endured more than their fair share of consequences. If all those consequences were going to work, they would have worked a long time ago.
You only need to worry about giving in or backing down if you’re engaged in a power struggle. If you’re solving problems with your child, there is no power struggle.
Why have Debbie and Kevin—and countless other parents—endured hundreds of outbursts? Because the guidance they received was based on the conventional wisdom. So, when they gave Jennifer a directive—for example, “Jennifer, it’s time to turn off the TV and come in for dinner”—and Jennifer wouldn’t budge, they would repeat the directive. Jennifer would (predictably) become frustrated. The parents would then calmly remind Jennifer of the rewards she would receive if she complied and of what would happen (punishment, time-out) if she failed to comply. Jennifer, who badly wanted the rewards and found time-outs and punishments to be decidedly unpleasant, would begin screaming. Debbie and Kevin would interpret Jennifer’s increased intensity and failure to respond to their directive as an attempt to force them to back down or give in and would inform her that a time-out was imminent. Jennifer would begin throwing things at her parents. Debbie and Kevin would take Jennifer by the arm to escort her to time-out, an action that would intensify her frustration and irrationality even further. Jennifer would resist being placed in time-out and would try to scratch and claw her parents. They would try to restrain her physically in time-out (many clinicians no longer recommend this practice, but Jennifer’s wasn’t one of them); Jennifer would (predictably) try to spit on or bite or head-butt them. They would lock Jennifer in her room until she calmed down. Ten minutes to two hours later, Jennifer would stop screaming and swearing. When Jennifer would finally emerge from her room, she was often remorseful. Debbie and Kevin would hope that what they and Jennifer just endured would eventually pay off in the form of improved compliance.
Eventually, Debbie and Kevin came to recognize that things weren’t improving. Indeed, they were all feeling worse.
If you’ve had a similar experience, then you’re probably ready to travel down a different path. It won’t be easy. It won’t be fast. But we’re going to focus on problems rather than behaviors; we’re going to focus on solving those problems rather than on rewarding and punishing those behaviors. And we’re going to solve those problems proactively rather than in the heat of the moment. When the problems are solved, the concerning behaviors that are associated with those problems subside.
QUESTION: This is all very interesting. But I’m not going to say yes to my child on everything he wants just so he doesn’t get upset.
ANSWER: Good, because this book isn’t going to tell you to do that.
QUESTION: Don’t I need to set a precedent so my child knows who’s the boss?
ANSWER: Your child already knows you’re the boss. Mission accomplished. He needs you to be a different kind of boss, to use your authority in a different way.
QUESTION: So, I’ll still be in charge?
ANSWER: You’re going to feel a lot more in charge than you do now.
QUESTION: What about natural consequences?
ANSWER: Natural consequences aren’t all that different from adult-imposed consequences. Both adult-imposed consequences (e.g., stickers, time-outs, losing privileges) and natural consequences (e.g., if you don’t share your toys with your friend, he won’t want to play with you; if you touch the hot stove, you’ll get burned) are very powerful and very persuasive. Both types of consequences teach kids how you want them to behave and motivate them to behave adaptively. But if a kid is lacking skills rather than motivation, and if the kid already knows how you want him to behave, then neither type of consequence is going to get you very far. Again, the vast majority of kids with concerning behaviors I’ve worked with over the years had already endured more adult-imposed and natural consequences than most of us will experience in our lifetimes. If all those consequences were going to work, they would have worked a long time ago.
* * *
We covered a lot of territory in this chapter; here’s a summary of the key points:
A common belief about kids with concerning behaviors is that they have learned that their concerning behavior is an effective means of getting their way and coercing adults into giving in, and that their parents are passive, permissive, inconsistent disciplinarians.
This belief has led countless parents to implement incentive programs aimed at modifying children’s behavior. But such programs don’t solve the problems that are causing concerning behaviors, and many kids and families do not benefit from such programs.
Your new approach will be focused on solving problems rather than modifying behavior, as you shall see.
* * *
Sandra didn’t love doing laundry, but the relative solitude of the Laundromat gave her time to think. She was still mulling Frankie’s latest suspension. She’d tried talking with him about it, but he’d told her to leave him alone and they’d ended up screaming at each other instead.
How did it get this bad? She thought back to how awful her life had been before she became pregnant with Frankie; how the guy who’d let her move in with him (in exchange for certain benefits) had kicked her out of his apartment when he learned she was pregnant; how happy she felt to have a kid of her own, even at the age of sixteen, a kid she was determined to treat way better than her own mom had treated her. Despite spending time in a homeless shelter with her young son, despite not having a reliable income, they’d managed. They had fun together. Frankie was her total focus. She took good care of him. She even stayed out of romantic relationships because she didn’t want anything to get in the way of her raising her son. She made sure Frankie knew she expected big things from him, that she wanted him to make something of himself. He seemed really smart to her. We were pals back then, she recalled.
Things didn’t start deteriorating until Frankie started having difficulties at school in first grade. She began hearing about Frankie being hyperactive and aggressive and about the difficulties he’d begun experiencing on various academic tasks. Frankie received extra help for his learning challenges, but for his behavioral challenges he was kept in from recess, held after school, and began receiving suspensions. Various medications were tried; some made things worse, others had side effects that Frankie couldn’t tolerate.
Sandra responded to Frankie’s difficulties with the same determination that had seen her through other adversities, but her efforts to encourage her son to behave himself in school only led to screaming matches. Various counselors guided h
er on using sticker charts and time-outs to deal with Frankie’s concerning behaviors. He liked the idea of earning rewards in the beginning, but he became aggressive if he didn’t get a reward he was hoping for and eventually lost interest. Time-out wasn’t a viable option; Frankie would scream and swear, and the neighbors would complain. Eventually, Frankie refused to talk with Sandra about school; if she broached the subject, he’d become violent—so violent that he’d twice been placed on inpatient psychiatry units. Having seen kids being pinned to the ground and placed in seclusion rooms when they were out of control, Frankie had vowed to run away from home before he’d let himself be put in one of those places again.
Now Frankie and Sandra rarely talked to each other about much of anything. Her thoughts turned to their new home-based mental health counselor, a guy named Matt. Their old counselor—Frankie liked her—had been transferred to another office. The new guy wanted to put Frankie on another reward program! In their first meeting, Frankie wouldn’t even look at Matt. Can’t say that I blame him, thought Sandra, shaking her head. Matt wouldn’t listen to her when she told him about how many stickers and point systems they’d been through. Sandra sighed. I don’t know if I have the energy for this anymore.
Sandra had always envied the fact that Debbie and Kevin had decent insurance coverage through Kevin’s teaching job. Sandra had no such insurance. She had relied exclusively on social service agencies to get Frankie the help he needed.
Sandra took a deep breath. Enough thinking for one day. She felt like she was at a crossroads. Her son was slipping away, and the energy and determination that had sustained her through difficult times throughout her life seemed to be fading as well. It was becoming quite clear that energy and determination—and love—weren’t going to be enough to make the difference for Frankie.
6
Three Options
There are basically three options for handling unsolved problems. I call those options Plan A, Plan B, and Plan C. Plan A refers to solving a problem unilaterally. This is where adults decide upon and impose a solution. Plan B involves solving a problem collaboratively. And Plan C involves setting aside an unsolved problem, at least for now. If you intend to follow the guidance provided in this book, Plans B and C are your future. Plan A is there if you need it, but you’re not going to need it very often, if at all.
The Explosive Child Page 5