How many times have we looked at a child who is refusing to cooperate, or bursting into tears over what looks like a whim, and thought: “he’s doing it on purpose, he just wants to test me”? American psychologist Ross Greene offers an idea that turns this reading upside down: kids do well if they can. Not if they want to, not if they’ve been raised well enough, not if we punish them enough — if they can, meaning if they genuinely have, in that moment, the skills to handle what is being asked of them.
In his model, called Collaborative & Proactive Solutions, difficult behaviour isn’t a motivation problem but the visible tip of a skill that is still missing: flexibility, frustration tolerance, problem-solving ability. The first randomized controlled trial testing this approach, led by Greene and colleagues in 2004 with 47 families of oppositional children, found significant improvements by the end of treatment, still present four months later. A larger trial with 134 youths (Ollendick and colleagues, 2015) found that about half of the children treated with this method no longer met the criteria for their original diagnosis, compared with no improvement in the waitlist group.
A note of rigour is fair here: an independent scientific review by the CEBC (California Evidence-Based Clearinghouse) places this approach at an intermediate level of evidence, not the highest, and notes that shared tools to measure correct implementation are still missing. So it is not a magic formula, but a tool with a serious research base, to be used with balance.
What changes in practice? Instead of imposing a solution from above (“just do as I say”), the method suggests tackling the problem together with the child, in a calm moment rather than in the middle of a meltdown: understanding what is getting in the way, stating your own concern, and looking together for a solution that works for both of you. This doesn’t mean being permissive — it means teaching, one step at a time, the skills that are still missing.
Next time a child pushes back, instead of asking “why won’t they just listen”, try asking “what is making it hard for them, right now, to do what I’m asking”. Change the question, and often the answer you find changes too.
Sources
- CEBC – California Evidence-Based Clearinghouse for Child Welfare, “Collaborative & Proactive Solutions” (citing Greene et al. 2004 and Ollendick et al. 2015)
- Ross W. Greene, Wikipedia
Follow me on social media
If you found this article helpful, I share content like this every day on my channels too. Subscribe and follow along:
Rispondi