Parents, teachers and school administrators got a new look at the old problem of badly behaved children when Ross Greene, PhD came to town.
In a Jan. 24 speech at Innisfail Jr./Sr. High School, the renowned child psychologist challenged the “myth” that kids are challenging because their parents screwed things up.
“The reason your child is challenging is because your child is lacking the skills not to be challenging,” he said. “Maybe it's something about the kid.”
Nearly 30 per cent of Innisfail kindergarten children were found to experience great difficulty in one or more areas of development, compared with 25.4 per cent nationally, in recently released research done for the Early Child Development Mapping Initiative.
More than 100 people sat captivated by the originator of the Collaborative Problem Solving method of dealing with youth, as he dispensed advice from years of experience with screamers, biters, swearers, runners and hitters.
“There's nobody who escapes lacking skills,” he said, in an interview with the Province. “The big question is which skills and how crucial are they.”
Falling behind in athletics is not as big a deal as children who have issues with flexibility, adaptability, frustration tolerance and problem solving, he noted.
“If a parent is finding their child is lacking skills that is affecting them academically, socially or behaviourally that's when it's time to seek out assistance from somebody who can be helpful,” he said.
The real key to overcoming unmet child expectations, or as Greene put it “unsolved problems,” is to work together with children to understand their underlying concerns.
“Applying power to things power isn't going to fix, makes things ugly,” he said. “Sticker charts can make things worse. Timeout can make things worse.”
Instead parents need to team up with their child.
“Not adversaries – allies,” he said. “Collaborating is going to do it.”
One of the skills parents can learn is how to drill down deeper for a better sense of what the child is struggling with, he said.
“The kid always has a point,” he said. “The kid's concerns are legit.”
Greene runs livesinthebalance.org – a non-profit focused on providing essential resources to parents, youth justice workers and school staff. The site includes radio programs and streaming videos on a wide variety of topics. For $35 care packages chock full of useful information can be sent anonymously to anyone.
“It's the child who has the lagging skills,” he said. “It's the adult who doesn't understand that and is trying to solve problems in a way that isn't working.”
"If a parent is finding their child is lacking skills that is affecting them academically, socially or behaviourally that's when it's time to seek out assistance from somebody who can be helpful."Ross GreeneSpeaker
