The Explosive Child – Dr. Ross Greene - GSSD Blogs

Tracy’s Notes from Dr. Ross Green’s Explosive Child Conference
May 2008
3 Themes…
The Collaborative Problem Solving Approach (CPS)
1) Kids do well if they can…. We need to adopt this as a philosophy. If they can’t
do well, we need to figure out what’s getting in the way, so we can help. Don’t
use ‘kids do well if they want to’, because we all choose to do well if we can.
2) Your explanation guides your intervention… How we explain what’s going on
tells us what we’re going to do about it.
3) Definition of “Good Parenting”, “Good Teaching” and “Good Treatment”…
Being responsive to the hand you’ve been dealt. Don’t treat kids exactly the
same; if you do, your not giving them what they need. Kids need different things.
Conventional Wisdom: It’s not working - we often blame passive, permissive,
inconsistent parenting and say the kid has learned that challenging behavior is an
effective means of getting what they want (attention, or avoiding something such as
homework). We need to question this traditional philosophy.
Logical Intervention for our Conventional Wisdom: This is what we usually do -
Train and motivate adaptive behavior through an intensive, consistent program of
consequences and ignoring. This is what we’re doing, but is it working? We commonly
suspend these students who don’t comply. We put too much energy into trying to make
kids ‘want to…”
Unconventional Wisdom - It’s a Developmental Delay: The child is
delayed in the development of crucial cognitive skills – often including
flexibility/adaptability, frustration tolerance, and problem solving ….or has significant
difficulty applying these skills when they are most needed. (They are lacking the skills to
do thing in an adaptive way when they exhibit maladaptive behavior.) The belief is that
these kids are deficit in skills, not in motivation.
Maladaptive Behavior – includes, but not limited to, explosions. It occurs when the
demands being placed on the person are higher than the person’s capacity to respond
adaptively. There is a spectrum of maladaptive behaviors ranging from pouting/sulking,
to self injury to killing self or others. These people are lacking skills. Challenging
behavior is a learning disability just like reading – it is a deficit in skills so we should
apply the same philosophy – teach them the skills they are lacking. Don’t treat them as if
they could do better, but just don’t want to.

So the logical intervention…. Identify the lagging skills that are
contributing to the maladaptive behavior and teach them; identify the
problems precipitating maladaptive behavior and work toward solving them (while
maintaining adults as authority figures). An authority figure is someone who identifies
the problem and fixes it.
Mantra… behind every challenging behavior is either an unsolved
problem or a lagging skill. Let’s not just blame parents for challenging behavior
that we’re not handling any better than they are.
CPS Overview
The CPS model views maladaptive behavior as a developmental delay and so the
emphasis is on…
• Different assessment (cognition, not behavior)
o What’s going on in this kid’s head that we wish wasn’t?
o What’s not going on in this kids’ head that we wish was?
• Different goals of intervention - teaching lacking skills and solving problems, not
teaching adults to be more effective at imposing their will and ensuring that kids
have the incentive to comply.
CPS Treatment Ingredients
• Answer the question, “What lagging thinking skills and unsolved problems are
setting the stage for the negative behavior in this child?”
• Be aware of what your options are – for pursuing expectations, creating a helping
relationship, teaching skills, solving problems, and reducing challenging behavior,
and what each option accomplishes.
• Successfully execute Plan B
Pathways: The Hand You’ve Been Dealt (each of these categories contain a number
of skills):
• Executive Skills (often our kids with ADHD)
• Language Processing Skills
• Emotion Regulation Skills (kids with depression or anxiety)
• Cognitive flexibility skills (Autism Spectrum Disorder)
• Social Skills (Autism Spectrum Disorder)
Lagging Skills:
• Difficulty handling transitions, shifting from one mindset or task to another
(shifting cognitive set) – the demands of their environment are hard on them. We
want them to comply immediately and we demand this often of children lacking
the skills to change/shift mindset. Kids need a chance to process the instructions
or demands placed upon them. When rushed, the child will likely exhibit a
behavior on the spectrum of maladaptive behavior because they can’t live up to
the expectations placed on them.

• Difficulty reflecting on multiple thoughts or ideas simultaneously
• Difficulty considering a range of solutions to a problem – they need to learn
organized, planful problem solving (help them define the problem, consider
possible solutions, and anticipate likely outcomes). When you ask them what the
problem is, they often say “I don’t know” – help them sort out what the problem
is.
• Disorganized, impulsive problem solving – Kids who often can’t think of
anything past their first solution, or they are so impulsive that they do the first
thing that pops into their head. And often, the minute there’s a change in
schedule or a ‘bump in the road’, these kids resist. Give them time and they may
respond. Teach these kids to say “Can you give me a minute?” instead of “No”.
And teach adults to ‘give them a minute”. Challenging behavior takes much
longer to deal with than giving a kid a moment to comply. Be proactive rather
than reactive. Prevention rather than intervention.
• Difficulty considering the likely outcomes or consequences of actions
(impulsive) Help them realize that the first solution is often not the right one. It
usually takes more in-depth thinking to find a good solution.
• Difficulty expressing concerns, needs or thoughts in words – We think through
language. When language is challenged, humans can resemble dogs. For
example, when upset and lacking language, we have three options – to bark at you
(swearing is the ‘human bark’), lash out, or run away. The ability to express
one’s self through language is a critical factor in behavior. If you think of adults,
don’t we swear when we are frustrated and can’t think of a better way to express
ourselves?
Non-verbal children have difficulty letting others know what’s going on in their
heads. They often can’t tell us what’s bugging them so they revert to maladaptive
behavior. Even non-verbal kids can use CPS to learn adaptive behavior.
Remember, rewarding and punishing doesn’t teach kids language skills. If
they are lacking language, we have to find ways to help them express themselves.
• Difficulty managing emotional response to frustration so as to think
rationally – kids need to be able to separate their emotions from the thinking they
need to do to solve a problem. We need to do that to be able to actually solve
problems. Teach them to think clearly in the midst of frustration and to stay calm
enough to make this happen.
• Chronic irritability and/or anxiety significantly impedes capacity for
problem solving – when you treat an irritable kid like a pain in the butt, he’ll just
get more irritable. Sometimes mood drugs can help, but remember, ‘pills don’t
teach skills’, they just open the door for skills to be taught. Medication
doesn’t fix bullying, learning disabilities etc. That’s why these kids need
counselling as well. Many challenging kids are also sleep deprived – something
to keep in mind as well.

Medication helps well with these conditions:
• Inattention/disorganized thinking
• Hyperactivity-impulsivity
• Irritability/obsessiveness
• Mood instability
• General anxiety
• Sleep
• Tics
More Lagging Skills:
• Difficulty seeing the ‘greys’. These are concrete, literal black and white
thinkers – black and white thinkers are stuck in a grey world. As kids mature
and develop, we expect more ‘grey thinking’, but some kids don’t develop this.
These are often our ASD kids. They do much better with factual information and
that’s why they seem so bright, because they can recall facts and all kinds of
information. We have to be careful not to expect them to just understand our
‘grey world’ and try to understand why they are having difficulty. They do not
choose to be this way – no one would choose to be this way.
• Difficulty deviating from rules, routines, original plan – often our ASD kids
• Difficulty handling unpredictability, ambiguity, uncertainty – they have
difficulty being able to modify their thinking – they need to realize that you can’t
solve each problem with the same solution. Different problem = different
solution.
• Difficulty taking into account situational factors that would suggest the need
to adjust a plan of action.
• Difficulty appreciating how his/her behavior is affecting other people; these
kids are often surprised by others’ responses to his/her behavior – Social
skills difficulty; many people in prison lack this skill. They can’t interpret
feedback from others – the smiles, the frowns of disapproval etc. They don’t
know how to adjust their behavior depending on the reaction they get from others.
Teach them what various facial expressions and body language indicates.
• Inflexible, inaccurate interpretation/cognitive distortion or bias – These are
the kids who think, “I’m stupid, things will never work out for me, it’s not fair,
nobody likes me, you always blame me, people are out to get me etc.” This is an
example of “what’s going on in their heads that we wish wasn’t.” They interpret
things as others are out to get them and then they retaliate.
Bottom line – don’t punish these kids for what they can’t help!
Challenging behavior is set in motion by lagging skills.
Assessment Tools for assessing lagging skills:
• Assessment of Lagging Skills and Unsolved Problems (ALSUP) – attached
• Situational Analysis
• Formal Testing (sometimes)

Most of the information can be gathered from the first two. Don’t try to make a
diagnosis, but rather try to find the skills that are lacking and then materials needed to
teach the skills. We need to transform school discipline and make it more proactive by
identifying the skills that the challenging kids are lacking.
ALSUP
• Is a list of skills that are frequently found to be lacking in kids with social,
emotional and behavioral challenges.
• It is meant to be used as a discussion guide for achieving a plan – not simply a
checklist.
• Use the ALSUP in case meetings and have all collaborative team members fill it
out together. Then come to a consensus on the lagging skills in the child. This
helps the team focus on developing a proactive plan to teach skills that are
lacking.
Situational Analysis
In what circumstances does this kid exhibit challenging behavior?
• Triggers (the who, what and when of challenging behavior)
o Home – homework, screen time, diet, interactions with a particular
family member, going to bed, morning routine, sensory issues etc.
o School – circle time, getting down to work, staying on task, riding the
bus, recess, lunch, interactions with a specific person, sensory issues
etc.
o 10% rule – if it causes trouble 10% or more of the time, write it down
as a problem. List the unsolved problems.
Challenging behaviors are highly predictable. It is not true that you never know when
he is going to blow – you’ll find this out if you document the unsolved problems through
situational analysis. If you find out, then you can intervene proactively rather than
reactively to a blowup.
The following are dead-end explanations that don’t allow us to intervene because we
don’t know what skills the kid is lacking. eg. “He has bipolar disease, she’s adopted, he
just wants attention, he wants his own way, he wants control, he’s manipulating us, she
has a bad attitude, she makes bad choices, she won’t cooperate.”
Actually many of us want control and want things our way, BUT we learn to
do it in adaptive ways rather than maladaptive ways. If a child is using maladaptive
behavior to get what he wants, we have to assume that he doesn’t have adaptive skills.
If the explanation guides the intervention, all of these excuses lead to dead ends
because these are things we can’t change, BUT we can TEACH SKILLS, so let’s focus
on the skills that are lacking.
It’s so important to make this a collaborative process with the parents, however, if
parents choose not to implement a proactive plan at home, it’s still important to have one
environment doing the right thing and teaching the skills the child is lacking.

Are we really giving kids the opportunity to cooperate and collaborate? We are
quick to say they won’t cooperative, but make sure they have the opportunity.
Our traditional method is to teach kids right from wrong and employ consequences.
Sometimes natural consequences also teach kids lessons. Most kids actually know right
from wrong, they just can’t deliver due to their lack of skills. If you employ
consequences, don’t make them unnatural and illogical, and expect them to be effective.
Instead, ask yourself, what skills is this kid lacking?
Think twice about using a reward program where the good kids are always rewarded in
the class and the ones who have challenging behavior often don’t get the reward. You
don’t have to teach the good kids how to behave – they already know. All this does is
cause frustration to the child who is lacking the skills to do well. Teach them the skills
he is lacking and make adaptations to allow him to achieve and succeed. Decrease his
frustration and you’ll decrease the maladaptive behavior.
Don’t say a child isn’t motivated. Believe that every child wants to do well, they’re
just lacking skills to get them there. Imagine if a child was drowning (obviously lacks
swimming skills), would you say “He’s not motivated to live.” Would you offer him a
sticker if he saves himself? Would you say he’s just seeking attention? Would you
threaten him with a time out if he doesn’t save himself? How silly!! We can’t let kids
drown!
Three Plans:
Plan A – impose adult will – this is the most popular and the way we usually operate.
Plan A works for some kids, but it causes challenging behavior in challenging kids.
It’s also Plan A when we say, “You need to do this or else…..you have to leave the class
etc.)
Plan B – collaborative problem solving – will accomplish all goals below. This is a
model where you do something ‘with the kid’, not ‘to the kid.”
Plan C – Drop it (for now, at least) For example, “I know the skills this kid is lacking
from doing the ALSUP. I’ll remove some expectations for now so I can focus on the
priorities. I can’t fix all the problems at once.” This is one way to reduce challenging
behavior because you remove expectations that the kid can’t meet.
Only Plan B addresses all of the following:
- pursues unmet expectations
- creates a helping relationship
- identifies and teaches lagging thinking skills
- collaboratively solves problems
- reduces challenging behavior
* If all you’re using is Plan A and C, then you’re just picking your battles, but you’re
still battling!

We need to use Plan B because the child has shown he needs someone to serve as his
‘tour guide’ for navigating problems and regulating emotions. Over time, this plan
will teach kids skills so they won’t need help for the rest of their life. Once they learn the
skills they are lacking, the problems can be solved. We wouldn’t say that we can’t give a
child in Gr. 2 reading help because he might need it for the rest of his life. Instead, we
would develop a plan to teach him the skills he is lacking. We need to do the same with
behavior – treat it like a learning disability and teach skills that are lacking.
Remember, an unrealistic expectation is a challenging behavior waiting to happen.
Have realistic expectations.
Two forms of Plan B:
• Emergency – takes place in the midst of maladaptive behavior; can be used
for solving problems, but more useful for crisis management or de-escalation.
The hard way is starting with this plan - don’t wait to talk about homework
issues until your child’s in the middle of a hard assignment that’s due
tomorrow.
• Proactive B – This is the most preferable and most important. It takes place
well before the maladaptive behavior recurs; you are more likely to solve
problems durably here.
Plan B Entry Steps
1. Empathy - the goal of this stage is to gather information and achieve an
understanding of the kid’s concern or perspective on an issue.
a. Begin with a neutral observation ie. ‘I’ve noticed that…’ and end with
‘what’s up?’
b. Use reassurance for additional calming – “I’m not saying you must”, “I’m
not mad at you”, I’m just trying to understand”, “I’m not saying you
can’t.”
c. You must get a very clear understanding of the child’s perspective. Don’t
rush – you’re not done with this step until you have a clear understanding
of the kid’s concern or perspective
d. May require ‘drilling down’ or further clarification – “How so?”, “I don’t
quite understand”, “Can you tell me more about that?”, “I’m confused.”
e. Be prepared for surprises – we are often wrong in what we think the
problem is. Problems you’re not aware of can surface here.
f. Be neutral and blameless.
2. Define the problem – the goal is to ensure that the adult’s concern or perspective
is entered into consideration (possibly with “The thing is…” or “My concern
is…”
a. Just get concerns on the table right now, don’t worry about solutions yet.
We’re quick to try to put solutions out – let them be part of coming up
with solutions later.
b. Reminder – dueling solutions = a power struggle. CPS is a win/win
situation where dueling solutions is a win/lose or power struggle.

c. If there are only adult concerns on the table, it’s Plan A.
d. If there are only child concerns on the table, it’s Plan C.
e. If there’s both, then it’s Plan B.
f. Good adult concerns – safety, learning, how behavior is affecting others
g. What if the kid doesn’t care about your concerns? You could thank him
for being honest, and tell him that you’re really trying to take his concerns
into account, and if he could try to take yours into account, maybe we
could get somewhere and not always be fighting. “Let’s be on the same
team” or “Let’s work together to solve this problem”.
3. Invitation – Goal is to brainstorm solutions together so as to address both
concerns.
a. Let the child know that this is something you’re doing with him rather
than to him.
b. Invite the kid to help you solve the problem. Give him a chance to express
his ideas so he knows you value his opinion.
c. “Let’s think of how we can work that out.”, “Let’s see if we can solve that
problem.”, or “I wonder if there’s a way...”
d. Give the child first opportunity to generate solutions – “Do you have any
ideas on how we could…” but resolution of the problem is part of a team
effort.
e. Don’t think adults are the only ones who can come up with good ideas. If
you are truly doing Plan B, you will have no idea where things will end
up.
f. Don’t be fearful of this process because any solution that the two parties
agree upon must be realistic and mutually satisfactory. Your concerns
and various solutions will be addressed just as the child’s. He won’t
explode because he feels like part of the plan and that his concerns are
being heard. The skills he needs are being taught to him through this
process. Don’t agree to do something you don’t agree with. Keep
talking until you can find a solution that works for both of you.
Beginning B
• Start with triggers – “I noticed that when you lose points in class, it’s very
upsetting for you. What’s up?
• Start with triggers rather than lagging skills as it’s too hard to start this way. Only
start with lagging skills when kids are lacking the skills to do Plan B in the first
place.
• Choose triggers that are contributing to the kid’s worst moments and the
maladaptive behavior most often, and those that would be most conducive to
success.
• Plan B always ends with an agreement that we’ll keep talking and address
concerns as they arise.

Emergency B
• Only difference is timing and the wording of the Empathy step (reflective
listening)
• Biggest challenges for schools in transforming school discipline
o Improving adult’s understanding of challenging behavior
o Shifting from reactive to proactive mechanisms
o Involving kids in solving the problem – hearing their perspective
o Principals need to get staffs to collaborate with kids using Plan B rather
than just bringing the student to the principal and expecting them to fix the
problem using Plan A. This is not effective.
Trouble Shooting Plan B
Factors to consider if Plan B isn’t going well:
• Missing steps – empathy or invitation
• Using A instead of B
• Steps out of order
• Failure to drill down – the problem is not as explicit as you need. A poorly
described problem will affect the outcomes/solutions that will arise. Go back if
you have to and gather more information if needed.
• Solutions, rather than concerns are on the table.
• Over-reliance on Emergency B – proactive B is calmer, you get more information
and you have more time.
This is Hard!
• Early on it feels like slogging through mud
• Over time a rhythm should develop
• Very difficult problems will require more than one discussion
• Sometimes it’s necessary to take a break from the discussion and return to it later,
after both parties have had more time to think
• Initially, the kid is likely to propose solutions that are not realistic or mutually
satisfactory
• The first solution seldom solves the problem durably
• This is a process, not a technique. Things are not solved in an instant.
• By achieving a clear understanding of the kid’s lagging skills, challenging
episodes are reduced.
• By decreasing the use of Plan A, you further reduce challenging episodes
• By increasing the use of Plan C, you also further reduce challenging episodes
• By increasing the use of Plan B, many problems are being solved and skills being
trained … and again you further reduce challenging episodes
What if the kid can’t or won’t talk?
• Identify and articulate concerns so as to identify the problem to be solved
o Educated guessing – there’s only a certain number of possibilities or
reasons for the problem. If you make an educated guess, you may be
able to guess the problem.

o Have kids understand their triggers and then point to pictures or learn
to use phrases to communicate the problem. Have a list of common
triggers with related pictures they can use ie. Hungry, too hot,
someone’s teasing me, someone’s mad at me, don’t feel good etc.
o Train a rudimentary vocabulary for verbalizing concerns. Teach them
to say, “Something is wrong”, “Give me a minute”, “I don’t know
what to do”, “I need a break,” or have a picture cue that they can use to
relay this. This will help them lengthen their fuse so they don’t resort
to maladaptive behavior when they can’t express what’s wrong.
• Consider possible solutions
o If the kid has no ideas, you could say, “Well, I have some. Want to
hear them?” Phrase them as proposals, not directives.
o Train a rote problem solving vocabulary – ask for help, give a
little (compromise), do it in a different way. Teach kids they can
use these three steps to solve problems in all environments.
Powerful Quotes
• Fair does not mean equal.
• In our classroom, everyone gets what they need.
• In our classroom, we help each other.
o Teach kids to empathize with others.
o When teachers do the same for all kids, they have little to show for their
efforts.
o Would a doctor give each patient the same treatment, or would they give
each patient what they needed? That’s what teachers need to do too.
Important Themes
• Remain calmly optimistic and relentlessly persistent in the face of all odds
• All change is incremental (and collaborative)
• To implement this, you need staffs to recognize that what they are doing isn’t
working and they need to try something different – Plan B.
• Plan B sets limits as much as Plan A – just without the challenging behavior
• Our world is a Plan B world – kids need to learn how to share their ideas and
concerns in an appropriate way and to compromise/collaborate if they are to be
successful as an adult.
• Just punishing them doesn’t teach them real world skills. Our role is to ‘figure
out what’s getting in the way’ of a child doing well.
• All challenging behavior tells us is that we have something to fix, but we have to
figure out what needs fixing.
• There are way too many suspensions and expulsions because we haven’t learned
how to effectively deal with kids who are lacking skills.
• All behavior, no matter how bad, is due to kids not being able to meet the
demands placed on them.
• Never forget – it’s about the kids!
Additional information at www.thinkkids.org