Dearest Flawless Friends,
I flew to Boston last Friday with Tara and Janine to meet one of the Flawless Medical Advisors, Dr. Stuart Ablon, where he conducted a workshop on Collaborative Problem Solving with his organization, Think:Kids, at Mass. General/Harvard Medical School. The program was called “Think Differently: A New Approach for Parenting Challenging Kids”, which I think basically applies to all of us. Anyway, what a mind blowing day…. Not only is Stuart extremely charismatic but the entire concept behind CPS is so brilliant and truly simple that I have been practicing ever since I attended with Phoebe AND my husband!
I thought I would share some of the outstanding, simple concepts and tools that I found so important and useful to use and I can see how effective this is for challenged children.
(btw – the stats are showing that practicing CPS is lowering violence and conflicts by 75% and higher)
1. The Overall Mantra behind CPS is this:
KIDS DO WELL IF THEY CAN. Not because they don’t want to…
And if they can’t, then we adults need to figure out why so we can help! This is not the old conventional wisdom system of reward and punishment… This is about the true belief that every child can do well if they have the skills.
2. Understanding the truth: that children are challenged by learning disabilities, and that challenging behavior occurs when a demand placed upon someone requires skills that the person does not fully possess…yet.
3. Understanding that behind every challenging behavior is either a trigger or a lagging skill or both, and knowing that there are very predictable triggers that can be responsibly identified.
Don’t we know that? We all have them…..
4. The practice of solving problems with the challenged child so that they don’t keep coming up!!!
Use proactive conversations before a crisis occurs, as well as skills that can be used in the middle of challenging behavior.
These are such breakthrough, simple, brilliant concepts, pretty tricky to practice YET also completely possible with practice.
The very next day I had a very unhappy child who only wanted to go with daddy to the movies, and we created a very fun solution with all three of us that actually worked and my daughter felt heard.
And so did I.
I wanted to give you a little window into a program that is gaining huge success and we can’t wait to launch programs in NYC .and that is where Flawless comes in, raising money and awareness so that Flawless can support extraordinary programs like Think:Kids.
Thank you Janine for my Boston adventure and for finding these amazing resources and having the courage to show everyone that there are healthy, loving and nurturing solutions to change the lives of challenged children.
Check the website out yourselves!
Much love to you all, Lori
