Please help with using Collaborative Problem Solving

Post Reply New Topic

Yeah, take-out is definitely an option. I guess my issue is that I am trying to go from a cobbled together non-system that I have fine-tuned over the years to something that involves him actually having come up with possible solutions as opposed to me doing it.

What I mean to say is our current system involves me basically taking what I need/want him to do (or not do) and put the issues into three piles. One pile is the stuff that is easy and what we use some form of what Dr. Green would call plan A on. (You know, what most parents do.) The other pile looks a lot like Dr. Greene's plan C, which is all the stuff that we have decided not to push for a variety of reasons. That pile would be what Dr. Green would call Plan C.

The third much smaller pile is what Dr. Greene would say to use Plan B on. They are things that either I have prioritized and think are important to work on, or things I think are low-hanging fruit and we have a good chance of making progress on.

If you are still reading and not bored out of your mind yet, then I will tell you that our Plan B pile is not worked on normally the way Dr. Greene would say to do it. There are some things in that pile that I use little bribes for. Do x important thing and you get a point, 7 points=reward. etc. That works on some things where I just need an extra little bit of motivation. Many of these things are things that lend themselves to habit and after the special clearly labeled, finite promotional period of point earning, I hope become habit.

Then there are other things I have been doing prior to reading about CPS as a half-measure kind of Plan B where I guess on things that will be effective compromises and float them by him. Generally, this was done an on emergency basis more so than a proactive basis. He has not had the communication skills to participate in the more open-ended type questions and he gets overwhelmed by too much choice.

His communication has improved a lot, so I finally bought Explosive Child, this summer and am attempting to see if I can get the collaborative part to work, now. We had the restaurant discussion on an emergency basis, but I would like to think this out more and get suggestions on how to proceed before I try the proactive method. He still has issues with open-ended questions, but I would like him to learn how to explicitly compromise. That is the main lagging skill at the heart of this, I think. Maybe we are not ready, though. We have practiced sharing, and he will share willingly and happily. He is better at taking turns, with us, anyway. Compromise? Not so much. Are there foundational skills I am missing?

Just to add more for those not afraid of TL:DR posts, I thought I might give some background on the food issue. Feel free to skip it.

My husband and I were both raised in different cultures, but both had parents with a Plan A view on meals. You eat what is made, or do not eat. You go where your parents take you. The end.

My brother and I were both in retrospect picky eaters. My mother was an awful cook, and my parents bought weird food for uncooked meals like breakfast and packed school lunches. I literally hated almost every meal served to me. I thought about this last night and I honestly do not know how we managed to get enough calories in us b/c we hardly ate was was given to us, especially my brother, (And I wonder why my metabolism is messed up--LOL) My husband would eat food he didn't like, b/c he was hungry just like regular kids are supposed to do. My brother and I would eat very little when it was something we thought was gross.

Anyway, my son is not served disgusting food(I like to think), but he had/has a ton of sensory issues and so was way more picky than either my brother or I, even. If he didn't like it or something about it grossed him out, he would not eat any of it. He ate only a few foods.

I was worried about him getting proper nutrition, he was on the skinny side at that time, as is; and so I made him separate meals so my husband and I would not be constrained by his extremely rigid preferences. I understood that I was setting up a pattern where he would feel entitled to special treatment, but it was a risk I felt was worth taking at the time, given our circumstances. We kick the can forward, sometimes.

As far as restaurants went, he never wanted to leave the house, so it was not a reward at all, and we used the bribe method to get acceptable behavior when it was realistically possible to take him to restaurants. Mostly he still did not want to go even with bribes. Eventually he became more comfortable, but we were very limited to where to go. Again we set ourselves up for him to feel he has a lot of input.

So, as to the power/getting his way issue, it is not a power thing so much as he is accustomed to the accommodation. We have told him tales of the olden days where mom and dad went where our parents told us, and that he should be grateful he has more input that we did but that is abstract to him.

His social skills are very, very low and even if someone were to invite him to a playdate with a meal, he would not pick up that other kids do not get to pick what they eat. Currently he eats better, and we serve him what we eat, but if he has a visceral reaction and won't eat it, we still make him a cheese sandwich or give him fruit after we are done eating. We are Ok with that right now, and have dumped that in Plan C, but it still adds to the normalization of thinking it is fine for him to decide these things.

So on the one hand I know it looks like we created a monster with this, but on the other hand he does have real sensory issues that we try to take into account. I cannot have him not eat b/c he really wouldn't, although most people out in the real world do not believe me when I tell them this.

This is also the first time that he is comfortable enough with not being at home where he -wants- to go to a restaurant, but it is only if it is the specific one he wants. If we say we will otherwise stay at home, he is OK with that too, b/c he would rather eat at home than a second tier place.

Way too much information, I know.

This is a very interesting and informative thread, thank you in particular for the detail. Hearing your thoughts and experiences creates a rich point of comparison with my own and this is setting off all sorts of useful lines of thought. Emilemulder's post is also particularly helpful in framing some of the meta-issues around these arrangements and the communications that are required to agree on decisions.

We almost never go to restaurants anymore, unless we can see that we can sit far from others, because of my son's issues with people's mouth noises.

I am trying to teach him to control his expression of emotion when he encounters such offensive stimuli. I tell him that it's OK to feel the way he is feeling, but that it is unfair not to consider the intention and feeling of others. In particular, he feels assaulted when someone smacks their lips or chews with their mouth open. I am telling him that I understand that it feels like an assault but that he has to understand that it is not one and that the motivation of other people is critically important. If they are doing something and it bothers you, remove yourself from the situation and do it without expressing anger or rage.

We also go through the "my way or not at all" options when we try to decide on what to eat or what movie to watch, etc.

It just happens that I picked up the mail just before reading this thread and skimmed through the IEP report that came with it. I noted that he was mostly listed as maintaining and in a few places progressing but not progressing in a few key areas including making eye contact and communicating emotions.

It is very clear to me that a big problem for him is not being able to guess at other people's intentions, so not knowing if a gesture is neutral, friendly or hostile. and not being able to communicate feelings with subtlety or precision.

These deficits create a sort of negative amplifier in these sorts of negotiation over food or film choices. He thinks his sister wants to watch Japanese anime just because she knows he doesn't like it. He really doesn't see that her primary concern is over what she does like, not over his feelings. So he thinks of her expressing her preferences as a kind of attack and thinks some sort of retaliation is an appropriate response. He also has trouble explaining why he doesn't like things or what he is feeling when he is upset, and if he doesn't fairly quickly get his way he tends to respond by a sort of philosophical defeatism, ("sigh, I guess I just never get my way") or a little tantrum (stomping off and rushing up the stairs to his bed, muttering angry words under his breath.)

This is starting to have a negative effect on his few friendships. When his buddies want to do something that he doesn't (e.g., skip through the cut scenes in a video game, he may stomp up to his room and rage. They will wait him out for a little bit, or just leave. I was in the kitchen washing dishes and tidying up the other day when this happened and one of his friends said to me, "is he all right? Is he coming back?" I told them that he was getting his feelings together but that he would be back, but it was painful to see his only real friends taken aback in this way.

It seems to me that the vital skills to work on this summer are perspective taking, communicating feelings, and exercising in-the-moment self-control. These are foundational to the kinds of collaborative decision making you are describing, to maintaining friendships and to progressing at school and in later life.

This is a dependency tree. You can't pay attention to the people around you or the impact you are having on the people around you if you are immediately lost in your own reactions to things with no self-control. You can't communicate appropriately if you don't have some model of other people's motivations. You can't communicate effectively if you don't know how to express your own feelings and tune that expression to the state of the people you are conversing with.

If you can work those three skills, you can agree to go to a mexican restaurant with your buddies and watch a movie they all like but is your third or fourth choice. If you can't work those skills you won't be able compromise on anything and there won't be friends asking you to come with them.

This line of thinking has sort of mapped out the growth we need to cultivate this summer and beyond. Thank you for creating this thread and catalyzing these ideas.

I'm still a newbie in trying to use collaborative problem solving. I've listened to almost all the podcasts. I've only made a few attempts, but I have found I needed to break it up into several conversation- a couple for the drilling (ie info gathering) step, one for restating the problem and explaining my concerns, then 1 or 2 for brainstorming solutions. At this point I'd say that I'm doing "almost-B", in that I'm able to get clarity on his concerns but I'm still the one coming up with the solutions and implementing them (we're not exactly collaborating on the solution.)

It seems to me you don't yet have clarity on his issues with the restaurant. Wanting tortilla chips or a different restaurant are a good theories, but maybe the cause is actually something else. Maybe you could get more info by having a talk where you are comparing concretely what is good and bad about different restaurants.

The initial lead in seems to be, "I notice you're having difficulty sitting quietly and enjoying your meal when we go to restaurant A. What's Up?" If that's too open ended for him, maybe you replace "What's Up?" with a series of questions about things he likes and doesn't like about restaurant A.

Let's pretend that it becomes really clear that his concern is that he would rather eat at restaurant B because it has tortilla chips. Your invitation might be, "You really like the chips at B, but they don't have them at A. Mom and Dad really like the pasta at A, and would really like to eat there sometimes. I wonder if there's a way we could sometimes eat chips at B, but other times eat at A, and also make going to A more enjoyable for you..." At this point, I would postpone the next part of the conversation by saying, "You think about whether there's anything that would make restaurant A enjoyable, and I'll think about it, too, and let's talk some more this afternoon about our ideas."

In the next conversation, you could start by asking, "Have you had any ideas that would make restaurant A more enjoyable?" If he has no ideas, you could talk about each of your ideas. "Would it help if we take turns picking the restaurant?" (If the answer is "yes", then, "Ok, we'll take turns. We still need to figure out how to make A more enjoyable when we go there.") "Would it help if we brought our own chips to A?" "What if we picked up take-out chips from B and brought them to A?" "Would you enjoy it more if we brought an iPod to play with when we go to A?" "Would it help if you could go outside and take a walk when it gets too noisy at A?" etc.

(Btw -- My son was not able to have this kind of back and forth conversation at age 6, the sentences here are definitely too long. I have no idea how you would modify it for your son's current language capability.)