Please help with using Collaborative Problem Solving

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We have a situation that I am not sure how to handle using Collaborative Problem Solving. (The method in "Explosive Child" by Dr. Ross Greene)

My son has gotten much better about going to new restaurants on special occasions, as long as his sensory and food preferences have been taken into account. He has been really good progress and I am very proud of him. But (there is always a but, right?) for regular eating-out he has decided that he is "sick of" some of the local restaurants he has been OK with in the past.

I drilled for information and it appears that he is trying to get us to only go to more preferred restaurants as opposed to having us pick one that is less preferred, but acceptable. (All the places in play have pizza, burgers and/or other things he will eat but he especially likes one that serves tortilla chips before the meal, despite ironically having being "sick of Mexican" food for the longest time.) He doesn't have a full-on-tantrum, but I would not subject other diners to his ear-splitting protestations. (He has trouble regulating volume even when calm, and when he is not, it is worse)

Normally, the usual reaction would be a Plan A of consequences; but a punishment is not going to do anything but inflame him, which is why we are trying Collaborative Problem Solving in the first place. It will not make the other restaurants more acceptable in the future, which is what I would like. I could try a bribe of chips or something, after the meal as a sort of collaboration, but I am also trying to decrease the junk food in his diet.

I will admit I have not asked him directly what would make it OK to go to one of the other restaurants, but we have not had success with open-ended questions and have had to be "geniuses" in the modified form of the method for kids with communication issues.

I know I could Plan C it, and limit our choices to the restaurants on his preferred list, but it really limits things, and it feels like a step backward. I do appreciate him being more flexible on special occasions, but I think it would be good for him (and less limiting for me) if i could get him to be more open about local dining options.

Thoughts?

Edited for literacy.

I notice you are eating in restaurants a good deal of the time. I don't enjoy doing so as much as I used to because they are so expensive. But, in the past I have gone from loving a place's food to being repelled by it quite suddenly and for no apparent reason. Often I didn't know myself why, but the change in desire for the food is obvious to me. The same can be said for ambiance.
As an adult I enjoy not having to explain these changes to people.

I have no personal experience with this method or with taking kids to restaurants, but I wonder, could you ask him what foods specifically he does not want to eat and then say he can not have those foods but has to go to the restaurant you want? Is he only eating the same thing at the restaurant? Maybe he just doesn't like the food he always has at that place anymore, but he could have something else from the same menu (you could even order something for him from the adult menu and split it with him). That's kind of collaborative..right?

Would he understand a compromise like alternating (one time you go where he wants to go, the next time you go where you want to go)? It's collaborative if he agrees to that compromise.

This isn't how to use this method... but If it's not the food he doesn't like, is it the sensory aspect? My kids have limited communication, but we used to go to this local grocery store and my son was fine until one day he wasn't fine. Eventually I realised they changed the lights to a different kind of bulb, and he doesn't like that light. So even if it was okay before, maybe it's not anymore because they changed something. Or maybe it's not anymore because something about him changed and whatever he tolerated before, bothers him now (dunno if that happens, but it seems sort of plausible). If it's sensory, you can find a solution to the sensory problem (e.g. sunglasses). Did you ask him specifically about sensory aspect already?

Thank you for your responses. I asked him about sensory issues at the restaurants and he said he was just "sick of them" and had no sensory issues. It is possible he is having a different sensory response to the same stimuli, and not able to communicate it clearer, but he had been pretty good about explaining decor and lighting issues in the past.

His favorite food is pizza and all the places we take him locally have it on their kids menu. I am way pickier about pizza then he is. He will eat bad and good pizza in any variety as long as they are round and not square or an oval shape. All the places except the pizza place have what I consider to be bad pizza, including the places he is willing to go. He is not picky about pizza quality and if I ask him which pizza he likes best of all those places and even including homemade pizza, he says he has no preference. Depending on the place, there are other options he will eat, as well.

I don't think it is the lighting either because one of the places he is now willing to go to that he once said was too dark, is darker than one of the places he will no longer go to. It is possible of course.

Ann2011, I can understand not wanting to discuss things. I can be rather circumspect about things in real life, but aside from the issue at hand, he needs to work on communication issues so that people can understand what his needs are. It is an integral part of Collaborative Problem Solving b/c to come up with solutions we need to know his issues. I would rather ask him than try to guess b/c at a point, especially as he gets older, that starts to be presumptuous.

I mean, it is possible form him not to know why his experience of a particular perception has changed. I used to find this disquieting when I was a kid. I could express that my feeling were diffefent but not why so. Anyway, neither here nor there as he is trying to learn to express himself.

I do understand that it can be hard to sometimes to understand what is bothersome, but just know it. Sometimes he will tell me that is the case. He has not said that in reference to this, but it is possible he does not want to tell me that.

Collaborative Problem Solving is something that works for you. What is your world view that makes it work?

What is his world view?

I'm not sure but is this you wanting him to consider others (your) preferences?

I don't remember how he deals with it, but it seems like maybe a fairness thing? That you want other food choices and you could use this method if it were siblings fighting. But it's you.

I think maybe be clear you have preferences. Because it seems like maybe he IS communicating his and you, an important family member, are wanting not to have no voice in what's for dinner

I find it often a dilemma how to encourage communication by validating without feeling compelled to go along.

I am not sure what you are asking with reference to world views. It is not a world view. It is a method of getting the child to figure out why he/she does or not does not do a particular thing, making your own thoughts known, asking for help coming up with a solution so that both parties can figure out a way that works as a solution for everyone.

Someone who seeks to solve problems with a Collaborative Problem Solving method may work under an egalitarian view. How does your son see the world?

Last edited by screen_name on 28 Jun 2014, 9:09 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Or not know it ... it can take me weeks to figure out why I feel a certain way, but there seems to be no rushing it.


It can be stressful to be required to produce knowledge that isnt known. Then you have to start making stuff up just to satisfy people, but then things said aren't accurate and more confusion ensues.

I understand your question better now. Thank you.

He knows intellectually that we are the parents and he is the child. In practice, he views himself as equal to adults. We started out with a more authoritarian model when he was younger and then modified it when we realized it was making things worse. He is compliant when it is easy to be compliant, but non-compliant when it is hard.

I am trying to figure out why this is hard for him. It seems to be disproportionately important to him, and I am not sure why. I could understand if we were asking him to go somewhere he does not like. We are only asking him to sometimes go to a place that is a second tiered preference.

I am currently suspicious the tortilla chips is the reason he wants to go to the Mexican restaurant. One time we told him we wanted to go to a Chinese restaurant he said he did not want to go b/c he was "sick of it,." We said that it was OK, and we would not go. Then twenty minutes later he asked where we were going. We told him we were staying home to eat. He seemed disappointed, but did not get agitated, It was unusual for him to be disappointed as he once vastly preferred to stay home. I suspected it was that he wanted to go to his new favorite restaurant with the tortilla chips. There is one another place in his top tier. They do not serve free chips, but it his first favorite restaurant and he has never dropped it from his favorites.

It just seems odd that the tortilla chips would be such an important reason to him, but that he was not excessively upset about staying home that other time.

(I do not know if this helps)

Maybe you can give him a choice between a restaurant you want to go to and staying home. Tell him if he chooses the restaurant he is not allowed to complain about it. If he asks what you'll be eating if you stay home (because I know DS would) name something of which he is not particularly fond.

1) I don't think it's odd to want to tortilla chips served before the meal and have that be a major factor in one's choice of preferred restaurants. We all have some reason; that one seems as ligit as any other.

2) In trying to guess how your son may see his place in family discussions, I am wondering if he sees the whole deciding-bit to be how to best position himself and "win" the game...while his "opponents" (you) are trying to be certain everything is fair. If that's the case, there is a fundamental misconnect. You may feel taken advantage of and he may be annoyed at lengthy conversations.

This isn't necessarily a part of collaborative problem solving, but you may want to try to lower the stakes by going to the non-preferred restaurant on a non-busy night (like a monday or tuesday). You could even ask the people at the restaurant if they'd be ok with it and if they could recommend a time when there would be few people there...then tip well.

I know collaborative problem solving is really about the conversations you have with your kid, outside of the context of the problem and better understanding the problem so you can get some real buy-in from your kid on a mutually acceptable solution. Maybe there are ways to do some of that with additional visual supports. Just off the top of my head, you were saying that you were having a hard time putting your finger on what bothers him about the restaurant, but being in the restaurant may be too problematic, while asking afterwards is too abstract. Would it be possible to make an exhaustive list (possibly collaboratively) of all the things that could potentially upset him about a place, then when you're there have him point to them?

Also not sure if it needs to be reiterated, but I get the sense that you are already bending over backwards to pick foods and restaurants that he likes, which is already "plan c" correct? This constitutes a real sacrifice on your part that he probably isn't even fully aware of. So you are already involved in a compromise and now you're talking about compromising the compromise. It may be worth starting from the real impasse - you want to eat different foods at different restaurants, he doesn't...and then go from there. There may of course be other issues like nutritional concerns. Assuming that his nutritional needs are met to your satisfaction you may open up compromises like he eats his own food in the car, and then gets an appetizer at the restaurant and sits with you. Or maybe if the issue is preparation time, the compromise is he starts cooking his own food (depending on age).

The real strength of collaborative problem solving is that ideally it helps adults and children to develop a shared (and more accurate) conceptualization of a problem, and then a mutually agreed upon strategy to solve it. Those communication deficits make that first part hard with ASD, so you may want to bring in your functional behavioral knowledge (which I know you're solid on, ASDMommy) to help fill-in that piece. Once you have a solid concept of that problem, then you should be able to come up with a variety of creative solutions and work with your son to choose a mutually acceptable one. Just remember that it's often about compromise, which doesn't mean giving him exactly everything that he wants (at only your expense). I only mention it because it can be tempting to take the path of least resistance even when it's not absolutely necessary, but here's a case where you deserve to get your way at least some of the time, and giving that up is a big sacrifice.

Reading what Emile wrote made me wonder whether maybe he could practice sharing with something easy. This might be silly but does he see you aren't engaging in a power struggle, you have a different food preference? If you think understanding your perspective is hard you could start soft, like emphasizing your choice of ice cream flavor, his choice.

My daughter was upset being out late as well as by noise and uncertainty. But the thing that stands out reading your posts is how one incident unrelated to a place to me (like a baby cried or they failed to have the expected drink) could be make the place unreliably upsetting to her.

So I'm unsure if your son might be having trouble letting you win (in his mind) or bothered by something. But maybe another route would be to practice something distracting and positive like if he wanted to get something at the store associate (not bribe just casually associate) Chinese with what he wants.

I get a lot of takeout😞