Kid Collaboration, #75

Dr. Ross Green:

When you're solving problems collaboratively, you're not focused on motivating the kid, giving the kid the incentive to do this behavior while trying to disincentivize another behavior that's done through punishment. What you're doing is trying to solve the problem that's giving rise to the behavior in the first place.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

This is Dr. Lisa Belisle and you are listening to the Dr. Lisa Radio Hour and podcast show number 75 kid collaboration, airing for the first time on February 17, 2013. Do you have a challenging child in your Life? Internationally acclaimed Dr. Ross Greene, author of the Explosive Child and founder of Lives in the Balance, shares a surefire method of creating calm out of kid chaos. Schools and institutions have found unprecedented success through his collaborative approach. I was asked to be a columnist for Parent and Family magazine at the end of my residency program. At the time I was a mother of two and pregnant with one, but that didn't mean I was an expert in parenting. Despite the fact that I was the oldest of 10 children and had done much child rearing over the years, I still found parenting to have its own unique challenges. And it had its own unique challenges with each of my three very unique children. I did go forward and become a columnist for Parent and Family magazine and in fact you can find many of the articles on our website drlisabelisle.com and I dealt with issues as diverse as eating disorders and mindfulness and picky eaters and nail biting. It was a fun time. I think I learned a lot and I learned a lot through parenting. I learned that there is no cookie cutter approach that works for every child and I in fact, often despite the fact that I am the adult and my child is the child, I couldn't really fall back on simple authority. I really had to listen to what my child's needs were and I really had to understand my own needs as well. So although I hate to say I was negotiating with my kids. I definitely was collaborating more often than not. And now I have a college age child, a high school age child and middle school child and my parenting has continued to evolve. It's something that never remains static. I'm sure that my parents could say the same thing about me and my nine siblings. I was also interested in reading Dr. Green's book the Explosive Child and hearing about chronically inflexible and easily frustrated children. Because what I read into it was that these are kids with lagging skills. These are kids who just don't necessarily easily fit into the mainstream, possibly through genetics, possibly through something environmental that's impacted their growth and development. But it doesn't mean that just because these kids don't get along the way that the rest of us think they should get along, that we should throw the baby out with the bathwater. They are still human beings and they still deserve to be heard. So I enjoyed reading his book and I enjoyed reading about kids who, if they weren't explosive because they were easily frustrated, they were implosive and they actually began to take things out on themselves. Those of you who aren't parents or don't have children in your lives, I think will still benefit from hearing the words of Dr. Ross Greene and possibly reading his book the Explosive Child or even his second book, Lost at School, because what he's talking about is basic human relationships and the ability to collaborate and problem solve and not just assume that every person is like the next person. I hope you do enjoy our conversation with Dr. Ross Greene. Thank you, founder of Lives in the Balance and author of the Explosive Child. As my patients and listeners of the Dr. Lisa Radio Hour well know, I believe that one of the most fundamental things we can do for ourselves and our wellness is to maintain good energy. On February 27th at the Body Architect, I will be offering a talk called Rev up youp Metabolism as part of our Spring 2013 Wellness Series. We'll talk about the foods that you can eat and some of the supplements that you can think about taking and other ways to keep your energy good. For more information on this talk, please give the Body Architect a call at 207-774-2196. Another way of getting good energy into your life and maintaining good energy over time is through qigong. Beginning on March 6, I will be offering a Qigong based wellness program for six weeks that incorporates instruction on healing foods and health from a traditional Chinese medicine perspective. Called the Dragon's Way, this six weeks program is particularly helpful for people who would like to address life balance, excess weight, anxiety, digestive problems, stress and much more. For more information on the Dragon's Way Qigong based wellness program or the February 27 Rev up youp Metabolism Talk, please call the body architect at 207-774-2196 or email us through the website drlisabelisle.com. I always enjoy finding people who have moved to Maine because they like the state. And of course I'm from Maine myself, but also because they found Maine to be a receptive place to be for things that they are passionate about. And Dr. Ross Green, who is the founder of Lives in the Balance and also author of books such as the Explosive Child and Lost at School, found a very receptive audience for his subject matter here in the state of Maine. So we're happy to have you here in our state and also in our studio. Thank you.

Dr. Ross Green:

I couldn't be more delighted to be in both places.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

So the explosive Child is kind of an attention grabber. And people might ask, what's an explosive child?

Dr. Ross Green:

Well, I've actually never loved the title because first of all, it's not exactly clear what an explosive child is. And secondly, there are imploders who are imploding for the exact same reason that exploders are exploding. So there's a lot of people who have kids who are imploders who've wondered if the explosive child would apply to their kids. So in that way it's not the perfect title. But kids who explode, most people know if they have one. These are kids who are just overreacting, usually to a frustration and then doing any of a variety of things that I guess would fall under the explosive umbrella, but really under the behaviorally challenging umbrella. They might be screaming or swearing when they're exploding, they might be hitting or kicking when they're exploding. It's less what they're doing and more adults are finding it extremely difficult to deal with these kids. I guess that's what explosive means.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Well, and of course there's always a sort of a need to put things out there and capture people's attention, so certainly it does do this.

Dr. Ross Green:

I will say, when I first proposed this book to the publisher, the title was the Chronically Inflexible Child. And of course I was immediately told that that was not going to be the title of this book. But if you asked me what comes closer to describing what's really getting in these kids way, it's that they are very inflexible, very easily frustrated, have a great deal of Difficulty solving problems, that's who they really are. The explosion is what they're doing. Those lagging skills are why they're doing it.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

How did you come to be interested in working with children who are either exploders or imploders or their families?

Dr. Ross Green:

Well, it was either going to be kids or animals. And blood is not my gig, so there goes animals. But kids have been my thing for a while. Starting like as a camp counselor. I knew I was either going to be a teacher or a child psychologist. And then it became child psychology because I began gravitating to the more challenging kids. And then the kids who seem to intrigue me the most, and this wouldn't be the case anymore now because I really don't see them as being terribly different. The kids who were hyperactive, impulsive grabbed me. I found them fascinating. But if you're working with that population, you're also working with a lot of kids who aren't doing what they're told, tantruming a lot, defying adult rules and requests. And they really intrigued me. And so that's the direction I began moving in. The kids who most mental health professionals are actually not that enthusiastic about working with, but I find them incredibly intriguing. I get a real kick out of them. Of course I'm not living with them, but it's a real kick to help the people who are living with them, help things go better in households because these are tough kids and they can have a very negative adverse impact on families and on siblings and on classrooms and on peers and on teachers. It's tough.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

But there must have been something about these kids that caused you to specifically become interested. Because you're right, difficult people, whether they're children or adults, tend to get shied away from. But you kind of embraced this whole thing. What was the fascination?

Dr. Ross Green:

Number one? These are really cool kids. I think that I gravitate to underdogs. Now I've just lost a whole bunch of people who are thinking, these kids are underdogs. Yeah, these kids are underdogs. They are extremely poorly understood. They are often viewed as manipulative, attention seeking, coercive, unmotivated, limit testing. And quite frankly, those are the lenses I was trained to see them through. Their parents are often characterized as passive, permissive, inconsistent, non contingent parents. Very common beliefs. They are. They're underdogs too. The interesting thing is neither the parents nor the kids are viewed as underdogs. So that makes for the absolute ultimate underdog. The ultimate underdog is a parent or a kid who's not viewed as an underdog. Here's the interesting thing about these underdogs. The kids, they're often not only poorly understood, but because of that, often very poorly treated. They are often on the receiving end of our worst. They spend, and this would not be the worst that could happen. They spend massive amounts of time and time out. They get hit by people a lot. In our schools 230,000 times a year. Not in Maine, but in other parts of the US These kids are on the receiving end of corporal punishment 230,000 times a year. They get suspended a lot. They get expelled a lot. Now we're talking about underdogs, in my opinion, all flowing from the fact that they are not very well understood and that a lot of the strategies that are often applied to them can be extremely counterproductive.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Were you an underdog yourself growing up?

Dr. Ross Green:

I was not.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

And so why did you care?

Dr. Ross Green:

I think it's my personality to see wrongs and right them. There are lots of wrongs in the world that I could be righting. This is one of the wrongs in my field that I found very compelling and that I found tremendous need to write, and obviously using a different form of the word write to write about. It's my personality.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

You started doing more cognitive behavioral work, which really is very different from. Not very different, but definitely has differences from what you're doing now. It's more structured. It more relies on cause and effect and behavior charts and stickers and timeouts. And now you're into something that is problem solving collaboratively. Why?

Dr. Ross Green:

Well, the truth is all of those sticker charts and timeouts and rewards and punishments do fall under the cognitive behavioral umbrella, which is a very broad umbrella. And my model falls under the cognitive behavioral umbrella as well. They do tend to be at different points of the same spectrum of the cognitive behavioral umbrella. The most practical answer I can give to why I stopped using the reward and punishment approach and started moving in this direction and developing an approach aimed at problem solving is that I found focusing on behavior and rewarding and punishing, it wasn't working very well. And psychology is one of the helping professions. I didn't get into psychology to make things worse or to not help. I got into psychology to help. I wasn't helping. So I started thinking and I started paying much closer attention to what the emerging research was telling us about these kids 20, 22, 24 years ago, and what the research was beginning to tell us and is now telling us in an extremely compelling way, is that these kids aren't lacking Motivation and therefore strategies aimed at motivating them would actually make little sense. These kids are lacking skills. That's, in my opinion, the single most compelling finding from the research on behaviorally challenging kids over the last 30 to 40 years. Behaviorally challenging kids are challenging because they're lacking the skills to not be challenging.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

So talk to me about that. I mean, you talk about what you call lagging skills that the kids are just. They just don't have the skills to sort of maneuver within the environment that they are placed in, whether it's school or home or social settings. What types of skills are they lagging in?

Dr. Ross Green:

The umbrella skills that I always refer to are flexibility, adaptability, frustration tolerance, problem solving. But there are actually dozens and dozens of other skills that are contributing to those umbrella skills. Things like difficulty making transitions, moving from one mindset or task to another, and I'm not being exhaustive here. Difficulty controlling one's impulses, thinking about the consequences of one's actions before one acts. A skill called hindsight. The ability to reflect on past experience, to bring it to bear in the as. To influence decision making and the solutions and actions one chooses. The ability to use language, words to let people know instead of fists or teeth. To let people know what's bugging you. To let people know what your concerns are. To let people know what's getting in your way. The ability to separate your emotional response to a frustration from the thinking you must do to resolve it. Those of us who are good at that skill tend to respond to problems and frustrations with more thought than emotion. Those who are not good at that skill tend to respond to problems and frustrations with more emotion than thought. That's actually not good because thinking is how problems get solved. Other skills. The ability to shift off of what one is thinking about. The way something should go because there's been a change in plan because the demands of the situation have changed. The ability to move out of one's existing mindset and into another one. When environments require it, when the situation demands it. A few others, and I'm not being exhaustive. Empathy, Huge skill. Appreciating how one's behavior is affecting other people. Huge skill. Being able to take another person's perspective. These are all skills. The research has been telling us for a really long time that if you're lacking those skills, you are at significantly elevated risk for challenging behavior, which quite frankly makes perfect sense. Those kinds of skills.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

So rather than assuming that people are born with the ability to respond empathically or to make transitions, what you're saying is these are things that need to be learned, and if you have less of these sort of inherently, then you're going to have to work harder to learn these skills.

Dr. Ross Green:

I think that these skills come more naturally to some kids than others. I tend to be a guy who thinks in terms of everything's 100% nature and 100% nurture. So whether it's because they were born vulnerable to not being able to acquire these skills or because they needed those skills to be taught and didn't get that, they're lacking them. We gotta help them learn them.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

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Dr. Ross Green:

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Dr. Lisa Belisle:

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Dr. Ross Green:

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Dr. Lisa Belisle:

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Dr. Ross Green:

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Dr. Ross Green:

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Dr. Lisa Belisle:

One of the things I was struck by was you're a psychologist and of course part of the medical profession and we tend to like to put labels on people and in fact, patients tend to like labels because it makes them feel better. In general, they can say, well, my child is difficult because he has bipolar disease, for example. What you're suggesting in these books is that a label might be of some benefit, possibly, but probably not really. It doesn't matter what the diagnosis is. It's sort of the underlying lagging skill. And how do you work with that?

Dr. Ross Green:

Correct. If we look at the criteria for psychiatric diagnoses in kids, what we mostly find is behaviors. Behaviors that we believe cluster together. And those clusters of behaviors have names like attention Deficit hyperactivity disorder, like oppositional Defiant disorder, like the now no longer with us, or at least soon to no longer be with us. Asperger's disorder, Autism Spectrum disorders, Obsessive Compulsive disorder. Those are labels that summarize lists of behaviors. And that's fine. I mean, if you ask me what's the biggest advantage to diagnosing a kid, it's that it helps people take his difficulty seriously. The problem comes in when the diagnosis pathologizes the kid. The diagnosis actually makes it sound like the problem resides within the kid, like it's a kid who needs to be fixed, when the reality is, it takes two to tango. Diagnoses scare people away. Potential helpers who say, I've never worked with that disorder. I can't help him. But the biggest issue with diagnoses, and this is pretty big, is that they cause us to focus on behavior. Behavior is a distraction. What should we be focused on instead? The lagging skills that are contributing to those behaviors, because that's what really helps people understand. And one other thing. We should be focused on these specific situations in which those lagging skills are making it difficult for the kid to meet our expectations. Worded slightly differently, the specific expectation the kid is having difficulty meeting because of that lagging skill. I call those unsolved problems. When you're solving problems collaboratively, you're not focused on motivating the kid, giving the kid the incentive to do this behavior while trying to disincentivize another behavior that's done through punishment. What you're doing is you're trying to solve the problem that's giving rise to the behavior in the first place. So just a quick example to make sure that that's clear. Let's say that when Teresa is having difficulty in class, she's jumping out of her seat and running out of the classroom. That's the behavior. What's the problem setting in motion that behavior? The fact that she's having difficulty reading the assigned material and science. We could reward Teresa for staying in her seat, and we could punish her for running out of the classroom, and maybe we could get her to stop running out of the classroom. But the problem that's giving rise to that behavior would remain unsolved. If we solve the problem. First of all, we got to figure out what the problem is in the first place. Teresa is having difficulty reading the assigned material in science. If we talk with Teresa about that problem, find out what's getting in her way and get it solved, she's not running out of the classroom anymore.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

So what types of things might be causing her to do this?

Dr. Ross Green:

She might not understand the assignment in the first place. She might not understand the words on the page, Anything that could be getting in the way of a kid. She might not have the attention span to stick with it. Lots of different things could be contributing to her having difficulty reading in science, none of which would be fixed by us rewarding Teresa for staying in the room and punishing her for leaving.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

You talk about a spectrum of sort of inflexibility and frustration, where at one end, you have kids who. They are very outward with their emotions, you know, and there is things. There are things like kicking and biting and hitting and screaming and just inability to sort of hold in. But then on the other end are the children who get so frustrated that there is this implosion, and they often will cry, cry, and just feel unable to cope. Could it be perhaps even more difficult for the children on the implosion end of the spectrum because they don't really necessarily show you that they are frustrated or inflexible?

Dr. Ross Green:

Well, I think that it's both easier and harder for them. They have a tendency to be kids who are going to definitely people are going to notice because they're being disruptive or they're being aggressive. I call it the spectrum of looking bad. You know, when do people look bad? When they're having trouble looking good. When are they having trouble looking good? When they're lacking the skills to deal with the demands that are being placed upon them. Which, of course, is true of all of us. It's just that those of us who are blessed with decent skills find ourselves in that situation as often as kids who are not blessed with those skills. They are frustrated a lot. They are having difficulty solving problems a lot. They look bad a lot. What do they do when they look bad? At the mild end of the spectrum, they cry, they whine, they pout, they sulk, they withdraw, Moving in the more externalizing direction, if you will. They bite, they spit, they kick, they Scream, they swear, they run, they lie, they steal, and it can get worse. The the bad news for the ones who are exhibiting behaviors that we adults have less of a major problem with is that sometimes we forget they're even there. We don't kind of even, don't even notice. You notice when a kid is biting, spitting, kicking, hitting, throwing, destroying, running, that you notice. The good news for the ones who are a little bit more mild is that adults do tend to be more empathic. If you're crying, not all adults, but there's certainly adults who are not empathic. When a kid is crying, they tell the kid to suck it up and get over it, right? But I would say that we are in general more empathic toward the ones who are less disruptive than we are to the ones who are disruptive. It's still pretty clear to me that the ones who are disruptive and doing that stuff in the opposite direction do tend to come in for our worst. So there's lucky and unlucky to being at the milder end, if you will. Interesting thing about mild. All of this is subjective, right? If you asked me, who would I get a bigger thrill out of working with, a screamer swearer or a whiner? I take the screamer swearer in a heartbeat. I know most people wouldn't. That's probably why I'm in this business.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Is it possible that the reason that kids are more inflexible or easily frustrated is that they have a sensory overload, that their environment is really just so much more than they can handle, and they look around themselves and they say, well, this doesn't seem to be bothering anybody else, but it's bothering me is

Dr. Ross Green:

that one of the possibilities, lagging sensory skills would certainly be on the list of things that could be skills that are getting in the kid's way. Labels in clothing, seams in socks. I generally find. Let me think about this a little bit. I don't usually find that that alone is going to set in motion challenging episodes. I find that there's usually other lagging skills that complement the sensory. But certainly sensory hypersensitivities are a very common trigger for kids who are sensory hypersensitive to their worst moments. No doubt about it. And that's one that's frequently overlooked.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

And it's also one that's not. It's not easily dealt with. I mean, there are sensations that we're all going to run across in our lives. We can't just cut all the tags out of every. Well, we can. We can do that. But it's kind of this whole Buddhist notion that, you know, you can't just clothe yourself in leather and protect yourself from the world because the world is always gonna be kind of in there with you. Right. How do you. So what's the lagging skill that you are working with there? How do you solve that problem?

Dr. Ross Green:

Well, the interesting thing is this. I know the process by which the problem would get solved. I'm not exactly sure what the solution would be because it depends totally on the kid and the person who's trying to solve the problem with them. The process would involve three steps. Step number one is where we're gathering information from the child about what's getting in his way, what's bugging him, what's his concern, what's his perspective? The information we get from the child when we're doing that first step is going to be crucial as it relates to solving the problem. Otherwise, we actually won't know what's getting in the student's way. We're just guessing the child's way. I'd rather know. Second ingredient is our concern. See, there's only a problem if our expectations are not being met. So if the adult is good with cutting all labels out of clothing, good with having the kid wear seamless socks or no socks at all, we don't have an unsolved problem. Right? And the kid is probably not reacting because the kid is wearing no seams in socks or no socks at all. And there are no labels in the kid's clothing. Right. I call that plan C. Plan C is where you're just removing the expectation completely. Right? This is the adult saying, you know, it's not a major thing for me. I don't care if in this life he has seams in his socks. Right? I don't care if in this life he has tags in his clothing. I don't care. Plan C. But if you want to solve, oh, there's another plan, Plan A. That's where you're saying, dude, this is a harsh world. You're gonna have to have tags in your clothing someday. I've decided you're wearing clothing that's uncomfortable for you, Suck it up.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Yeah. So get over yourself. In other words.

Dr. Ross Green:

Correct. But if you're doing plan B, which is where you're solving the problem collaboratively, you need to know what's getting in the kid's way. That's step number one. You need to say what your concern is, buddy, I can't cut all the tags out of your clothing. There's tags that if you cut them out, it actually makes it more uncomfortable, not less. Right. Valid concern. Here's the cool part. Adults are accustomed to thinking that they have valid concerns. One of the hardest part about solving problems collaboratively is to recognize that kids do too. And then in the third ingredient, kid and adult. If this is kid adult problem solving, this would be just as legit for adult, adult problem solving. Kid and adult are brainstorming solutions that are going to address the concerns of both parties. That's very different than just telling the kid what to do. And very different. That's plan A. Very different than just dropping it all together. But that's why I don't know what the solution's going to be. I can never know what the solution is. I don't know what the kids concerns are yet. I don't know what the adult's concerns are yet. Once I know those two things, I got to help them solve the problem together in a way that works for both of them.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

And adults do tend to want to, even as they're having conversations with kids, they want to jump in and insert their own interpretations of the situation.

Dr. Ross Green:

We do bad habit. Bad habit. Because we are frequently wrong in our assumptions. I call them adult theories. Right. I find that a very high percentage of the time that adults think they know what's getting in a kid's way, we're wrong. And here's the good part. We can always ask. So whenever I'm hearing adults theorizing about what's getting in kids way, I'm glazing over slightly because I'm thinking first of all, this is a theory. Like I was just on the phone with some educators in a foreign country and we were talking about a kid who was having trouble sitting in math class. Math group. And I asked the adults what they thought the kids concerns were and they said we think this is all about power and control. Then they actually did the first step with the kid and they found out what was really getting in his way as relates to sitting in math class. None of which was about power and control. We adults are frequently wrong. Not only are we frequently wrong on what we think is getting in the kid's way, what we then do is we take what we think we're right about but are really wrong about and then we preconceive solutions and then we impose those solutions. So this is sort of the way adults do it and you can get away with it with a kid who is flexible and adaptable, handles frustration well and solves Problems. Well, you can get away with that stuff. If you do that stuff with a behaviorally challenging kid, he's gonna blow.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

And this happens with other adults as well. I mean, I think what you're talking about is basic sort of communication skills.

Dr. Ross Green:

Huge part of that in here. You don't want to be reading the kid's mind. Better to ask. You don't want to be imposing your will and being unilateral. Better to collaborate. You don't want to be running with solutions that only work for one of the two parties. You want to be running with solutions that work for both parties. So there is a huge communication piece in there as it relates to kids actually feeling free to tell adults what's going on. When we're doing Plan A, unilateral problem solving, we're not even interested in the kid's concerns. And then we wonder why 10 years later, the kid won't talk to us. Well, he gave up hope a long time ago that anybody was actually interested.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Do you think that this is one of the reasons why adults want to impose Plan A? Because when they were children, Plan A, they had Plan A imposed upon them. And they figure that's just what happens when you're a kid. You're an adult. You get to be an elder and be respected. If you're a kid, you have to respect.

Dr. Ross Green:

I think there is that mentality. I think a lot of people who were raised that way didn't like it, but they aren't exactly sure what to do. Instead, there's a part of human nature that is about imposition of will. Humans want what they want. Actually, I'm not sure I know any species that doesn't. We all want what we want, taking into account another person's concerns, let alone a kid, trying to come up with solutions that work for both parties, let alone a kid. This is a bit of a novel concept for many people. So I think that imposition of will is a part of human nature. I also think that the capacity for collaboration is part of human nature as well. Just a part. We haven't tapped into very much throughout human evolution, but it's there. Here's the interesting thing. Some parents say, I'm raising him the way I was raised. Some parents say stuff like, I'm the king of my castle, I'm the boss. You do what I say. But I find a lot of folks impose their will first and then come up with a rationale for why they did it second. So it's not always clear that imposition of adult Will is philosophically driven. I find that the philosophy often comes later to explain why we did what we just did.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

I began this segment talking about how you came to Maine because you found people in Maine were receptive to these ideas, to collaborative to solving problems collaboratively. What's happening in Maine and why are we so receptive?

Dr. Ross Green:

Well, I'll start with the first part. I have a long standing relationship with the Maine Juvenile Justice Advisory Group that has been just remarkably supportive of my work in the state, starting with implementing the model in the juvenile detention centers in the state, Long Creek in South Portland and Mountain View up in Charleston. And over the course of the time that the model was being implemented and other things were being implemented simultaneously, they have seen dramatic reductions in the use of solitary confinement, the use of what we call hands on procedures, restraint, seclusion, staff and kid injuries have plummeted. And most importantly of all, recidivism. The rate of kids leaving and coming back has plummeted all over the last seven or eight years. Now they have had some incredible people doing some incredible brave hard work in those facilities, but they've also been implementing the model over that time period. Very gratifying and really kind of has Maine, in my opinion, sort of as one of the shining stars of juvenile detention throughout the world. Quite frankly, I think Maine is an excellent model for juvenile and believe me, things are not the same all over as they are in Maine. Maine's doing it right in its system of juvenile detention. But then also through the Juvenile Justice Advisory Group in Maine, we began other projects implementing the model in schools. We presently have a project in which 14 or 15 different schools, geographically distributed throughout the state, are implementing the Model school wide with in the schools that have completed already. Similarly dramatic results. In one of the schools that have completed, they had 142 discipline referrals the year before they started implementing the model. And after two years of implementation, then we're down to 42 a year. And that's dramatic. What are they doing differently? Same as the people in juvenile detention are doing differently. They got different lenses on. They're viewing challenging behavior and challenging kids through the prism of lagging skills and unsolved problems. They're solving problems collaboratively. And I know for a fact that there are many kids who would not have been able to remain in their schools had this model not been implemented with those kids. And those kids would have been costing those school systems an enormous amount of money for outside placements. And those kids are staying in their home schools. And that's spectacular. What I'm doing is I'm using Maine as a model for schools and prisons all over. So the cool thing about this is, yeah, Maine is now the home base for solving problems collaboratively for this model. But people all over the place are not only learning about the model through what people in Maine are doing, but people are Maine and looking pretty good too. Your second question was why Maine? Wish I had a real specific answer to that. I find that people in Maine are receptive to these things. Generally rather progressive in their thinking, generally less about turf and bureaucracy and fiefdoms, better at working together. I love it here. This is such a breath of fresh air. I think that's why Maine.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Why do you think we have, it seems more children who are chronically inflexible and frustrated. And why has this become more and more of an issue?

Dr. Ross Green:

I think there's a bunch of reasons among the ones that spring to mind, and I'm not blaming schools, but I think that because schools have inherited a lot of initiatives, they didn't ask for them, they inherited them. I think that we are demanding skills of kids in our schools way earlier than we ever did. And what we know is that the earlier you demand skills of kids, the earlier in development you demand those skills, the more kids are going to fall off the apple cart. We have become very oriented. And once again, there's as many educators who think this is a bad thing as I do. Right. Become very oriented toward high stakes testing, making sure kids go over a certain academic bar, less oriented, at least for a while. Some schools are sort of moving back into the direction of teaching kids how to problem solve. And they say that's who we Are now we're teaching kids how to problem solve because we think that's actually an important skill for real life. So I actually think the pendulum is starting to swing back, which is a very good thing more towards skills that are important for life in the real world. I mean, I haven't taken a test in 30 years. In 20 years, me being really good at taking tests. I had to be good at it to get my license. I had to be good at taking tests to get into grad school. Beyond that, what skills do I rely very heavily on for life in the real world? Collaboration, problem solving, flexibility, adaptability. Those are the skills that are crucial for life in the real world. Other reasons I think that we are much more transient than we used to be. And so a lot of the community supports that used to be in place aren't. I think we're really busy. I think adults are busier than ever. I think a lot of adults are struggling financially and having to work two jobs. There's a lot which, you know, they feel bad about. But who loses in the equation when all of these things are happening? Kids. And the more vulnerable ones fall off the apple cart. Who might not have fallen off the apple cart 20 years ago? They do now.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

What would you say to the people who believe that this process is too time consuming? Because certainly it's. At least in the short term, it's going to seem a lot more time consuming to ask your child what is going on and try to understand the situation and try to come up with a solution which may not even be the right solution long term because you're going to have to keep going back and revisiting. Long term, it might be a great thing, but short term, it would just be easier to just say, do as I say. What do you say to those people?

Dr. Ross Green:

It is very easy to do it, to say, do as I say. How hard can that be? Do as I say. No, because I said so. Those are very easy things to say, what I'm asking them to do. And see, I come at this from the perspective of somebody who's helped people solve problems collaboratively probably 10,000 times, right? So I've been there at the beginning and I've been there at the end, right? At the end, people aren't complaining about time. At the end, people are saying, you're saving me a lot of time here. Because now they can reflect back on what they used to do. And what they used to do used to take an enormous amount of time and. And had no hope of saving them time. Because the problems were remaining unsolved. I find that our desire to make things better quickly is what slows us down most often. The faster we try to go, the slower it takes, the longer it takes. What I find is if we take our time, figure out what's getting in the kid's way, help the kid understand what our concerns are, brainstorm solutions together. Going slow speeds things up. So I know the whole thing sounds paradoxical. The faster you try to go, the longer it takes. The more you take your time, the less time it takes. That's my experience. 10,000 Plan B's later, how can people

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

find out more about your organization Lives

Dr. Ross Green:

in the Balance Lives in the Balance this is the nonprofit that I found founded somewhere in the neighborhood of three years ago for two purposes and the web address because I'll forget it forget to give it. I remember the web address I'll forget to give it is www.lives l I v e s inthebalance.org and it is a treasure trove of free information on this model. There's streaming video showing people how to do it. There is a vast listening library filled with all of the radio programs that I've done over the last two years. I do two web based radio programs every week, one for educators that airs at 3pm every Monday Eastern time and one for parents that airs every Monday at 11:00am and people can join in live. And the cool thing about doing a live program is they can call in and ask questions and I'm happy to answer them. And the answers are great for other people to hear who are having the exact same difficulty. But all those programs are archived in the listening library on the Lives and a Balance website and there's got to be close to 200 of them at this point. They're 45 minutes long and they are an incredible resource for learning how to do all this and for thinking through all of the things that can get in the way. The most striking program I think I ever did was a mom who called into the Parents program and was sobbing before she even started. She had just found the Lives in a Balance website. And not only she was crying, primarily because at least this is what she was saying. She was very upset that she hadn't found the information earlier and she wanted to know if there was any way to repair her relationship with her daughter, but mostly she was kicking herself for what she didn't know. And I reassured her by letting her know how little I know about plumbing. Something goes wrong in my house with plumbing, I gotta call somebody who knows what they're doing dealing with a behaviorally challenging kid? Most parents are not prepared for it. Most parents are prepared for a regular old kid who does just fine. The behaviorally challenging ones are the ones who throw us off our game. The behaviorally challenging ones are the ones that require that we be at our best, even though they frequently bring out our worst. The Lives in the Balance website was I founded the nonprofit to give this model away for free and to advocate on behalf of behaviorally challenging kids and their parents, teachers and other caregivers. And that is what we do, and that is what we will continue doing.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

And having read the two books and I think you've written there's three, those are the two.

Dr. Ross Green:

Explosive Child and Loss at School are the two that are probably the most up to date at this point.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Well, having read both of these, I can attest to the fact that these are also treasure troves of information, especially the experience Explosive Child, which I know that you have some concerns about the title of it, but I really thought that the conversations and the examples that were given of discussions between parents and children were very real. And having three children of my own and nine siblings, many of whom were somewhat inflexible and frustrated, and they're all wonderful. Now as adults, I can say that this is a very useful parenting guide. It's very user friendly, very useful. And people who are interested in either reading the Explosive Child or Lost at School, where can they find them?

Dr. Ross Green:

They can find them at any bookseller or any online bookseller. They're easy to find. And the reason the examples are real is because they are.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Well, we appreciate your coming in and speaking with us today, spending time with us, talking about children with behavioral challenges. I know that they will thank you at some point when their parents have listened and gotten some good information out of this show or out of your radio show or out of reading one of your books. We've been speaking with child psychologist Dr. Ross Green, founder of Lives in the Balance and author of three books, including the Explosive Child and Lost at School.

Dr. Ross Green:

Thank you very much for having me on.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

We at the Dr. Lisa Radio Hour and podcast believe that kids are important and we like to take a look at various kid related topics. In two weeks on the Dr. Lisa Radio Hour and Podcast, we will be featuring speakers on the subject of kids nutrition. We hope you enjoy this bit of conversation with Dr. Michael Dedekian. So, Dr. Mike, first tell us what's a pediatric endocrinologist?

[Unidentified voice]:

Great question. So a pediatric endocrinologist is someone who helps children with growth and any other hormone problems they might have. That includes diabetes and a full spectrum of other diseases like thyroid problems and problems with puberty, those kinds of issues.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

It's pretty specialized. Why did you become interested in this?

[Unidentified voice]:

So that's a great question too. I became interested in endocrinology because I think it's a terrific blend of science and being able to help care for patients. So I have a basic science background from research laboratory experience. And the kind of science that we use in endocrinology directly takes what we have learned at the benchtop to the bedside where we can help children be well and grow.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Having spent time working with children and parents through my own medical practice, I know that it takes a certain special ability to communicate that you develop, I think, through pediatric training. Is this what you found to be.

[Unidentified voice]:

So that's true. I think no matter what kind of doctor you are, communication is an essential field. There's no doubt about it. Sometimes things in endocrinology can be complicated. So we do our best to boil things down to their essential elements. But one of the things that inspires me about the field is that endocrinology is very observational, meaning that we have learned from science what the body does naturally and are trying to restore that balance to our patients. And, and that's usually a pretty easy concept to understand.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

It is an imbalance that we're talking about now when it comes to children being overweight and obese. What has happened that's caused this imbalance to occur in such a widespread manner?

[Unidentified voice]:

Well, that's the essential question. I think you've really hit it on the head there, and we don't know all the answers to that question. Some people argue that our genetics have not changed that much in the past few hundred years. So therefore it must be mostly environmental influences that are the root of this problem. It's probably a little more complicated than that because as our understanding of genes and genetics has changed over the years, we're learning that genes are malleable, that their expression is dependent on certain things in the environment. And even though the DNA code may not have changed. How our genes are being expressed and used in the body may be something that's changing over time, and that's a complex constellation of environmental influences, societal influences, and many other different issues. So I always like to say in the beginning that the epidemic of obesity that we see in children and adults has no single trigger. It's a multifactorial issue, and I gave a couple examples already. Food supply would be another one. The way our food supply has changed, the way portion size has changed, the way our behaviors have changed, the way parenting has changed. All of these things play a role. Socioeconomics is another huge factor as well, and that has changed. So there's no one single issue. I think there is a popular misconception that obesity is a personal choice, and it is not a personal choice. I think if you ask anyone who's overweight if they have chosen to be overweight, they would not say that they have chosen to do that. Certainly any child who is overweight has not chosen that for themselves. So it is not a personal choice. It's not something completely under our control. And I don't mean to absolve us of personal responsibility because that's obviously very important and what we put into our bodies and how much we move our bodies is important. But there are many other factors like genetics and and family history and environment that are not under our control. And we need to think very broadly about this issue.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

This is Dr. Lisa Belisle and you have been listening to the Dr. Lisa Radio Hour and podcast show number 75, Kid Collaboration. Our guest today has been Dr. Ross Green, author of the Explosive Child and founder of Lives in the Balance. For more information on Dr. Green, visit. Document. The Dr. Lisa Radio Hour and Podcast is downloadable for free on itunes. For a preview of each week's shows, sign up for our e. Newsletter and like our Dr. Lisa Facebook page. You can also follow me on Twitter and Pinterest doctorisa and read my take on health and well being on Dr. Lisa's bountiful blog at bountifulpath.com for for more information on my medical practice and our upcoming Spring Wellness Talk on February 26, rev up youp Metabolism or our Qigong based wellness program beginning on March 6th. Please call the Body Architect at 207-774-2196. We love to hear from you, so please let us know what you think of the Dr. Lisa Radio Hour. We welcome your suggestions for future shows. This is Dr. Lisa Belisle hoping that you have enjoyed our kid collaboration show thank you for allowing me to be a part of your day. May you have a bountiful life.