MENTAL HEALTH PROFESSIONALS

As a mental health professional, you’re often the go-to person on helping caregivers of kids with any variety of behavioral and emotional challenges. And there’s a good chance caregivers have already tried any variety of interventions that didn’t get the job done or made things worse. No point in perpetuating the cycle.

Parents want to know why parenting strategies that have “worked” for their well-behaved children aren’t working for their child who’s not doing well. To answer that question, you’ll need to first help them understand the factors that are making it hard for the child to do well. Educators often want to know why their traditional school disciplinary practices aren’t working for a particular student and why their traditional structures — FBAs, IEPs, 504 Plans, Behavior Plans — haven’t gotten it done.

In the Collaborative & Proactive Solutions (CPS) model, concerning behavior is understood to be a child’s frustration response. Big frustration responses are an indication that a child is struggling with certain skills, such as flexibility/adaptability, frustration tolerance, problem solving, and emotion regulation. No, we don’t view concerning behavior as coercive or as an attention-seeking or manipulation device. And we don’t think kids exhibit concerning behavior because they’re poorly motivated. So we aren’t real keen on traditional behavior modification strategies involving adult-imposed consequences.

Frustration responses occur when kids are having difficulty meeting certain expectations. Those unmet expectations are called unsolved problems. The goal of intervention is to solve those problems collaboratively and proactively. And that’s something behavior modification strategies weren’t designed to do. No matter how often they’re applied.