Dr. Ross Greene on Using CPS (Collaborative and Proactive Solutions) with Very Young Kids

Debbie:

Hey Ross, welcome back to the podcast.

Ross Greene:

Thanks for inviting me to come back.

Debbie:

Well, I honestly have been looking for an excuse to bring you back to the show. And then I heard about your new documentary about using CPS with young children. And I was like, this is the perfect opportunity. So I’d love to talk about that. But before we do, I was just saying before I hit record, you were last on the show almost seven years ago. I think we were talking about the Kids We Lose documentary and also of course touching base on all your books. But I’d love it if you could kind of talk a little bit about maybe just an update from our last interview, like where your focus is. And I’d also love to hear about what the response was to your work surrounding The Kids We Lose.

Ross Greene:

Good. Well, I have been sort of interrupted by COVID, but not really. Really devoting myself to the nonprofit that I founded, Lives in the Balance. My book, Raising Human Beings, may have come out in the last seven years. I can’t remember what its publication date was, but I think that was the last seven years. But Lives in the Balance, we’ve really been expanding, number one, all the free resources on the CPS model on the website. But number two, our advocacy and legislative efforts. I now think of us as among the leading organizations advocating against punitive exclusionary disciplinary practices federally at the state level. Internationally, I was just participating in a briefing in Washington DC on the Keeping All Students Safe Act, which would make it harder for schools to restrain and seclude kids. There’s corporal punishment legislation. There’s legislation aimed at protecting kids in residential facilities. A lot going on at the state level. So that’s been a big part of what we’ve been doing at Lives in the Balance.

We also now have close to 5,000 grassroots advocates who are helping us out. That’s been a major focal point at Lives in the Balance. We’re still training all over the world, schools, treatment facilities, parents on the collaborative and proactive solutions model. And in terms of what I’m working on right now, it’s a book. That is what I’m most pumped up about these days, which is just how long, for decades really, we’ve been teaching educators and staff and treatment facilities about how to deescalate and restrain kids.

Ross Greene:

That just simply means that we’ve been deescalating and restraining kids a lot. When we could have been teaching them instead how to proactively solve the problems that are causing kids to become escalated in the first place. And as I said in our recent newsletter, the harm that we could have been preventing is immeasurable. So that’s in the pipeline, as well as like the eight other books that I wish I had the time to write.

Debbie:

I relate to that. And just even hearing you share all of that, like I’m having a little bit of my own, you know, I’m going back to when I first discovered the explosive child when I had, you know, when my child who’s about to be 20 was six, I think. And just kind of following your work over the years and, you know, listeners, I’m just gonna say now, if you didn’t hear our first conversation, I’ll have it in the show notes. Listen to that. I will have so many links in the show notes. The B team is an amazing resource on Facebook. We actually had someone from your community join my community for a private conversation to really walk us through the resources. So there’s so much and I’m so excited and awed by the work that you’re doing with policy. That to me seems like the most powerful work in so many ways and probably the most cumbersome in terms of really trying to get change to happen. What’s that been like?

Ross Greene:

That has been interesting. Getting anything done at the federal level these days is interesting and glacial. I think we’re having more success at the state level. We passed a restraint and seclusion bill here in Maine about two years ago. Different states are considering similar bills. So I think that things are moving more quickly, though not always immediately successfully at the state level, but it’s a process. There’s a Canadian bill to get people to stop hitting kids. So the good news is Lives in the Balance is sort of a hub, not only of free resources on the CPS model and all kinds of support for people, but also the hub of all of those advocacy and policy efforts on that sort of legislation.

So it’s been a little bit of a learning curve. Things don’t move as quickly as you would like. But I guess my attitude is this. There’s two ways to go here. Both are fine. One is to mandate change, which legislation does. And the other is just to help people get trained in a different way of thinking and doing things. You know, I’m fine with door number two without legislation. Sometimes it just takes legislation to give it the push that it needs. Nothing moves as quickly as I would like it to though.

Debbie:

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And before we pivot to your documentary and what we’ll be spending the most of this conversation talking about, I just want to ask on a global level, you know, how, because as I mentioned before we hit record, we’re moving back to the Netherlands, I get asked a lot about just the state of neurodivergent understanding and awareness in school systems in the EU and the UK and around the world. And so can you just talk for a moment about the awareness of and willingness to explore a different, more peaceful approach to supporting kids.

Ross Greene:

Variable is the key word here. You know, CPS has always met with favor in Scandinavia. I’m just back from Australia and New Zealand where they are also looking for how to do things differently. We are exploding in Ireland right now because of a very huge project we have going on there. So it’s variable. There are states and places, countries that are not as interested. I tend to think of Scandinavia, despite some current drifting in the wrong direction, as among the most enlightened on how kids are treated. 60 some odd countries have passed bills so that people can’t hit kids anymore. So obviously that’s going well.

The neurodivergent community, in my opinion, has been probably the most outspoken community when it comes to the harms done by punitive exclusionary disciplinary practices, because they probably have been the people on the receiving end of those harms more than any others. And that is gaining a foothold as well in different places. So if you squint your eyes, we’re moving in the right direction. If you focus on certain states that still like restraining, secluding, and hitting kids, you might not come to that opinion, but all in due course.

Debbie:

Yeah, great, thank you. Thanks for addressing that. So, all right, let’s pivot. We are gonna talk about a documentary. Someone from your team reached out, because you were doing a grassroots effort to really spread the word about a documentary called It’s Never Too Early, CPS with Very Young Kids. And I was very interested, because I get asked that question all the time. You know and I probably even thought it, well, at six, how come, and you’re going much younger than that. So can you tell us first about what this is about and what kind of forced your hand, not forced your hand, what encouraged you to get this out into the world?

Ross Greene:

Well, exactly what you just said is what encouraged us to get it out into the world. People being skeptical about whether three, four, and five -year -olds can be engaged in the process of collaboratively solving the problems that are affecting their lives. We’ve always known that the answer is yes, but thanks to some funding from Coleman Family Ventures, we were able to actually pursue a project in which we filmed three and four and five year olds being engaged in that process and filmed lots of parents for the documentary, Never Too Early, talking about their goals for their very young kids, their aspirations, their fears about the world, their kids are inheriting the skills their kids are gonna need to be in that world.

And quite frankly, how the process of solving problems collaboratively and proactively with kids might help them learn those skills. But me, you know, I got this in my blood. For me, even three -year -olds are three years delayed on us solving problems collaboratively with kids. I think you start with infants. The basics, and the basics are being attuned to what kids are struggling with, applying a solution, and getting feedback from the kid about whether what you thought was going wrong and what you thought would fix it, how well you’re doing. And I would just call that not only good parenting, but being responsive to the hand you’ve been dealt. I don’t view the CPS model as being any different. As I’ve always said, I don’t think anybody has a problem, generally speaking, with doing what I just described with infants. I think that at around the age of two, and I said this in the film, two very interesting forces come together. Number one, us caregivers, for whatever reason, start to become obsessed with compliance. It’s like number one, the minute the kid turns two. And they, the kids, who have always known what they wanted basically from the minute they pop out, some interesting skills kick in for them to permit them to go for it, locomotion and language. So now two interesting forces are coming together, a kid who can now go for it and caregivers who’ve decided that compliance is their number one priority, which as I said in the film is probably why we call it the terrible twos. Why would we not continue being responsive to the hand we’ve been dealt and meeting kids where they’re at from age zero to forever? That’s of course the big question.

Debbie:

So I’m so glad you spelled that out. I actually pulled out that quote because it jumped out at me. Around the age of two is when most parents decide compliance is their priority. And I was like, I felt that. I felt very seen when I saw that, when you said that. So why do you think that is? Like what, that is the big question, but why do you think, what happens at that time?

Ross Greene:

You know, because the kid is now going for it, I think caregivers feel a loss of a sense of control. I would argue you aren’t in control from the word go and thinking you are is delusional. This kid was somebody the minute they popped out. This is not a blank slate. So the goal of parenting once again is to be responsive to the hand you’ve been dealt. The best you can shoot for and I talked about this in Raising Human Beings is influence. You are the kid’s partner. The more you shoot for control, the less control you end up having. So I think it’s a bit of a feeling that you’ve lost control. You know, when they’re an infant, they can’t do anything. They just lay there, right? And you hold them and you try to get them to smile at you. You are thrilled when they, you know, look happy. Little by little, they start going for it. But I also think, we live perhaps more so in the United States than some other places, but also perhaps so more in some other places than the United States. We live in a society here that tends to be pretty compliance oriented. And of course, we apply that to our kids. Those are the, I also think there’s convenience involved. I think that it feels more convenient and easier to just have a kid who, when you say jump, says how high. But I also think we feel judged if we have a kid who doesn’t. I think those are some of the reasons.

Debbie:

Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And you know, you said going back to the infancy, you say in the documentary that crying it out is a form of insisting on compliance. And I was like, yeah, that’s exactly right. And that you’re, you said your top priority in that moment is either compliance or convenience. So it is, it does start very young. And as you said, our kids are not blank slates. You said infants are very good at letting you know if you’ve got it right or wrong. So could you say more about just that infancy relationship and how, like what is CPS? You mentioned being attuned and responsive and I think of Mona Delahooke’s work and I know you two are close colleagues as well and it’s so exciting to see much more information out there about how to do this, but could you talk specifically about CPS with an infant. Are there any other things we would want to know about that?

Ross Greene:

You know, the key is to pay attention to what an infant is telling you, both when they’re happy and when they are distressed. When they’re happy, you’re probably fine. When they’re distressed, they’re telling you something. And by the way, I need to make the point that we’ll go back to infants. That’s true with three -year -olds and eight -year -olds and 14 -year -olds and 67 -year -olds. When they’re distressed, they’re telling you something. And what they’re telling you is that there’s some expectation they’re having difficulty meeting. Regrettably, especially as kids get older, we pay more attention to the way they’re communicating than we do to what they’re communicating. And of course, the kids I’ve been working with for a very long time are the ones who communicate that they’re frustrated in ways that tend to be maladaptive, but they’re still communicating something important and that is that they’re frustrated for a very long time. We’ve been primarily paying attention to the frustration response Not to what the frustration response is telling us. Okay now that’s true for every kid and quite frankly largely true for adults as well now back to infants, you know infants have some Characteristic ways of letting us know they’re distressed. I don’t have to go into detail there because everybody who’s had an infant knows and most people who didn’t have an infant know too. What are they distressed about? Kind of the same stuff, hunger, heat, cold, lights, noises. You know, I got 13 year olds who I work with who are still distressed by those things, right? Novelty changes. These are things that distress human beings, right? There are infants. Sometimes we say that they have a difficult temperament who are distressed more often and by more things and in ways that are more extreme. And there are infants, we call them easy, who are distressed by fewer things. And when they are distressed, they are not as distressed. Okay, that’s good to know, but they’re all still communicating something, right? Even easy infants get distressed sometimes. It’s just that their stress response isn’t as toxic to us adults, right? There are infants, I used to be good colleagues with a researcher who did research on infant cries. And there are infant cries that are just excruciating, that may actually cause some infants to be more at risk of maltreatment because of the characteristics of their cry.

Okay, so that just tells us what we already knew, but it tells us that it starts from zero. There are kids who communicate that they’re having difficulty meeting expectations, that they’re distressed, that they’re stressed in ways that are less adaptive than others. It doesn’t change throughout the lifespan. So for me, whether it’s infancy, or two and three year olds, or 17 year olds, the goal is exactly the same. Pay attention to the fact that the kid is distressed, and by the way, even though that sounds like a no -brainer, it’s not a given. Don’t be so caught up in what the frustration response is. I fully acknowledge some frustration responses are less adaptive, more disruptive, more dangerous than others. Pay attention to what the kid is communicating and collaborate with the kid on solving those problems together. A lot of what we’ve been doing since B .F. Skinner is we’ve been paying attention to the behavior and we’ve been trying to modify it. And the bad news is rewarding and or punishing behavior does not solve a single problem that’s causing that behavior. We’re covering a lot of territory here.

Debbie:

We really are. My brain is going in 10 different directions. I want to pivot to talking about values a little bit, because that was a big piece of the film. But I just want to say that I had many aha moments. And I live, eat, and read this stuff and have for a long time. And so I always get quite chuffed when I’m still like, whoa. Even talking about a difficult infant, which You know, I was like, yep, that’s what I had, right? A difficult infant is just an infant who has difficulty meeting our expectations.

Ross Greene:

Let’s take my daughter as an example. She’s 26 now, but as an infant, if we had the expectation that she would sleep through the night, we were screwed. And I was the nighttime guy. And so walking her tended not to work. The only thing I could find that worked was driving her around in the car at two o ‘clock in the morning. I like to tell her, I don’t think I have felt rested since she was an infant. There you go, parental guilt. But it might be true, right? But eventually we were able to get her to sleep at night. But what it mostly took was trying to pay attention to what she was telling us about what was going to work and what wasn’t going to work. You know, the other option. And there are people who would do this and I don’t fault them for doing this. I just don’t think this fits the definition of being responsive. Who would let the kid cry it out? For some people, that’s a matter of philosophy. For others, it’s a matter of desperation. I was unable to do that and I don’t suspect that it would have worked. And even the guy, Dr. Ferber, who recommended that many years ago, I was sitting next to him on an airplane and he was expressing regrets about having given that advice.

In any event, so I’ve got first -hand experience with an infant. My son was a peach, right? First -hand experience with an infant who’s having difficulty meeting an expectation. We really have the expectation that you sleep through the night. Now, what are we going to do if you’re having difficulty meeting that expectation? As kids get a little bit older, meaning they can tell you, many of them. That makes it, in my opinion, a little bit easier. Otherwise, as you would with non -speaking kids of any age, you are dependent on your powers of observation and trial and error. Hopefully, eventually you get to know the kid and you sense patterns in what could be the matter and patterns in the solutions that might work. But this is a very different approach than solving all problems by sticking a bottle in the kid’s mouth.

Debbie:

Yeah, absolutely. Okay, thank you. Thank you for sharing that. And now also, there were a lot of drives at two in the morning in Seattle up to Northgate Mall in that Honda, I remember, a long time ago. So totally relate to that. So let’s move to the preschool age. What I found so interesting about this part of the documentary was you did talk to a lot of parents and you asked them questions like, what do you want for your kids? And it was really about values. And there was something about that that really struck me because I could have told you my values then, but I didn’t parent to achieve those values. Can you talk about that? I mean, again, it seems like such a simple reframe, but it kind of blew my mind.

Ross Greene:

It’s a big deal, because I think that us parents often don’t give ourselves the luxury of thinking about our values. We’re busy, we’re paying attention to what other people think. I would call this values -based parenting. You should be basing your parenting based on what your values are and what you want for your kid. and who you want that kid to be. And that’s going to translate directly into whether you are primarily using parenting strategies that are oriented toward power and control or parenting strategies that are more oriented toward collaboration and problem solving. And, you know, there’s other ways to slice the pie. But for me, that’s a big part of the dichotomy. But that should be based on values. What kind of parent do I want to be? Who do I want to help my kid be? What am I trying to transmit to my child? And I actually thought that was one of the best parts of the film, where we’re hearing parents of lots of different ethnicities and socioeconomic strata and from all kinds of different countries talking about values and what kind of parenting practices coincide with those values. What a great discussion to have with people. And it’s something people really like talking about, but as you said, just don’t really give themselves the luxury to think about very much.

Debbie:

Yeah, it was really powerful and I watched that and I thought about it with parents of such young children too, right? Like there’s such a, like a hope and an optimism and you know, this very clear vision. And I also, you know, I’ll just say like, I was like, yeah, and then your child has their own agenda. And so you’re always constantly, you know, having to meld your desires and wishes with this other human. And I just wonder how, for me, I was wondering, how do we keep those values to the forefront so we’re always prioritizing them? What kind of habits can we create so that we don’t get sucked into? Because as our kids get older, there is judgment. There are expectations in different environments. And I feel like it gets harder and harder to hone in on the, or just to stay honed in.

Ross Greene:

I think that we should give ourselves the luxury to write down what our values are really early in the process. Hang on to that. I actually think those values especially serve you well when other kids are involved, when other parents are involved, when schools are involved because of my values. And I’ve had the luxury of thinking about values more than most because I’ve written about it and thought it through. Not that I think it’s that complicated. None of the parents in the film had really, none of them practiced for the interview. It’s amazing how easily it came out of them, right? Who do you want your kid to be? What kind of parent do you want to be? It’s a luxury to think about it, but it’s also a luxury to continue reflecting on it. I knew how I wanted my kids to be treated. And so when my son’s hockey coach, when he was six, not the coach, my son. When my son came off the ice one time and we were walking to the car and he said to me, daddy, what does pathetic mean? Six years old, I said, where did you hear that word? He said, coach, so -and -so told me that my play in the corner was pathetic. OK. My values then kicked in. The coach immediately got an email. He denied it. I don’t imagine that my son had ever heard the word pathetic before, so I knew it probably went down. But that’s me saying, don’t treat my kid that way.

And you shouldn’t be treating other kids that way either. I don’t care if you’re a hockey coach. I don’t care what the hockey vibe is. I care about how you treat my kid and who I want my kid to be when they grow up. And what I want them to have modeled for them as it relates to how to solve a problem, even if that problem is unsatisfactory performance. By the way, unsatisfactory performance at age six could be on the hockey rink. At age 12, it could be academic. At age 27, it could be in a job. I also want my kids to know, if you aren’t being treated this way, you have a choice. You have, you have, what’s the word? Agency, thank you. It’s not such a hard word. It’s just that I’m 66. You have agency. You can choose to stay in it. You can say to yourself, this is not how I choose to be treated. I’m out. Good. I want my kids to know they have agency. I want them to know how they should be treated in their job, in their relationships. That starts from zero and never stops. I think the important thing is we need to think about it ahead of time and keep reflecting on it.

Debbie:

Yeah. Yeah. And notice those intuitive hits like you had, well, that wasn’t even intuitive. That was a very visceral response when you heard your son say that word, but we need to pay attention to when we get those signals and kind of get curious about what is that about and why does that feel wrong? And then we can take the appropriate action. 

Ross Greene:

But here’s what’s interesting. My reaction, which was based on values, was probably different than some other potential reactions, which may have been based on different values. I could have said, well, that’s hockey. I could have said, well, you need to listen to Coach when he tells you you’re not doing a good job. And I didn’t tell my son that the feedback was invalid. I had no idea what the play was in the corner anyways. I grew up in Florida. What do I know about hockey? But so the feedback wasn’t invalid. The way it was communicated left a lot to be desired. That’s it.

Debbie:

Yeah, super interesting. So what we’re not going to do in this conversation, because we’re kind of going to be wrapping up, is walk through the collaborative and proactive solutions model. Listeners, if you’re not familiar with it, there again, go back and listen to our first interview and look at the show notes pages. There will be so many resources to walk through that. And it’s, I mean, it’s a game changer. I probably mention it in every talk that I give to parent communities because it’s so powerful. I do want to ask you one question about, well, there was a quote that jumped out at me when you’re talking about defining the adult concerns, which is really such a key part of this process is why does this matter? You said, if you don’t know why this is important that the expectation is met, I don’t know why you have this expectation. And it was another mic drop moment. And any kind of advice for parents to kind of catch themselves or start to really question why they care so much about the things they care about that could get in the way of having this collaboration with our kids.

Ross Greene:

I think that’s part of reflecting on one’s values. Values lead us to what we expect from our kids. If we value, as I said in the film, and by the way, the best place for people to get a tutorial is in the film. If they watch the film, they’ll know about the CPS model for sure. If we value a clean room, then that will have implications for our expectations for our kids, right? It’s not something I valued particularly, so I didn’t care. My son’s bed was never made. My daughter’s bed was always made perfectly, right? I don’t care. It’s not a value I hold, right? My values are related to how you treat people. I have expectations around that. How you expect to be treated. I have expectations around that. But I think that all starts with what do you value? What’s important? And coming up with that on your own. It’s not really up to other people to define your values for you. It’s up to you. It’s your kid, it’s your values, it’s your expectations. You get to pick them. And if somebody else is picking your expectations for you and they don’t jive with your values, that’s conversation.

Debbie:

Yeah, that’s great. Thank you. So okay, the documentary. It’s called Never Too Early: CPS With Very Young Kids. I have it here on YouTube. How can listeners view it and how can we as a community. I’ve got a big listenership. How can we support it and spread the word?

Ross Greene:

Watch it and tell people about it. They can watch it not only on YouTube, but straight from the Lives in the Balance website. If they go to the, so first of all, they gotta get on the website, livesinthebalance.org. Then they go to our solution in the upper nav bar, scroll down to CPS with young kids and they can watch the film and the accompanying examples of three, four and five year olds doing the problem solving process straight from the Lives in the Balance website.

Debbie:

That’s great. And I just want to say, and I’ve had this conversation with Mona so many times too, like if I had had access to brain body parenting as a parent of a young child, I would have done things so much differently. And I’m so grateful for any parent who has access to this model and can start using it with their young kids. I feel like it’s going to prevent so much harm. And it’s really part of this bigger shift that we’re all working towards every, you know, helping our kids grow up respecting, having our kids grow up knowing that they’re respected, understanding who they are and being good humans, right? You’re raising good humans is one of your books. So I know that this work is truly powerful. So any, before we say goodbye, any last words of wisdom or anything you want to share that we didn’t get to in this conversation?

Ross Greene:

You know, as you were talking, I was thinking one of the things I like best about the model is that it not only takes into account the kids’ concerns, and we’ve been spending a lot of time in the last decade perhaps teaching kids to make sure that they’re taking care of themselves, say what they need, but it also takes into account the adults’ concerns. And at various points in history, we’ve been teaching adults that their concerns are paramount. Neither has to be paramount. They can coexist. And we can come up with solutions together. And this is my statement on current world events. We can come up with solutions together even to longstanding problems that take into account the concerns of both parties. And at the very least, we can teach our kids how to do that.

Debbie:

That’s wonderful. Thank you. Dr. Greene, thank you so much. I so appreciated this conversation and getting to catch up with you and will continue to follow and support your work. And yeah, just thanks for everything you shared today.

Ross Greene:

Much appreciated. Thanks for inviting me to do this.