Changeable by J. Stuart Ablon

Author:J. Stuart Ablon
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2018-06-05T04:00:00+00:00

Helping “Regular” Kids to Thrive

CPS may benefit parents confronted with extremely challenging behavior, but what if you’re a parent and your kids are typically developing or well adjusted? Can you benefit from using CPS as well? The answer is a resounding yes. Like their more challenging peers, well-adjusted kids have their own unique set of strengths and weaknesses when it comes to skills. But whereas a challenging kid might struggle mightily in a number of everyday life situations, a more typically developing kid might struggle in only one or two areas—and in a modest way, at that. Your son might not be flunking out of school, but you might wonder if he could be applying himself a bit more. Or your daughter might be doing well in school, but you wish you didn’t have to work so hard to get her out of bed in the morning. Or with either of your children, you might be satisfied overall with their development, yet still feel a bit worried about the food choices they are making.

Whatever your area of concern, CPS tells you that you have three choices: try to make your child do it your way (Plan A), do it their way for now (Plan C), or work collaboratively to arrive at a solution (Plan B). If a conflict arises that relates to what you deem a problem area, you might choose to work on it using Plan B so that you can solve it in a durable way, while also helping to strengthen your relationship with your child and build your child’s skills. Or you might decide in this instance that your child isn’t struggling that much and you don’t need to pay special attention to the underlying skills. If you just need your child to comply with your wishes, and she has the skills to do so, you might decide to assert your will. Alternately, you might decide to drop your desires and work on the problem another time.

You might wonder if parents of well-adjusted kids really need CPS. After all, these kids are already skilled in relative terms, and any disciplinary problems they experience aren’t especially severe. Can’t parents get away with simply asserting their will when conflict arises? They can, but as I tell parents, they’re missing a huge skill-building opportunity. When children already comply well with authority, they have a much easier time jumping into a Plan B conversation and participating. Through listening to the concerns of their parents, articulating their own concerns, and brainstorming solutions, they can develop a number of more refined problem-solving skills that they’ll need in order to thrive in the adult world.

We adults are expected to comply with authority figures, too. We have to be able to stay calm when conflict arises with bosses, colleagues, or customers, regulating our emotions, showing a certain amount of flexibility, and, in many cases, doing what we’re asked. But today’s postindustrial workplaces require much more than this. On a daily basis, employees and managers in most settings must collaborate with others to solve pressing business problems.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.