Collaborative problem solving
Kids do well if they can — so find the missing skill, together, in advance.
Greene's premise is that challenging behaviour is a skill problem rather than a motivation problem, so incentives aim at the wrong thing. You list the specific situations that reliably go wrong, and then solve each one with the child — in a calm moment, never in the middle of it — until you find a solution you can both actually live with. It is the most procedural approach here and the most demanding on the adult in advance.
Not what it promises
Every approach here works for the families it suits; the useful question is what it costs to run.
- Doing the work when nothing is going wrong, which is when nobody feels like it
- Hearing your child's concern all the way out before offering yours
- Letting go of solutions you already had in mind
- Keeping a list, literally — the method does not run from memory
Where it stands
Every position with the source it was read from, and the pale band is how much internal variation the approach genuinely tolerates. A wide band is not vagueness — it means the texts in this family really do disagree with each other about that axis.
Source: The Explosive Child
Source: Raising an Emotionally Intelligent Child
Source: The Explosive Child
Source: The Explosive Child
The lowest position on who-decides that still has an adult structuring the conversation — the defining feature of the row.
Source: The Explosive Child
Source: The Explosive Child
Source: The Explosive Child
Source: The Explosive Child
Source: The Explosive Child
Source: The Explosive Child
Source: The Explosive Child
Source: The Explosive Child
Source: The Explosive Child
Source: The Explosive Child
Source: The Explosive Child
What to read
The Explosive Child — Ross Greene
Written for the hardest cases, and the method is the same for everyone else.
Raising Human Beings — Ross Greene
The same approach for an ordinary child, if the title of the other one does not fit.
Compared with
- Collaborative problem solving vs Attachment parenting
- Collaborative problem solving vs Authoritative
- Collaborative problem solving vs Behavioural / structured
- Collaborative problem solving vs Conscious parenting
- Collaborative problem solving vs Free-range
- Collaborative problem solving vs Gentle parenting
- Collaborative problem solving vs Good enough
- Collaborative problem solving vs High expectation
Sources for this row
The Explosive Child
Ross Greene, Harper, 5th ed. 2014. Primary text for Collaborative & Proactive Solutions: unsolved problems are solved with the child, in advance, not in the moment.
Raising an Emotionally Intelligent Child
John Gottman, Simon & Schuster, 1997. Emotion coaching, cited for the R2 high pole and for what the emotion-coaching evidence does and does not show.