KindlED | The Prenda Podcast
The KindlED Podcast explores the science of nurturing children's potential and creating empowering learning environments through microschooling. Powered by Prenda, each episode offers actionable insights to help you ignite your child's love of learning. We'll dive into evidence-based tools and techniques that kindle curiosity, motivation, and well-being in young learners. Do you have a question, topic, or story you'd like to share with us? Get in touch at podcast@prenda.com.
KindlED | The Prenda Podcast
Episode 78: Kids Do Well if They Can. A Conversation with Stuart Ablon.
We rethink “behavior problems” with Dr. Stuart Ablon, showing why kids struggle when skills lag and how collaboration—not control—creates durable change. We walk through Plan B step-by-step, with a classroom role play that turns disruption into progress.
• kids do well if they can as core mindset
• relationship quality as strongest predictor of change
• plans A, B, C defined with pros and cons
• plan B three steps: empathy, adult concern, invite solutions
• externalizing the problem to reduce defensiveness
• real-time role play: talking during math
• testing solutions against both concerns for realism
• building intrinsic motivation via mastery, autonomy, relatedness
• strategic use of plan C for prioritization
• how adults regulate themselves to avoid power struggles
• resources for learning more about Think Kids and Collaborative Problem Solving
About our guest
Stuart Ablon, Ph.D., is Founder and Director of Think:Kids in the Department of Psychiatry at Massachusetts General Hospital. An award-winning psychologist, Dr. Ablon is Associate Professor and the Thomas G. Stemberg Endowed Chair in Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. He is the author of three books, Changeable, hand-picked by Malcolm Gladwell, Adam Grant, Dan Pink, and Susan Cain for their Next Big Idea Club, The School Discipline Fix, and Treating Explosive Kids: The Collaborative Problem Solving Approach. Dr. Ablon received his doctorate in clinical psychology from the University of California at Berkeley and completed his training at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School. One of the world’s top-rated thought-leaders and keynote speakers, Dr. Ablon teaches educators, parents, clinicians, managers, and leaders a very different approach to understanding and addressing challenging behavior of all types and in all people. Dr. Ablon has helped hundreds of organizations throughout the world implement the Collaborative Problem Solving approach.
Connect with Stuart
Stuart Ablon
Changeable
The School Discipline Fix
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About the podcast
The KindlED Podcast explores the science of nurturing children's potential and creating empowering learning environments.
Powered by Prenda Microschools, each episode offers actionable insights to help you ignite your child's love of learning. We'll dive into evidence-based tools and techniques that kindle young learners' curiosity, motivation, and well-being.
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We're all ears! If you have a question or topic you'd love our hosts to tackle, please send it to podcast@prenda.com. Let's dive into the conversation together!
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Empathy isn't agreeing or disagreeing. And it's not just sort of trying to talk a kid out of what they're feeling. Empathy is really trying to understand what they're feeling. And there's going to be time for us to work on that cognitive distortion that that child has that affects their self-esteem so badly. But right now, I'm just in the business of trying to understand.
SPEAKER_01:Hi, and welcome to the Kindle Podcast. I'm Katie, your host for today. And in this episode, we're going to talk about the real root cause of what we commonly refer to as behavior issues in kids. I know this is a hot topic, and I'm super excited to share all these tips with you today. I love every conversation that we have here on the Kindle Podcast, but this one really stands out as one of the most valuable conversations that I've had to date. You're going to leave better understanding the behaviors that you're seeing from your kids or your students, and you'll know exactly how you can help them improve that without using fear, punishments, rewards, anything like that. And that might sound too good to be true, but I assure you that it is absolutely real. We teach all of these strategies in our advanced guide training course at Prenda, and I'm super excited to share with all of you this amazing approach because I know that it works, and I see it work in all of our microschools, and I see it work with my own kids, and I'm just super excited to unpack this for you today. So we are talking to Dr. Stuart Ablon, and I'm gonna tell you a little bit about him, and then we will get to our conversation. So, Stuart Ablon is the founder and director of Think Kids in the Department of Psychiatry at Massachusetts General Hospital. An award-winning psychologist, Dr. Ablon is an associate professor and the Thomas G. Stemburg Endowed Chair in Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. He is the author of three books, Changeable, which was hand-picked by Malcolm Gladwell, Adam Grant, Dan Pink, and Susan Kane for their next big idea club, which is a huge honor. His other book is called The School Discipline Fix, and he's also written Treating Explosive Kids, The Collaborative Problem Solving Approach. So let's get to our conversation with Dr. Avalon. Dr. Avalon, thank you so much for coming on the Kindle Podcast. We are so excited to have you today.
SPEAKER_00:It's a pleasure to be here. I really appreciate you having me.
SPEAKER_01:All right, so back us up in your story a little bit. Tell us who you are. Like, how did you come into the work that you're doing? What is like, what would you call? We call it at prendo your big why. Like, why are you doing the work that you're doing? What is the change you're seeking to make in the world?
SPEAKER_00:All right. Big questions to start. I'll answer the last one first so I don't forget it. The change that I'm hoping to help be a part of making in the world is really helping people to better understand why some kids struggle with their behavior and really to understand that through a much more accurate and humane, compassionate lens. Because what I've found over the years is if you really help people understand why kids are struggling, the sort of how to help almost flows naturally from there. And sadly, I think for a long, long time, not just for kids, but anybody for that matter, we've really misunderstood why people struggle with their behavior. And as a result, a lot of kids have been really uh mistreated. And frankly, we we've lost a lot of opportunities and caused a lot of damage along the way, not on purpose, but because we've sort of been guided by the wrong ideas. So that's my why. How did I come to this? I was very fortunate to, in graduate school, have sort of a split existence where on the one hand, I was working with um guy who specialized in working with kids with externalizing difficulties, challenging behaviors of different kinds. And on the other side, I was studying different types of therapy intensively. And we were literally like recording hours and hours of therapy. And I and my classmates were coding these hours across a hundred different variables and then using those variables to predict when therapy was helpful. What about it was helpful? And these two worlds were colliding for me because, on the one hand, most of the time when it comes to challenging behavior, we were focused on trying to discipline kids, to use rewards and consequences to change their behavior, sort of using mechanisms of power and control, if you will. But then what I was finding in my therapy research is that there was only one reliable predictor of helping anybody to change their behavior, anyways. And frankly, it's also the most powerful one. And what we were founding, and this has been found found by tons of other psychotherapy researchers, is that that one reliable predictor, the most powerful predictor of helping somebody to change, is the degree of helping relationship that you have with the person you're trying to help. And so I was leaving graduate school thinking, okay, wait a second, you got to figure out how to build a helping relationship. That's the most important thing. And yet, with kids with challenging behavior, we often blame them for their behavior and try to use power and control to correct it. Like those two things don't go together. And then I was lucky enough to come back to Mass General Hospital, where I'd been a research assistant before for my post-doctor, uh predoctoral and postdoctoral internships and fellowships, and started working with Dr. Ross Green at the time, who was working on the book The Explosive Child that he wrote, that was positing some of these original ideas about that, you know, kids who struggle with their behavior, that it isn't a lack of motivation. What he was reviewing is decades of research in neuropsychology that showed us that what I like to say is these kids they don't lack the will to behave well. What they lack are the skills to behave well. And that started what was a more than decade uh collaboration with him and the work that I've been doing for 30 years since.
SPEAKER_01:That's amazing. Yes, I love Dr. Ross Green and I we were visiting before the podcast. I'll just tell a quick story of how Prenda came into contact with your work. I was writing the very first Prenda guide training. This was back in like 2019, and Kelly, Prenda's founder, and I were kind of like intuiting a lot of this, treating kids differently, treating kids more compassionately, building relationships first, like doing this. And I would kind of try to like explain it to moms at the park, and they were like, no, like that would never work. Like, I just like give me the sticker chart, like get the grades out. Like, we have to take a super hard line with kids, or like they'll just play video games all day, or they'll just sit there, they'll do nothing. And it's just not what we were seeing as we were like actually in the trenches, like building relationships with kids and like inviting them into the learning space. We saw them like be very eager and very curious, and like we were unlocking a lot of motivation in them without any of these tools, right? So I was trying to find some, like, you know, I'm not I don't have your experience or research or anything like that. So the moms at the park were not listening to me. And so I finally I did a little bit more digging and found um your work and Dr. Ross Green's work and was finally, finally able to connect them with more of like a method and the research that was like, this is what I'm feeling, this is what we're doing. But here's some actual like method behind it. And we, as soon as we started applying the approach, like we saw night and day changes with kids that were really, really hard. A lot of the people that come into Prenda, especially early days Prenda, like their kids just school does not work for their child, right? Their child is so unhappy. All of these stories are like kids are crying, holding on to the car, like, do not drop me off at this building. Their anxiety is through the roof or their behaviors are out of control, right? Like, so their their parents are in a high degree of pain, I would say, around the whole education space. They're looking for a different option. And so a lot of them came into prend on. So we had to figure out how are we going to help these kids who in a different setting would be like labeled and classified as very extreme behavior cases.
SPEAKER_00:Yes. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:And we started applying the approach and it was just like night and day. So really appreciate your work and how it's influenced all of all of our work.
SPEAKER_00:Well, I'm thrilled to hear that. And it's I mean, it sounds like, you know, like many people, you had come to some of these ideas on your own through a a lot of experience, as you said, in the trenches, sort of working in really challenging circumstances. And, you know, I think one of the difficulties is you talked about the sort of the moms at the park wouldn't listen. Well, you know, just like we like to say kids do well if they can, moms do well if they can too. And so do dads like me. You know, we all do well if we can. But when we're equipped with out to out-of-date ideas, you know, sort of conventional wisdom that has been disproven, but we're still hanging on to those ideas, we're doing the best we can, but we may be missing the boat. And, you know, when you talk about, you know, kids who struggle so much at school and people thinking they just need a hard that people take a hard line with them. You know, I always remind people the kids who aren't having a hard time at school, the kids who are going willingly, the kids who are participating in the learning and doing their homework and stuff like this, it's not because they always love every aspect of it. It's not because they're like supremely motivated at all moments for this. It's that they have the skills to handle what's being thrown at them. And that's the thing about us humans. We like to meet people's expectations. And when we have the skills to do it, you know, we're quite willing to do so. But the other thing you mentioned, Katie, is motivation. And I'm sure we're gonna delve more into motivation because of course there's different types of motivation, and I think that's important to clarify for folks.
SPEAKER_01:Absolutely. So let's kind of go back a little bit for listeners who are not familiar with this approach. Can you take us through like collaborative problem solving? Take us through the start with the three plans and kind of like describe, like just frame, compare the three plans kind of framing with traditional discipline and education framing for us.
SPEAKER_00:Sure. And first, I think we can just for a moment back up one step further back because what we covered really quickly is crucial, because the plans and everything about collaborative problem solving doesn't necessarily make sense unless you are looking through the lens of kids do well if they can, students do well if they can, all kids are doing the best they can to manage what the world is throwing at them with the skills they have. And if they're struggling, it's much more about skill, not will. So, with that mindset in mind, because I think the mindset is more than half the battle, yes, then with collaborative problem solving, what we do is we are very practical with folks. We say, pick anything that a kid's doing you don't want them to do or not doing that you want them to do, anything. And ultimately, you've only got three options, and you know, refer to those already. They're the three plans. And they've existed since the beginning of time. You know, we didn't invent these plants, we just put labels on them so that folks like your teams can have a good way of referring to them with each other. We call it plan A when people try to impose their will to make a child do what they want them to do. Plan A is the runaway favorite amongst us adults, parents, teachers, when kids don't do what we want. We try to impose our will. That's one option. That's what we call plan A. We call it plan B when you try to collaborate with a child to solve the problem. And here's an important qualifier to solve the problem in a mutually satisfactory way. So it's not just that you're collaborating, it's not just you're inviting the child to solve this together. You're inviting the child to solve it together in a way that you're both gonna be happy with. We call that plan B. And the third option we call plan C. Plan C is when you decide, you know, for now, not forever, but right here in this moment, I'm gonna drop this expectation or I'm gonna solve the problem the way the child wants it solved. And just to be clear, that's not giving in, which most people fear it is. Giving in is actually when you try plan A, you try to impose your will and you can't pull it off and you sort of throw up your hands in frustration and bail. That's giving in. Plan C is being strategic. It's when as a teacher, as a parent, you're saying, you know what, I can't work on everything all at once. I got to put some things on the back burner, this one's not that important, or this is not the right time to work on it, and I'm gonna drop it for now, not forever. And so those are the three options: plan A, plan B, and plan C. Impose your will, collaborate with the child, or drop it.
SPEAKER_01:Why I'm just wondering, like in your experience, why is plan A so attractive to us? Why is that the one that we like go to and you have to like talk people out of?
SPEAKER_00:Well, because uh, you know, first, there's a lot of conventional wisdom that hangs over all this. And and part of that conventional wisdom is kids should do what they're told. And adults are the authority figures and some outdated definition of what an authority figure is, and that an authority figure is somebody who bosses other people's around and those people are just supposed to listen, which by the way, isn't great to begin with. But if a kid doesn't have the skills to be able to meet those expectations, it doesn't work so well. But you know, we're fond of getting our own way, us adults. Um, you know, I've always I always laugh when people describe a kid as like, you know, he just wants his own way. I always think to myself, who prefers other people's ways? I mean, I haven't met the person who prefers other people's ways. We all want our own way. So when we have there's a power differential between us and kids and we want our way, we often default to trying to impose it. I think the other reason we do that is we get frustrated. And, you know, we we don't talk about this enough, but we talk about kids, for instance, getting dysregulated and losing their ability to think straight. Guess what? It happens to us too. So if you have a kid who's not doing something you want them to do or is doing something you don't want them to do, and you feel frustrated or you feel ineffective as an authority figure, or even worse, you feel scared or you feel disrespected, that dysregulates you. And when we humans get dysregulated, we don't use the smart part of our brain anymore. And we reach for power and control to try to regain our footing. And I think that's one of the reasons that plan A is so popular. Even though when I travel the world asking people about plan A, everybody says to me, Oh, it's the most popular one, and it's super popular because we like to have our expectations met, but it doesn't do a great job at getting those expectations met. If it does, it's temporary. It doesn't solve problems in any durable way. They'll be back to greet you. It's not great at building that important helping relationship I talked about earlier. And there's nothing about imposing your will upon a kid that helps that kid build the skills that they're struggling with that are leading to the difficulties in the first place. So, in other words, plan A is super popular, but super limited.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, it's really easy to do this with very small children because part of the power differential is a size differential, right? Like you are bigger than them, you are stronger than them, you control all of these screens, all of the sugar, all of the things that they want. You control them, right? So then you can control that child. And it's like, wow, you're a tyrant. Relations. If you can't like that's literally the definition of like, we would never want to be ruled like that by an authority figure, yet we like apply that. And then I see my kids getting older. My 12-year-old, he weighs almost as much as I do, and he's like two inches taller or like shorter than me. I'm like, we are very like, I we wrestle all the time, and I cannot beat him. Wrestling, like this power differential is very limited. You only have a few years where you really can lean into that as an adult if you want to. And so it's really important that you spend those early years building the relationship that you're talking about so that you can have long-term influence instead of using plan A to get short-term compliance.
SPEAKER_00:And absolutely, because as you're pointing out, what what are you going to do when they get bigger and stronger than you?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, if that's all you've ever used, then you're done. You're cooked.
SPEAKER_00:Yes.
SPEAKER_01:So there has to be another way.
SPEAKER_00:Not to mention, as I think we're, you know, dancing around a little bit here too, even if you could impose your will to get a kid to do what you want them to do, there are downsides to that. And and I'm not saying, by the way, that you should never impose your will. It's evil to do that ever. No, of course not. There are times and places. But if that's your default parenting strategy. And I think we should clarify for something for folks, because when people hear impose your will and they hear me, for instance, saying, hey, you should try to avoid that, they think that you can't ask your kid to do anything. And that like asking them to do something is off limits in collaborative problem solving. Not at all. There's a huge difference between setting an expectation, asking your child to do something, a student to do something, and when they don't do it, imposing your will. And I think it's really important to clarify for folks these three plans are only needed when you have a problem. In other words, an expectation that's not being met. And you can't have an expectation that isn't being met until you have an expectation. So this is not about avoiding asking kids to do things. No, absolutely. Set your expectations. But when they're not getting met, you got three options. And plan A is not the only one.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I think it's really helpful to define that. Like, I don't like to use like the term like bad behavior or something. It's like there is an expectation that's at work in this environment, and the child is unable to meet that expectation, and that's an unsolved problem. And I think that that's it just neutralizes. It helps me stay regulated to know, like, oh, this isn't a problem. I'm just like observing the situation like a scientist would and knowing that we have an unmet expectation and that the key to solving that is collaborating with the kid and figuring out a plan. It's not a sticker chart, it's not time out, it's not me yelling at them. It's not, you know, like those things, like you said, don't help them. If the root cause of their behavior was that they were like manipulating me, I think I hear that a lot from parents. It's like, oh, like they're just trying to get attention or like they're manipulating you or something like that. It's just like, wow, manipulation. So I think something that you've said is like manipulation is a very like impressive skill to have. Like it's very, like, you know, it's a difficult thing to do to manipulate someone. And most four-year-olds don't have that ability to actually like intentionally manipulate someone, right? Like they're probably just doing the best that they can in the situation to either have their needs met or to express their their will, right? Which is puts them in the camp of completely normal human, not degenerate behavior issue.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, you know, the word when we say people, you know, kids are sort of a master manipulator or something, you know, manipulation gets a uh sort of a bad name. The reality is a lot of times manipulation is just trying people trying to get what they need and what they want. Where we get upset is when people do that in sort of less than adaptive ways. And I always say to myself, why would somebody try to go in the back door to get a need met if they didn't think the front door was closed? Like there's something awry there. And and as you pointed out, a lot of the kids I work with too that people think are master manipulators, uh, they struggle with all the kinds of skills that if I were picking a manipulation team, I would never pick a kid for my manipulation team who struggled with those skills.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, totally, totally. Okay, so let's dig into plan B. Can you just kind of take us through like if there's a three-step plan in plan B, can you like maybe we can even roleplay or you could like kind of give us, tell us some stories, even um of how to apply this.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, sure. And so we just talked about the downsides of plan A, right? Uh, we should just mention quickly plan C has its places, right? Plan C is a you pick your spots to decide to drop something that can reduce challenging behavior. It's not uh, you know, it's not a solution to a problem, but it has its place strategically. And as a parent, as a teacher, you're still in charge if you're using plan C because you're deciding to do it. It's your choice strategically.
SPEAKER_01:It's almost just a quick analogy that's coming to my mind right now. It's almost like when you're going to the gym, it's like, okay, today at the gym is a leg day. Like I'm not saying like I don't care about my arm muscles or my back muscles. It's like I'm just focusing on legs today, right? We do this as adults all the time. We're prioritizing, we're curating like what we're going to work on in that situation, in that setting. And that's what we're just doing. We're we maybe, maybe there's a hundred expectations on this kid's shoulder and he's meeting 90 of them. And there's a remaining 10 that are causing some issues. And we have to look at that list of 10 and be like, what's the biggest issue? Like, let's we can only really work on one or two things. We can't, we can't go to the gym and work on everything every day.
SPEAKER_00:Exactly. So you have to prioritize, right? So some things are going to be on the back burner for now or for Monday or what have you. Yes. Now, this I think the thing that we as adults get stuck in sometimes is just alternating between plans A and C. So imposing our will or trying to when it matters to us enough, dropping it when it doesn't. The problem with that is neither of those end up really solving the problem. It lives on. Neither of those are great at building relationship or building skills. And I always like to remind people, you don't get plan B by the average of A and C. You actually have to do something different if you really want to build relationship and build skills and solve a problem in a durable way. And that, you know, that brings you to what you wanted to walk through here, which is the process of doing collaborative problem solving. And I always tell people it seems easy on the face of it. And what's important to say is it's not easy, but it is simple. It's simple in the sense that there's only three ingredients to this process, but there's a lot packed into them. So first ingredient we call the empathy ingredient. It is the hardest, far and away the hardest. We adults have a lot of we have a hard time with empathy. We often think we're being empathic when really we're just like saying something to a kid like, I can see you're really upset, but that's not empathy. The the word empathy means to understand. So in the first ingredient, what you're really trying to do is you're trying to understand specifically the child's concern, their perspective, their point of view, what they care about, or what's hard for them about whatever situation you're talking about, whatever problem you're trying to solve. And I always tell people it's not until you really understand the child's perspective, their concern, that you can move to the second ingredient, which is where you get to share your perspective or your concern, what you're worried about, your point of view, not your solution. Okay, this is a big misstep for us adults. We often, even when we do a good job of hearing the kid out, we usually then say, okay, I hear you, but and then we tell them our solution. No, which we need to do is just share our concern, why we're talking about this in the first place, why this is an issue in our mind. And only once you have two sets of concerns on the table, first ingredient's getting their concern on the table, second ingredient's sharing yours, do you move to the third ingredient, which is where you invite the child to collaborate with you to try to solve the problem. And solve it how? In a mutually satisfactory way. Because you just spend a good deal of time figuring out each party's perspective or point of view or concerns. Now what you do is you say, okay, so how can we solve this together so that both of us are happy? So it addresses both of our concerns. And um, I always tell people, give the kid first crack at it. Always give the first kid first crack at generating solutions for multiple reasons, really. I mean, it's a way to increase investment for the child. That's a way for the kid to practice, it's a way for you to see what skills that the child struggles with. But if they are having a hard time coming up with solutions, you jump in and you can help as much or as little as is needed. But the goal is not to already have a preordained solution in the back of your mind that you're just trying to get them to. The goal is any solution that is mutually satisfactory, realistic, and doable.
SPEAKER_01:So let's walk through one. Let's pretend that I'm a kid who is having a really hard time not talking to my neighbor during like math time, where the expectation is sit quietly and work independently. And I'm talking to my neighbor all the time and you're my teacher. Like, how do we, how do we start?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, well, so the first thing you do is you realize that the worst possible time to do problem solving with this is when you're talking to your neighbor during math. If this is a predictable problem, it should be on your list of problems to be solved. And you can, in a quiet moment, when you're not frustrated, say, how do I want to handle this? I've got three options A, B, and C. And if this is one you want to try to start working on, you catch the student when they're calm, when they're accessible, and when you've had some time to think about this a little bit. So for instance, if you were the teacher, I would say to you, what are you worried about? Tell me your concern, your perspective. Let's be clear about that at the outset so that when it comes time to share it, you'll have it nice and short and sweet and ready to share. And I could guess what it is. But what for example, what do you think the teacher's concern here would be?
SPEAKER_01:I feel like my role, like what I'm my main worry as a teacher is is everyone having the opportunity to learn. And to me, that maybe means in like not being distracted. And so I'm worried, I'm actually as a teacher judged based on the academic performance of all of my students, right? And so if someone's distracting one of my students, one, they're not working, so that's gonna affect me. And then the the other student that's being distracted is not making progress, so that's gonna affect them. So it's it's not good for their long-term future selves. And it like is going to, in a selfish kind of way, like make me look bad as a teacher when they when they don't have like good outcomes. I'm being like super real right now.
SPEAKER_00:No, no, I appreciate the honesty. And this is what I try to do with folks is drill down with the adults. What do we care about? And I I'm hearing you care about three things.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I I'm gonna add one actually. Like it's also like maybe disrespectful to me, right? Like the expectation is that we sit quietly.
SPEAKER_00:And if you're not sitting quietly, like you don't care about my rules, maybe, or like you, you know, you Well, and so the first thing I would say to you, this would be a great conversation to have before you go problem solving with the student, because the first thing I would remind you of is that that student's behavior is about skill, not will. And let's be careful not to interpret that student's talking as a willful sign of disrespect to you. My guess is that's not what it's about. And to our earlier point, if you go into the conversation thinking that this is a disrespectful kid who, you know, uh needs to show you more respect as a teacher, you're not in a good position to hear them, understand their perspective, their point of view. So this is where the mindset comes in. Think skill not will, kids doing the best they can. And that will allow you to sort of put that concern aside, especially if we solve this problem, you're no longer going to be feeling disrespected. We'll be good. Which is the same thing I will say about your concern about sort of your effectiveness as a teacher and how you're judged as a teacher. If we can solve this problem so that the student isn't distracting others and distracting themselves from the work too, that'll get addressed. So right now, the sort of most pressing concerns are you are worried that this student is missing out on learning and getting in the way of the learning of their classmates. Those are your concerns. And the nice thing is you can put that in one sentence because we adults have a tendency, myself included, to drone on and kids start to sort of dissociate and tune out. So we we know what your concern is now? Great. Now we're ready to have the conversation with the student. We're gonna catch them when they're calm. If you were the student, I would start off the conversation by being very careful not to make this about your behavior and put you on the defensive immediately by saying something like, I've noticed that you've been very disruptive during math and you're really getting in the way of everybody's learning. I mean, what kid is gonna want to engage in that conversation, right? So what I do is I use an old clinical trick, you know, I'm a clinical psychologist, we call externalizing the problem, which means make the problem the problem, not the kid or the behavior the problem. So I would say to you something like, hey, I wanted to talk to you about math a little bit, because I've noticed that there's something that doesn't seem to be working so great about the individual time where we're supposed to be working on our math. What is it about that math time that isn't working so great for you? What do you think? Fill me in.
SPEAKER_01:Well, it's really hard, and I just feel like I'm not very smart at math, and so I just kind of hate it.
SPEAKER_00:So it's r it's really hard to do for you.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, the mat I just don't really get it.
SPEAKER_00:You don't get it. It's really hard and then it makes you feel badly about yourself, it sounds like.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Okay. So like when you're supposed to be sort of focused on it and doing it by yourself while your classmates are doing theirs, you're having a hard time getting started with it because you don't quite get it? Is that right?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I like try a bunch, and then like I just feel like this voice in my head just that tells me that like I'm really stupid and that I like I'm not a math kid. And like I just don't know what to do with that, so I just kind of like get really panicky.
SPEAKER_00:Wow. Okay. So this makes you feel really bad about yourself. And you're trying actually really hard to get it. Actually, it seems to me you're like trying probably harder than your classmates because it's not sort of coming to you and makes you feel really good.
SPEAKER_01:Everyone else just gets it immediately. It's really easy for them. So that probably that that I mean, I'm probably just kind of dumb.
SPEAKER_00:So you're sort of looking around and feeling like other people are able to do this really easily, and because it's not coming easily to you, you're feeling really badly and feeling like you're dumb.
unknown:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Can I interrupt our little role play for a moment here?
SPEAKER_01:Uh yeah, for sure.
SPEAKER_00:Because I want to say something really important. It's so tempting as an adult when you hear something so painful that a child says like that to immediately jump in and say, you're not dumb at all. I've seen the brilliant things you do. Don't worry, this is just maths, everybody's got something they're working on. This is just hard for you. I know how smart you are. The reason I didn't do that is that empathy isn't agreeing or disagreeing. And it's not just sort of trying to talk a kid out of what they're feeling. Empathy is really trying to understand what they're feeling. And there's going to be time for us to work on that cognitive distortion that that child has that affects their self-esteem so badly. But right now, I'm just in the business of trying to understand. I'm not supplying my perspective, my point of view. Remember, that's the second ingredient. First ingredient is just understanding. And if folks, when they're listening, are saying, okay, so if I'm trying this, guide me. How do you how do you do what that that was? It's not rocket science. It's asking questions, it's taking guesses if need be. It's when the child communicates something to you, it's repeating back to them in your own words so that you can really check if you've got. It and if they're really getting upset, shutting down, or escalating, it's reassuring them that they're not in trouble, that you really are just trying to understand and you know there must be an important reason that in this case math is hard for them. And that's all you want to do in this first ingredient. And we would keep this going until I really felt like I had it and you felt like I had it, because I would summarize it again. I would say, so if I'm hearing you write, you sit down to do math, you really, really want to be able to do it well because it makes you feel so bad when you don't. And you look around and you see other kids doing it pretty easy, and it makes you feel dumb that you can't, but you just don't get it. And then you get really frustrated and upset. And I'm guessing then when I see you maybe talking to your classmates and things like that, and I'm thinking, oh, they're distracting other kids. You're not wanting to distract other kids. You're just stuck and don't know what to do and feel bad about yourself. Is it is this sound right?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I'm talking to them because maybe they know the answer. So like our conversation starts by like me asking them a question about math, but then like we start talking about what we did at recess, and it just kind of like then I stop feeling bad about myself because I'm not talking, I'm not thinking about math anymore. And I feel like it helps me feel calmer to like talk to someone about something else.
SPEAKER_00:So you start asking one of your classmates about the math because maybe they can help you because you're stuck, but then you guys sort of start talking about other things, which is actually even better because then you don't have to deal with math, which is making you feel like crap. Okay. I think I get it. Wow, this has been really hard on you. Okay. So um so it's really hard for you to get started and get the math. You're feeling like crap about yourself because of it. You try to get some help from uh a classmate and you end up talking about other stuff, which distracts you from math, and that feels good because math feels so bad. And then I'm guessing, gosh, if I or one of your teachers gets frustrated with you because you're not paying attention to the math, that just makes you feel worse about yourself when we're sort of missing the boat because the reason you're not focusing on the math is you're not able to get it, right? And you really want to.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, it makes sense to speak, like all of my teachers hate me. So I'm just kind of like that kid, you know.
SPEAKER_00:And notice again, folks, if I step out of the role play for a moment, the tendency is to say, I don't hate you. I'm sure that's not true that everybody hates you. What I would say is I would say, Whoa. So you're saying it feels like every one of your teachers hates you because you're that sort of kid that like causes a problem in the class. Well, first I want to thank you for filling me in about this. And this has a this is about math and about all kinds of other stuff that's almost a lot more important than math, too. And you know, I guess, and by the way, if I can pause for the role play here, you know, I would, we were clear about what our concerns are, but having heard this student fill you in, you have other concerns that came up, I think, which is clearly about this kid's self-esteem, right? And this is why, you know, you can have all your ducks in a row, you think, for a conversation like this, but until you hear a kid out, you never know where this is gonna go. So while I was prepared to just at this point say, well, and you know, my concern is, not but my concern, but and my concern is that I really want to make sure you're learning and your classmates are able to learn too, so nobody's missing out. If I just shared those as my concerns, I would be missing the emotional boat here. Which means what I would say at this point is, oh, so thank you for filling me in about all this. And you know, when I came to talk to you about this, I was worried about that you were missing out on the learning, and some of your classmates were too, if you were talking about things during math. And so I was concerned about you being distracted and other people, but gosh, you've really helped me understand the problem so much more. And I guess my concern is just figuring out a way to help you with math, so math isn't so tough for you. And also I guess my other concern is that um how you're feeling about yourself because this is making you feel really bad about yourself. And you know what? Every single kid in this class is working on something. Um, yours just happens to be math. You got all kinds of other things you're great at. Everybody's working on something. Me too. So I guess I guess my concern is how do we help work on the math so that it's doesn't make you feel so terrible about yourself. That's that's the most important thing right now.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I really want to be good at math. Everyone's always talking about how important math is, like for our futures and getting jobs and stuff, and I really want to be good at it.
SPEAKER_00:That's great.
SPEAKER_01:I just don't know how to get how to get there.
SPEAKER_00:And you know, look, being great at math would be good, right? It's excellent. Math's really important. And I guess I would also say, see, here I'm adding my perspective yet. And I guess what I would say is there are a lot of really smart people who do all kinds of great things in the world that are great at other things beside math. But you know what? I think we can help you with math too. So now I'm going to the third ingredient. I wonder what we could do so that you're not feeling so stuck in math that you end up sort of getting distracted and feeling terrible about yourself. So I wonder what we could do about that so that you would feel better about yourself and could feel like you're making progress in math, and at the same time, then it wouldn't be distracting to you and other people. Do you have any ideas how we could start working on this together?
SPEAKER_01:Can I like not sit by James? James is like, I really want to talk to James a lot, and maybe if I just sat by someone else, like I wouldn't want to talk to them so much, maybe?
SPEAKER_00:That's an idea. So so if you sat next as somebody other than James, you'd be less interested in or drawn to talking to someone. So that might help.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, James is like one of my best friends. So I like always I know that he wants to talk to me too, and I know that he'll talk to me. And if I just maybe sitting by someone else, like I would be able to focus a little bit better and stay, even when math gets hard, that I would be able to like stay in that in that mode.
SPEAKER_00:So that sounds like a great idea for this sort of talking and distraction part. And I guess I just am thinking to myself, though, that if James isn't there to talk to, but you're still not sure how to start with math and you're stuck, you may not end up talking to James, but you're gonna end up feeling real bad about yourself. And we need to help you with that part too.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I don't know. And like here to break the role play real quick, like kids often don't know, right? Or like I've been in this role play, like very vulnerable and open with you. A lot of kids are like, I don't know. Yeah, don't know. Absolutely. How do like if I had responded like less like here's my heart and soul, like how how do you go about, like, say if I I would if I had just said like, I don't know, and kind of like about ideas.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:So the first thing is that you can't do the idea stage or the empathy, empathy stage, right? Like you kids can put walls up at any one of these.
SPEAKER_00:Absolutely. And with good reason. And it's usually either because they struggle with the skills that you were displaying in this role play, language and communication skills, emotion regulation skills, things like this that helped you put your concern on the table. But many students won't be able to, right? So what do you do in that case? Well, you go back to the four tools that I listed out in that first ingredient. Questions, which you responded to really well, so it made my job easy. And I was able to just reflect back what I heard from you. Another student may not be able to, so I'm gonna have to use some educated guessing, and I'm gonna put words in your mouth. And to be honest, it would not be a big leap for me to suggest that maybe the math was hard, and that's why you were struggling. Now, the part about talking to James or other kids that starts as requests for help for math, but then goes on to other things, I probably wouldn't have been able to guess that. But I'd get started with some educated guesses. And if I saw the reason you were shutting down or were saying, I don't know, wasn't necessarily you didn't know, but you weren't trusting this interaction just yet, I would use a lot of reassurance. I'd be saying, Don't worry, I know there's a good reason that you're not just sitting down and doing the math. I I know if it was that easy, you would. I I think you're really working hard on this. And I just want to try to understand. So you're not in trouble at all. I just want to try to help. Maybe that would ease it up. If not, we're gonna go with more educated guessing.
SPEAKER_01:And then when we get to just real quick with educated guessing, sometimes it's like we don't want to come in and like overshare our opinion or how we so we want to be careful about that. But an educated guess is more something to you're like kind of giving the student something to react to. Because if my educated guess is way off, it's way easier for them to be like, no, that's not what it is, right? And now we're taught, now they're talking, at least. So it's like, even if you're totally wrong, it still gets the conversation going.
SPEAKER_00:I mean, with younger kids, I'll play a hot and cold game, right? Am I getting any warmer with this or not? And yeah, some kids I'll just ask them just nod or shake their head. Yeah, it's sort of just points you in a direction.
SPEAKER_01:I've seen Dr. Green use like a one to five. Like, I'm gonna ask you some questions. Like, you just give me like a one if it's I'm like way off a five if yes. So like you're taking the cognitive load of like self-awareness and verbal expression off of them so that they can actually take a minute. Also, kids don't know, like they they don't like, they need time to process your questions and to like actually reflect. And in adult conversation, there is zero socially appropriate way to be like, like, I'm gonna just sit here in silence for 30 seconds, right? Like, we don't do that socially, so it's like, oh no, you don't immediately have like a totally good answer for this.
SPEAKER_00:Like And look, let's let's be clear if the kid knew exactly what was the issue and what to do about it, this problem wouldn't be happening in the first place. So it's not that this process of collaborative problem solving is magic, where it's gonna go ingredient one, ingredient two, ingredient three, solution. Yeah, no, it's gonna get stuck in the mud because this is hard and you're gonna run into a kid's skills deficits. You're gonna run into your own skills deficits as you go through the process. But I think it's also important in that third ingredient where I invited you in. What if you had no ideas whatsoever? And and you know, I always tell people count to 30, give a kid, which will sound like an eternity or seem like an eternity, but count to 30. And if the kid's got no ideas, then you can say tentatively, would you mind if I if I could come up with an idea and we could try them on for size together? Because ultimately, whether it's their idea, your idea, there's still the litmus test of would this work for you? Would this work for my concerns? Can we do it? Is it realistic? And your first idea, for instance, was a really good one for the talking issue, but didn't address at all your concern about Matt's really hard and you have a hard time getting started. So we still have work to do on that solution.
SPEAKER_01:So in that, in that moment as the adult, you're kind of like the an advocate for both people's concerns, right? Like you need to make sure the the um the put forward solution meets their needs and also meets your needs, and you can calmly advocate for those needs. Like, I love that idea. Here's here's just like you did, like, here are the holes in that idea. Like, what about this? And I think that the idea, and that that helps kids build critical thinking, right? Like this is new for kids. They don't have this skill. They're showing us all the time that they don't have this skill. So you're scaffolding that process of developing this skill. And that's why plan B is so much more powerful in the long run. I think the word you used is durable, right? Because not only are we solving this problem, but we're developing the skill of like being self-reflective and wondering how our decisions can affect the people around us and things like that, which those are the metacognitive prefrontal cortex skills that the kids who are sitting quietly probably already have, right?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, you're developing the skills and the relationship. Because if you have other problems to solve, again, what's one of the biggest predictors of whether you're going to be able to solve that with a student? The degree of helping relationship you have with them. Those are your two biggest levers, building relationship and building skills. And I think the cool thing about this process of collaborative problem solving is when you walk through it with a student all the way to completion, even if you don't get to completion, even if you don't get a good solution at the end of the day, you are practicing with them. You are modeling and scaffolding the practice of so many skills, language and communication skills, attention skills, working memory, self-regulation, emotion regulation, cognitive flexibility, social thinking skills, all kinds of executive functioning skills that you're practicing naturally through this problem solving process. And I love, Katie, what you said about the adult really wants to be an advocate for both sets of concerns. Because I cannot tell you how often when kids are invited to solve a problem, they are so used to plan A that they think this is a different creative way, tricky way of doing plan A. So when you ask them for a solution, they're trying to come up with a solution that addresses the adult concern even more than their concern. And so we not only need to be on the lookout for, okay, is that going to work for us, but we need to be on the lookout for, wait a second, I don't think that's gonna work for part of what you said. And and you're an advocate for that. It's a beautiful way of saying.
SPEAKER_01:And you're really demonstrating and building trust that you were listening to them during the empathy step, right? Which next time there's an unsolved problem and you want to meet with them and chat with them, they're gonna be like, they're not gonna think, oh no, one of these conversations. They're gonna be thinking like, great, help us here. Like, we're going to, this is gonna make life better after you kind of coach this. I had an interesting experience. I do this with my kids all the time. They're very used to like me interacting with them in this way. And this is what we teach all of our microschool guides to to do. But last night, my five year old was like just throwing a fit about something that was, in my opinion, was very silly. And it was just like literally, it was like 10 o'clock, way past her bedtime. And I was so tired. I did not have the regulation skills left in me to like go into like a what's making bedtime rough for you right now kind of talk. It was more like it lit, and we I don't do any, we have like expectations, but we don't do like rewards or punishments in our home at all. And so I literally said to her, my five-year-old seems so weird. I'm like, Maggie, I don't say this too often, but do you need a consequence? Like, that's where I was. Like, do you need to like you need to stop this? And that's like was like hearing myself try to do plan A. And like all of my kids were kind of in the hallway and they just like looked at me quietly and they were like, mom's mom's really tired if she's going to do need a consequence. Um, but kids definitely can if you interact with them in this way consistently, learn to trust that you are. I love this term that you keep using, a helping relationship. And I think uh Peter Gray, who wrote Free to Learn and is an advocate of more agency and autonomy in in education, he always says, be a helper, not a judge. And I think kids are so used to adults in their life as judges that there is this initial mistrust of like, you're the judge, you're not the helper, and you have to prove to them again and again through relationship building that you are a helper.
SPEAKER_00:And I mean, look at what you just said. You know, you were you were sort of at the end of your rope at, you know, 10 p.m. last night, right? And you were like, she's Maggie's throwing a fit over something that, in my opinion, is not a big deal, right? Like at 10 p.m., you couldn't help but judge where, you know, to her it was a big deal, evidently. So yeah, you know, I and look, the I think the other thing that's going on in this kind of problem solving is you are building intrinsic motivation for students, for kids. Because, you know, we spend so much time trying to extrinsically motivate kids with rewards and consequences, but the holy grail of motivation is internal motivation. Internal drive. You know, as an educator, it's like the most important thing if you can spark internal drive in a student. And you and I were talking about self-determination theory before we started today. Self-determination theory tells us what promotes, what fosters intrinsic drive. And it's a sense of mastery, being good at things, skill, right? Autonomy, independence, and connection, okay? Relatedness. And I think this is a process that fosters all of that mastery, autonomy, and connectedness. So it's sort of a recipe for building internal drive.
SPEAKER_01:It absolutely does. And that's the reason I'm so grateful for it is that it's not easy to find models, effective models, especially well-researched models, of another way, right? So it's like it's easy to come up with a list of like, well, you shouldn't say this to kids and you shouldn't treat them the way you shouldn't and you don't. But it's like, hey, what are we left with? We just created a vacuum, right? What do you do instead? And then this is completely aligned and I've just seen it like time and time again. And now my kids and other like kids in our microschools will be like, hey, I'm noticing that there's a problem here during this time of day. And I've already generated several solutions. Can we discuss them? And I'm like, yes, great, awesome. Because that's how I would do it as an adult. Like, hey, I'm noticing that like my husband and I are not getting along about the dishes. Like, I'm noticing this. What's up? You know, that is how we have effective relationships. And I'm just so grateful for all of your work. Just to wrap up here, we ask all of our guests this question: who is someone who has helped kindle your love of learning, your curiosity, your passion helped you become who you are?
SPEAKER_00:Uh great question. Uh sitting here feeling very fortunate because a number of people come to mind for me. Probably the person that comes to mind the the most right now is my grandfather, who passed away a few years ago at uh the age of 105, which is pretty amazing. I was very close to him as a kid and had the opportunity to sort of do a lot of things with him over time. And he was one of these really wise people who had all these great grandfatherly sayings that just contained so much wisdom. But most of all, he was an observer of the world. He he always told me to make sure you keep one foot in the grandstand and one foot on the playing field, which is in other words, like be on the field enjoying playing, but also, you know, keep a foot in the grandstand, just sort of observing and being mindful and and thinking, thinking and feeling and experiencing at the same time. I learned a tremendous amount from him that I uh use, frankly, on a daily basis in my work and in my life.
SPEAKER_01:I love that. Thanks for sharing. The whole point of the Kindled Podcast is to help us become grown-ups who can do that for the next generation. So that's why we ask that. And last question, how can people find out more about your work?
SPEAKER_00:Oh, great. Yeah, so I have the privilege of directing a program in the Department of Psychiatry at Massachusetts General Hospital. It's called Think Kids. And sort of one-stop shopping for a ton of resources there is to go to thinkkids.org. That's the word think and then the word kids.org. All kinds of information, training, community for uh parents, for educators, for clinicians, all organized around this work. And, you know, there's also several books on the approach uh that I've written or co-written. And people can find, you know, any of resources of mine uh there or on my own website, which is just my name, Stuart S T U A-R-T-Ablon, A-B-L-O-N.com. And there's also when you go right there, is a chance to take a little quiz that uh can help you assess your own skills across those five categories of skill that I mentioned before, or you can do it for a student, for your child, just to sort of uh gain a little bit of beginning insight. So I encourage people to go there and check that out as well.
SPEAKER_01:That's amazing. Thank you so much for coming on the Kindled Podcast. I've learned so much and enjoyed our conversation immensely. Thank you.
SPEAKER_00:Well, again, thank you so much for having me. I've enjoyed the conversation. Uh, keep up your great work, and um, yeah, I'm thrilled to know that our work is being shared in many ways like this uh throughout your microschools and and elsewhere. So, really a privilege. Thanks so much.
SPEAKER_01:The Kindled Podcast is brought to you by Prenda. Prenda makes it easy to start and run an amazing microschool based on all the ideas we talk about here on the Kindled Podcast. Don't forget to follow us on social media at Prenda Learn, and if you'd like more information about starting a micro school, just go to Prenda.com. Thanks for listening and remember to keep Kindling.
