Collaborative Problem Solving

Collaborative Problem Solving (CPS) is an approach to understanding and helping children with behavioral challenges that was first articulated by Dr. Ross Greene in his book, The Explosive Child (1998; 2001; 2005; 2010), then described in a book for mental health clinicians by Dr. Ross Greene and Dr. Stuart Ablon (Treating Explosive Kids, 2006), and then for educators in Dr. Greene's book Lost at School (2008, 2010). The CPS model views behavioral challenges as a form of learning disability or developmental delay -- in other words, behaviorally challenging kids are lacking crucial cognitive skills, especially in the domains of flexibility, frustration tolerance, and problem-solving -- and seeks to create fundamental changes in interactions between kids with behavioral challenges and their adult caregivers by having caregivers engage kids in solving problems collaboratively rather than by using motivational procedures. While studied primarily in children with oppositional defiant disorder, it has been suggested for behavior management in youth with a variety of behavioral challenges, including youth with bipolar disorder, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), Asperger's disorder, and conduct disorder, and has been implemented and studied in many settings including families, schools, inpatient psychiatry units, and residential and juvenile detention facilities.

Famous quotes containing the words problem and/or solving:

    What had really caused the women’s movement was the additional years of human life. At the turn of the century women’s life expectancy was forty-six; now it was nearly eighty. Our groping sense that we couldn’t live all those years in terms of motherhood alone was “the problem that had no name.” Realizing that it was not some freakish personal fault but our common problem as women had enabled us to take the first steps to change our lives.
    Betty Friedan (20th century)

    Science is a dynamic undertaking directed to lowering the degree of the empiricism involved in solving problems; or, if you prefer, science is a process of fabricating a web of interconnected concepts and conceptual schemes arising from experiments and observations and fruitful of further experiments and observations.
    James Conant (1893–1978)