Making amends is fine...but solving problems so the child doesn't have to make amends in the first place is even better.

Well, not exactly...but your respective concerns have equal standing and both sets of concerns need to be addressed for a problem to be solved.

Sometimes parents who are new to Collaborative Problem Solving are very hard on themselves for not knowing about it in the first place and feel pretty bad about what they were doing before. But you can't fault yourself for what you didn't know.

Solutions arrived at with Plan A -- through imposition of adult will -- are not only unilateral, they're uninformed...and that's a big part of the reason they often don't work very well.

The Parents Panel covered a wide range of topics on today's program...including the difference between "lowering" and "adjusting" expectations for a behaviorally challenging child.

It's certainly fine to ask a child how he or she feels about an unsolved problem...but if you want to solve the problem, gathering information about his or her concern or perspective is even better.

Two different moms called into today's program asking for guidance on helping their kids' schools get on board with the CPS model.  Their situations were a little different...but the guidance was pretty much the same.

On today's program we were reminded of how important it is to get a handle on a child's lagging skills so we understand what's really getting in the way for the child...and to nail down highly specific unsolved problems so we know what we're working on.

Plan B is fundamentally easy but really hard...and, on this program, our Parents Panel members talked about their own experiences with the hard parts.

We covered a lot of territory on today's program, but one of the big questions was related to how parents can help schools implement CPS.  (That doesn't come until near the end of the program...fortunately, there's lots of good information on the way there.)