When People Push Your Buttons: The Power of Curiosity Over Control
Episode Notes
What do you do when someone you love - whether it’s your kids, a spouse, or a friend - keeps doing the same maddening things?
This week, we’re tackling how to approach the most frustrating dynamics in any relationship. Dr. Alison is joined by award-winning psychologist Dr. J. Stuart Ablon, founder of Think:Kids at Massachusetts General Hospital, and Associate Professor at Harvard Medical School.
He shares a game-changing mindset shift: most challenging behavior is about skill, not will.
If you’ve ever thought, “They just don’t care,” about someone you love, this conversation provides a proven, practical path to real solutions.
This episode explores:
The five core skills that drive every behavior
The real reason most people struggle
How to keep your cool and trade judgment for curiosity
The exact words that lower defensiveness fast
Why boundaries still matter—and how to set them collaboratively
A step-by-step walkthrough of Collaborative Problem Solving in action
For more from Dr. Stuart Ablon, check out his many free resources:
💡For free access to an interactive, self-paced course for parents, go to:
https://thinkkids.org/Self-Paced-Courses/Parent-Caregiver-Course/ Use code: BestofYou
🏥 Think: Kids at Massachusetts General Hospital
📚Changeable: How Collaborative Problem Solving Changes Lives at Home, at School, and at Work
Here are some other episodes you might like :
Episode 86: Embracing Conflict—Why It's Essential & 4 Simple Ways to Tackle It
Episode 70: Mastering the Art of Emotional Intelligence—How to Harness the Power of Your Emotions to Improve Your Relationships
📖 Find a full transcript and list of resources from this episode here
💬 Got a question? Call 307-429-2525 and leave a message for a future episode.
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Editing by Giulia Hjort
Sound engineering by Kelly Kramarik
Music by Andy Luiten
While Dr. Cook is a counselor, the content of this podcast and any of the products provided by Dr. Cook are not specific counseling advice nor are they a substitute for individual counseling. The content and products provided on this podcast are for informational purposes only.
© 2025 Alison Cook. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. Please do not copy or share the contents of this webpage or transcript without permission from the author.
Transcript
Hey everyone, and welcome back to this week’s episode of The Best of You podcast.
Today we’re exploring a mindset shift that can transform the hardest moments with the people in your life—whether that’s a child melting down, a partner who shuts down, a colleague who stonewalls, or a parent who pushes your buttons.
The shift is the idea that: most challenging behavior is about skills, not will. When someone repeatedly does that maddening thing, our brains tend to assign motive—“they don’t care,” “they’re being difficult,” “they’re trying to get their way.” But what if, instead, we asked: Which skill is missing in this moment? And how might we work with them to build it?
My guest today has spent three decades showing families, schools, workplaces, and systems how to do exactly that. Dr. J. Stuart Ablon is a clinical psychologist and one of the leading voices on understanding and changing concerning behavior in any setting. He’s the Founder and Director of Think:Kids in the Department of Psychiatry at Massachusetts General Hospital, and an Associate Professor at Harvard Medical School. He’s the developer and leading teacher of Collaborative Problem Solving®—the approach behind the mantra you’ve probably heard: “People do well if they can.”
Stuart is the author of several terrific books, including his latest, Changeable: How Collaborative Problem Solving Changes Lives at Home, at School and at Work. His work is practical, compassionate, and incredibly effective because it builds skills and preserves relationships.
We're gonna touch on a number of topics today, but here's what you'll hear that you can apply to anyone who's frustrating you, but also to yourself. You're gonna learn the five core skill areas that sit underneath all behavior and how crucial these skills are for all of us. You're gonna learn how to stay regulated yourself and swap out judgment for curiosity when dealing with the difficult behavior.
We're talking about why boundaries still matter. We're not throwing those out, but how to reach them differently and more collaboratively. And you're gonna learn why understanding another person's concerns, another person's perspective helps us arrive at real solutions, solutions that are realistic and mutually beneficial at home, at work, and everywhere in between.
I am so thrilled to welcome Dr. J. Stuart Ablon to the podcast today. This is truly a life -changing conversation. I have thought about it so many times throughout the day since recording it, and he's also brought along a gift for our community. Think:Kids has a self-paced online course for parents and caregivers to learn Collaborative Problem Solving step by step. For listeners of this episode, you can access it free of charge with the coupon code bestofyou. It’s available in English and Spanish. We’ll put the direct link—and the code—in the show notes, along with more ways to connect at thinkkids.org.
I’m so thrilled to bring you my conversation with Dr. Stuart Ablon.
Alison Cook (00:00.264)
you know kind of say let me let me give that another shot or if technology falls out we'll be we'll be just fine okay all right everything is recording that's the hardest part of all of this and just quickly i mentioned to you in the in the email that it sounds like you know dr paula rausch yeah
Dr. Stuart Ablon (00:01.731)
Yes.
Dr. Stuart Ablon (00:05.912)
Sounds good.
Dr. Stuart Ablon (00:20.876)
Yes, yes, we went to the same college. We worked in the same department here at Mass General for a long, long time. So I've known her forever, yes.
Alison Cook (00:31.144)
Yeah. Did you know Lisa Krivikis by chance? Different field. She was a physiatrist, that's how at MGH and that's how we got connected to Dr. Rausch. They were friends and colleagues. so we've had a kind of a, our family has been really personally gained so much from PACT and what she's done there. and yeah.
Dr. Stuart Ablon (00:35.958)
No, I don't think so.
Dr. Stuart Ablon (00:45.432)
Got it.
Dr. Stuart Ablon (00:56.088)
Good, okay, yeah, and she does incredible work there and a unique and a program that's so needed, so yes, yeah.
Alison Cook (01:05.236)
Yeah, yeah, I love what you guys are doing. of you collectively is just amazing. well, I would love to just get started. Dr. Ablon, for my listeners who aren't familiar with your work, and I hope all of them are going to grab a copy of this book that you've written. It's just so helpful. So wise and practical. But tell my listeners a little bit about your work specifically, where you focus and this background that you have working not only with children, but with really unique cases with
kids that are really struggling.
Dr. Stuart Ablon (01:36.558)
Mm-hmm. Yeah, so, you know, I've spent my whole career at this point, which, you 30 years or so, really mostly around trying to help people understand kids and adolescents and why some of them have a hard time managing their behavior and what to do about it. And, you know, I've been able to, as you mentioned, work in some really challenging circumstances where, you you've got kids
with severe trauma histories. You've got staff who don't receive much training in trying to support these kids, and it can lead to some really difficult situations. And we've been fortunate to be able to try to help a lot of different organizations and kids and families in some of those toughest of settings. So I'm talking about in residential treatment facilities and hospitals and detention centers and things like that.
But the lessons that we've learned over time can be applied to every parent's interaction with every child. Not necessarily a child who struggles severely, but all kids can have a hard time managing their behavior at some times. And as parents, we all struggle to figure out the best way to parent our kids.
Alison Cook (02:43.061)
Yeah.
Alison Cook (02:54.633)
I think there's something so compelling and I found it in my own work, both as a therapist, but also as someone out in the community and the service work that I do that when you see that there are principles and truths that apply across the board. And this leads me to one of your biggest, I think the things that you emphasize that I think is so crucial and I want you to unpack it for us, but you really emphasize the importance of skills.
Dr. Stuart Ablon (03:10.114)
Yes.
Dr. Stuart Ablon (03:23.619)
Yes.
Alison Cook (03:23.657)
that when anyone, it could be a kid, it could be an adult, it could be a spouse, it could be a parent, anyone in our lives is struggling when we find ourselves bumping up against this like, why? Why does this keep happening? Whether it's someone else, maybe in ourselves, that we tend to default to this idea of willpower. If I only tried harder, I could fix it. If they would only try harder,
Dr. Stuart Ablon (03:45.027)
Yes.
Alison Cook (03:50.997)
they would fix it and you found that to be a really problematic framework. Can you talk to us a little bit about that?
Dr. Stuart Ablon (03:51.0)
Yes.
Dr. Stuart Ablon (03:54.479)
Yeah, well, it's sure, it's mostly problematic because it's wrong. know, forever the conventional wisdom has been that, particularly with kids, that when kids aren't sort of behaving the ways that we as parents or teachers or other adults want them to, that they're sort of doing that on purpose. And they're doing it to either get things like attention or, you know, get their own way or things like that. And actually,
When you study kids who have a hard time managing their behavior, what you realize is it's not about that at all. That something we've learned now, there's probably 40, almost 50 years of research that has shown that kids, or as you point out, anybody for that matter, who struggles to manage their behavior, they don't really lack the will to behave well. It's not that simple. What they struggle with are the skills necessary to manage their behavior.
And that's a new way of thinking about things, relatively new, but it makes a lot of sense. When you think about your average day, whether you're a kid or an adult, there's a whole bunch of skills you need to be able to employ to behave yourself well. You've got to be flexible. You've got to tolerate frustration. You've got to do good problem solving. And if those aren't skills you're good at, what it leads to is you sort of acting in ways that other people don't want you to act.
Either doing things people don't want you to do or not doing things that people want you to do.
Alison Cook (05:23.069)
It is such a paradigm shift as I've read your work and engaged with it to apply it. Even again, you can apply it with your kids, but even with someone in, you know, a sibling or where it's like, why are they doing that? They must not care about me. You know, we impute a sort of moral cause in a way, almost, and understandably sometimes because the impact is that it hurts.
Dr. Stuart Ablon (05:43.896)
Yes. Yes. Yes.
Dr. Stuart Ablon (05:51.629)
Well, so that's, think, a really crucial point, which is, so why do we tend to believe that behavior is under people's control and they just must not be trying hard enough, or if they're doing things that are harmful or hurtful to me, that they're doing it on purpose? I think it's because when somebody's behaving in a challenging fashion towards us,
We're not in the best position to be able to really understand what's going on, because we get frustrated. We lose our ability to think straight. When somebody's being difficult, when they're not doing what we want them to do, when they're disrespecting us, when we don't feel like an authority figure with our child, or worse yet, when we feel scared, when we feel unsafe, we don't respond with the smart part of our brain. Instead, we react more impulsively, and we want to
Alison Cook (06:22.357)
Yeah.
Dr. Stuart Ablon (06:44.558)
trying to regain control. And the way we humans tend to do that is reaching for power.
Alison Cook (06:50.335)
Yes. that's so well stated. It sort of pulls out the worst of us. We default. And again, that's not to excuse the behavior. And it's not to say that there isn't something that needs to be dealt with out here. But it does remind me, again, I mentioned to you right before we jumped on that my background is in the psychology of religion. It reminds me of, frankly, one of Jesus's teachings when it said when
Take out the speck in your own eye first, right? It's an opportunity. I talk about it in IFS language to take a U-turn. What's happening inside of me and my default is to go to blame and judgment, which doesn't help. And that's actually more of a reflection of what's happening inside of me than it is what's happening inside of them.
Dr. Stuart Ablon (07:30.156)
Yes, yes.
Dr. Stuart Ablon (07:35.087)
Correct. Correct. Well, it's a reflection, I think, of both because there's a fundamental truth, is that dysregulation, sort of losing our ability to think straight, is contagious. And so if you're a parent and your child is beginning to lose it, it's contagious. And we begin to lose it too. And now, the nice thing, though, is on the flip side, regulation, keeping your calm, maintaining control.
Alison Cook (07:49.767)
Yes!
Alison Cook (07:55.817)
Yes.
Dr. Stuart Ablon (08:05.388)
That is also contagious. And it's in fact why many children develop skills to be able to manage their emotions because they've had a lot of experiences with a parent that helps them see what that's like. They co-regulate, if you will, and develop the skills themselves.
Alison Cook (08:22.177)
Okay, so let's break this down because so there's a couple of things going on here for the listener, right? So we have to, especially as parents, but again, in any relationship, someone else's misbehavior or frustrating behavior, it gives us an invitation not to, like you said, grasp for power, grasp for control. It gives us an opportunity to practice being regulated, right?
And so we have to engage this process of our, we have to have our own skills in place to be able to do that because we have to model it. That's how we're going to best model it, especially for our kids, but really in any relationship. So what is that skill that I need? Right? What are those skills? You've mentioned a couple of them, but suddenly it's like, I know I can't just be angry. I know I can't just try to grasp control. I've kind of figured out enough to know that, but what is it that I do need to do? Because what I
Dr. Stuart Ablon (08:55.384)
Yes. Yes.
Dr. Stuart Ablon (09:11.98)
Right. Right.
Alison Cook (09:18.549)
to learn inside myself is what I'm ultimately modeling, especially for my kids. So what is that? What is that regulation? How do we unpack that in ourselves first?
Dr. Stuart Ablon (09:29.442)
Yeah, well, so first off, I would say that what's really helpful to equip parents or anybody with is a guiding mantra, if you will. And the notion of skill not will is helpful. But I think a more powerful version of that is the philosophy that we teach, which is kids do well if they can. Not kids do well if they want to, but kids do well if they can. And same is true of parents, any adult.
Alison Cook (09:50.943)
Mmm.
Alison Cook (09:57.718)
That's good.
Dr. Stuart Ablon (09:58.595)
People do well if they can. If you can try to remember that whoever you're dealing with that might be frustrating you, it's really hard to imagine that that person is setting out to behave poorly on purpose. You know, look, all of us want to do the best we can. I mean, isn't that true fundamentally of all of us that we're trying the best we can to handle whatever the world is throwing at us with the skills we have? And if you can remember that, people do well if they can, it can position you in a more empathic place.
Alison Cook (10:27.871)
Yes.
Dr. Stuart Ablon (10:28.246)
And the reason that's so important is I think empathy is the cornerstone of regulation in interactions between us humans. What I mean by that is when your kid is starting to escalate, as opposed to getting pissed off and frustrated with them, if you can maintain some mindset of curiosity, of non-judgmental interest in what's going on, what are you having a hard time with, and how can I help? And if you can...
Alison Cook (10:34.955)
Mmm.
Dr. Stuart Ablon (10:56.622)
have that kind of a stance, that's the beginning of staying regulated yourself and then helping to regulate your child in this case.
Alison Cook (11:05.471)
that's so helpful. That's so practical. So even just that subtle shift from what's wrong with them to I'm curious what's, which is exactly what we're trying to do in the work of getting curious about parts of ourselves. We don't like, like, again, it translates to instead of beating myself up that I'm acting in a certain way, what we respond to is, that's so interesting. I just had a reaction. I wonder what that was about. We're extending that.
Dr. Stuart Ablon (11:21.229)
Yes.
Alison Cook (11:34.933)
to the people in our lives. I'm curious, I wonder what that's about.
Dr. Stuart Ablon (11:36.121)
Yes. Yeah. And curiosity is part of empathy, right? People, think, misunderstand the concept of empathy, the word empathy. People often think empathy means just sort of show you care or something. But actually, when I talk about empathy, that's not what I mean at all. I mean the actual definition of the word empathy, which means to understand. And if you work really hard to understand where somebody else is coming from,
Alison Cook (11:42.068)
Yes!
Alison Cook (11:59.68)
Hmm
Dr. Stuart Ablon (12:06.05)
their concern, their perspective, their point of view, what's hard for them about a situation, whether you agree with it or not, you don't have to agree with it. Just trying to understand it, that's really calming. It's very regulating. And I often say, I think it's the most powerful human regulator we have is trying to understand somebody else's perspective or point of view.
Alison Cook (12:30.145)
That's so well stated. doesn't necessarily mean even feeling sorry for. It doesn't mean I agree with. It means or disagree with. It means I get it. I get why. And that can be a process that can take a little while. So is this kind of leading into this collaborative problem solving that you talk about?
Dr. Stuart Ablon (12:36.29)
No, or disagree with. Right.
Dr. Stuart Ablon (12:50.85)
Yes, yes. Yeah, you know, I mean, we talk about this notion of, look, people do well if they can, we're all doing the best we can with the skills we have. This is about skill not will. We help people, by the way, get clear on which specific skills somebody might be struggling with, whether that's my child or myself. And there's, you know, there tends to be sort of five core areas. But then we teach people, okay, well, so now if you've got a problem with your child or anyone else,
You know, you got to think about your options, which is how you're to handle that. And what we teach people is generally you have three options. You can try to make your child do what you want them to do. You can sort of do it the way they want it or handle it the way they want it. Or you can try to work it out with them and the work it out with them. call collaborative problem solving. And that's where we teach a very specific process that starts not surprisingly with empathy, understanding your child's perspective or point of view.
Alison Cook (13:45.675)
Got it.
Dr. Stuart Ablon (13:49.987)
before you go anywhere near sharing your perspective or point of view. Not your solution, by the way, to the problem, but your perspective, your point of view, what you're worried about, your concern. And seek first to understand, and by the way, if you understand your child first, they're gonna be much more likely to listen to your point of view. And the reason I always do this with my hands is it's my way of reminding myself and others, this is how you know you're collaborating. You have two sets of concerns on the table. Not just your child's, not just yours.
Alison Cook (13:59.99)
Seek first to understand. Yeah.
Alison Cook (14:09.281)
That's right.
Alison Cook (14:16.129)
Mmm.
Dr. Stuart Ablon (14:19.532)
But both. You've heard them out. You've asked them to hear where you're coming from. Now you can collaborate. Now you can invite them to problem solve.
Alison Cook (14:25.601)
So, okay, I love this. want you to walk us through a tough example of that, but before we get there, could you give me those five skills?
Dr. Stuart Ablon (14:37.078)
Of course. Yeah, yeah. And there are really five areas of skill with a bunch of skills embedded in them. So the first one is language and communication skills. And this is why we say, look, the two-year-olds, we call it the terrible twos. One of the reasons we call it terrible twos is they don't have great language and communication skills yet. They're not able to let people know what's bothering them with subtlety. They're not able to articulate their concerns, their perspective, their point of view to engage in verbal back and forth to solve a problem.
Alison Cook (14:40.107)
Okay.
Dr. Stuart Ablon (15:05.97)
Language and communication skills are crucial and not just for little kids. This is true of us adults as well. So that's one category. Second category, attention and working memory skills. know, sort of making your way through the world and managing your behavior well requires a lot of focusing on things that people need you to focus on at certain times, whether you want to or not.
Alison Cook (15:09.665)
Yep.
Dr. Stuart Ablon (15:30.893)
and then shifting to other things and shifting back and holding a bunch of information in your head at one time, that's a whole set of skills that's crucial. Emotion and self-regulation skills, which is fancy way of saying your ability to manage or control your emotional response to stuff and your ability to control yourself, like your impulse control, for instance. Can you stop and think before you act? That's the third category. Fourth category.
Alison Cook (15:38.635)
whole set of skills.
Dr. Stuart Ablon (15:58.615)
cognitive flexibility skills, fancy way of saying flexible thinking. You know, are you somebody who tends to be a bit more rigid or concrete or literal in your thinking, more black and white, or can you see the grays? Are you somebody who does great as long as everything goes according to the plan, the routine, the schedule, but if you throw a wrench into it, if there's something unpredictable, you know, novel, you have a hard time. know, flexible thinking is so important when it comes to managing our behavior.
Alison Cook (16:25.567)
Yep.
Dr. Stuart Ablon (16:27.662)
And then the last category is social thinking skills. There's so much that goes into adaptive behavior in social interactions. From basics like how do you start a conversation? How do you gauge whether somebody's interested in what you are engaging in? How do you know how your behavior impacts others? How you come across? To empathy, that skill we've talked about before, which is a very complex social thinking skill.
And those are the five categories. And I'll tell you what, show me any kid or any adult who really struggles with their behavior. And I will show you somebody who's struggling at least one, if not five of those areas. And if they're struggling in any of those areas, it's just confirmation that this is about skill, not will.
Alison Cook (16:58.145)
Smile.
Alison Cook (17:18.649)
that. So listening, first of all, if I put my parent hat on, I almost feel overwhelmed because kids don't come into the world. We do not come into the world knowing these things. We have to learn them. And many of us arrive at adulthood with deficits in many of these areas. So number one baseline, I think we can all feel empathy. That's a lot to
Dr. Stuart Ablon (17:34.531)
Yes.
Dr. Stuart Ablon (17:39.426)
Yes.
Dr. Stuart Ablon (17:43.279)
It is a lot. And the good news is a lot of times kids develop these skills despite the fact that we don't consciously try to practice those skills and help them build them. So that's the good news. But many times you're right. know, kids, they don't acquire those skills and many of us adults struggle. by the way, I don't think any of us gets a clean bill of health on all five of those categories, right? Like we all have our relative strengths and weaknesses.
Alison Cook (18:08.895)
Yeah.
Dr. Stuart Ablon (18:12.75)
on that list.
Alison Cook (18:14.623)
That's well put. Some of them may come more naturally than others, and some of them we have to work at harder than others. Okay, so now take me into this. So we've got that as our baseline. This is what sort of the ideal... When we have some level of skill across all those five categories, we may be able to function fairly well, not perfectly, but we may be able to go through those normal relational where we can problem solve, where we can...
honor somebody else's perspective, where we can speak up for our own perspective, all of those things. But where we see a, let's say with a child, let's say where we see a real behavioral breakdown, a real issue that is causing dysfunction, how do we come along collaboratively? Can you give me an example?
of maybe an actual example from your own practice or on own life where you've detected, here's what we're missing. And it can't be academic in that moment, right? You have to engage starting with that step of curiosity. What would that look like?
Dr. Stuart Ablon (19:18.338)
Yeah, well, so the first thing you want to do if you're going to practice this kind of collaborative problem solving is you need to clarify what problems you want to try solving. And I always tell people, you can't solve a behavior, but you can solve a problem that leads to some kind of a challenging behavior. So as parents, the first thing I do in my practice is I have people list, OK, so what are the types of situations
where the behavior that you're not so wild about comes up. Is it trouble waking up in the morning to get down to breakfast and go to school? Is it spending too much time on the computer in the afternoon? Is it not getting down to their homework? Is it refusing to eat what you've served at dinner? The list goes on and on and on. And what you want to do is you want to get as specific as possible, because that's your list of problems you want to solve.
and you wanna pick one at a time and you wanna try to work on them proactively, which is very important. Don't wait until the problem starts to happen, okay? So if this is a child who isn't getting up and out in the morning in time for school and making the whole family late, the worst time to work on that is in the morning when you're all running late. Pick a time where a kid is calm and accessible, you've had some time to think, and that's when you wanna start doing this collaboration.
Alison Cook (20:45.153)
So I love that that's a reframe of don't try to solve a behavior.
try to identify a problem. Again, that requires our own regulation to not react in the moment to the behavior, but to kind of notice that's a problem.
Dr. Stuart Ablon (21:02.028)
Well, you can, you don't even have to do it in the moment though. You know, you can do it when you, when you, you know, are about to hop into bed at the end of the night exhausted. can say, okay, why am I so exhausted? What were the, what were the challenges? Where were the meltdowns today? Where did we have these conflicts? Let me list a few of them and let me think about what the patterns are here so I can get ahead of this and just start small, start in one place, pick one problem to try to practice collaborative problem solving.
Alison Cook (21:05.078)
Yeah.
Alison Cook (21:18.976)
Yep.
Alison Cook (21:29.385)
Okay, then could you walk me through, so the first step is to kind of notice when you're in your own regulated place, and then you gotta go to your kid.
Dr. Stuart Ablon (21:37.431)
Yeah. And when you go to your kid, you want to be very careful not to bring up the behavior and have them on the defensive immediately. OK. Well, they're going to get defensive if you bring up the behavior. And this smells like a lecture about how they need to change their behavior. But if you bring up the problem you're wanting to solve with them and immediately confirm that you're curious and you're interested and you want to help, it's not magic.
Alison Cook (21:43.515)
Exactly! That's the first thing I thought! They're just gonna get defensive! So what-
Alison Cook (21:51.986)
Exactly!
Dr. Stuart Ablon (22:06.06)
but it's gonna sound a little different to them. And in my experience, they'll wanna hear a little bit more. So what does that look like? In the example I gave, instead of like, hey, I wanna talk to you about morning time, because we cannot be late anymore, because your behavior is making everybody, who wants to participate in that conversation? If I'm the kid, I'm out of there too, right? But what if I started the conversation by saying, hey, you know what? I've noticed that the morning routine's not working so great so far.
And I feel really bad about that. And I'm sure there's a good reason why. What do you think's going on with the morning routine? And notice the sort of little clinical trick that I'm using there, which is I'm making the problem the problem, not the kid or the behavior the problem. The problem's the morning routine, not the kid's participation or lack thereof in the morning routine. And I'm being curious, and I'm asking for their engagement. I'm asking for their perspective.
Alison Cook (23:00.169)
Okay, that is a profound shift, what you just said. And it strikes me that it really means we have to not go with an agenda, because kids will sniff out our agenda. Especially because again, I think a lot of my listeners, and think a lot of people in general, Dr. Ablennon, I've heard you speak about this as well, are kind of caught in that punishment reward, whether we're gonna go, well, we're gonna have a consequence, right? Or we're gonna reward you if you have 10 days of...
getting to school and you're really kind of, you're kind of coming in, no, none of that. It's more of a genuine curiosity, which is what's happening here? I'm curious. Nada, let's fix this.
Dr. Stuart Ablon (23:38.979)
Yeah, and that's your agenda. You are coming in with an agenda, but the agenda isn't to impose your will upon your child. The agenda is to try to figure out what's going on. And if your kid looks at you skeptically, like, what are you trying to do? The great thing about this process is you can be totally transparent. You can say, what I'm trying to do is do a better job of trying to understand what's going on instead of just reacting. And I really want to listen to you and hear from you.
Alison Cook (23:43.894)
Yeah.
Dr. Stuart Ablon (24:05.836)
And I think maybe if we learn some stuff together, we may have some better ideas about how to handle things in a way that'll work for both of us.
Alison Cook (24:12.862)
Yeah, that's, that is that I mean, just listening to you even as an adult, if someone came to me and I really felt like they were trying to collaborate with me, I would respond completely differently.
Dr. Stuart Ablon (24:24.716)
Yes. Yeah, you know, it's funny, do when we do trainings and we do these role plays and people want to role play a kid getting really upset and see sort of how I would handle that situation. If you approach it with curiosity and collaboration, it's really hard, even if you're trying to manufacture being angry to be angry. If somebody is saying, hey, I just want to understand what's going on and I want to see if I can help. Now, sure, are there cases where
You know, a kid has had so many conversations like this that they're suspicious. And so you say all the right words and they say some version of, right. I don't want to talk. You don't care. Something like that, right? That's quite possible that they'll do that. And this is where I give parents, you know, any adult for that matter, a bunch of guidance about what I think are the sort of tools of empathy. And not just because I've studied this for a long time.
Alison Cook (25:19.668)
Yeah.
Dr. Stuart Ablon (25:22.606)
And it's not rocket science. What it is is you ask questions. If need be, you take some educated guesses if you're not getting much from your child. But if they say anything to you, you let them know you heard them by repeating it back in your own words. And if need be, they get upset, shut down, reassure them that this is not some tricky attempt for you just to impose your will. So in other words, if they said to you, don't wanna talk about this, I'm sick of talking to you, you're not gonna help, you don't care. You know what I would say? I would say,
Wow, it sounds like what you're saying is, doesn't feel like a conversation you want to be a part of because you really don't think that I mean what I'm going to say. Am I hearing you right? All I did was reflective listening. And here's reassurance. I would say something like, and you know what? If I felt like that, I wouldn't want to have a conversation either. So I totally get where you're coming from.
Alison Cook (26:12.872)
Yeah, yeah, you just stay in that curious space no matter what comes. Now, what is the role of boundaries with this? Whether it's with kids or with, I can just hear this question, right? Well, what if I do need to actually, I just can hear this question coming, you what if I do need to stop a behavior that is dangerous or if someone is,
Dr. Stuart Ablon (26:24.407)
I'm
Yeah.
Dr. Stuart Ablon (26:36.948)
Absolutely. It's funny though, the reason I laughed was it's funny how we conflate collaboration with a lack of boundaries. Which makes no sense to me. It's like, I mean, when I talk about collaborative problem solving, I'm not talking about anything goes and you're just there to do whatever your child wants and you have no structure, there's no limits. No. In fact, the reason I'm doing collaborative problem solving
Alison Cook (26:48.018)
Okay, talk to me about this.
Dr. Stuart Ablon (27:06.574)
is because I have concerns as a parent. I have a perspective, I have a point of view, I have things that need to be addressed, but imposing my will is not the way I wanna get them addressed. boundaries, limits, every bit is important. mean, the whole reason you're having this conversation we're talking about right now is because you need to get to work on time and the kids need to get to school on time. That's the boundary, that's the limit. How we're gonna go about achieving it? Collaboratively. But the boundary's there, the limit's there.
Alison Cook (27:08.862)
Yeah.
Alison Cook (27:22.057)
Yeah.
Alison Cook (27:35.38)
That's good. That's good. That's good. It's a different strategy. Again, it's a skill. You're teaching us the skill that we're trying to model for them, right? Which is it's different skill versus yelling, badgering, and it's a more effective skill.
Dr. Stuart Ablon (27:49.101)
Yes. Well, look, I mean, in my experience, most families try, you know, the sort of the basics of trying to cajole or impose their will or use a bribe or a consequence to try to get the kid to do what they want them to do. And they only tend to fall back to collaboration when those things don't work. I wish some of our first responses were more collaborative and curious when something's going wrong.
Alison Cook (28:09.876)
Isn't that interesting?
Dr. Stuart Ablon (28:18.958)
Because that's really ultimately another skill we'd like to teach the next generation of adults, which is when you have a problem with somebody, instead of just lining up and seeing who's more powerful and if you can impose your will, what if the fallback, what if the immediate reflex was, let me see if I can understand where you're coming from. And then I want you to try to see where I'm coming from so we can put our heads together.
Alison Cook (28:19.156)
this.
Alison Cook (28:40.754)
It's so interesting when you say it like that, because it is often our last resort, or I throw my hands up in the air. But the word that comes to mind is humility. There's a humility in it. And humility is actually rooted in strength. Grasping for control is actually rooted in our own ego, which is understandable, but humility is actually, I'm confident enough and strong enough that I want to understand you.
Dr. Stuart Ablon (28:51.278)
Mm-hmm.
Dr. Stuart Ablon (28:57.315)
Yes.
Alison Cook (29:09.152)
Tell me, Dr. Ablon, if we can have just a few more minutes of your time. As I'm listening to you, I'm sitting here thinking, this is a skill, what you're teaching us, this collaborative approach that feels very lacking even on a larger stage in our inner culture. Could you speak to it? Because I love how you just said this isn't have anything to do with not having boundaries or not having your own perspective. Could you speak to that?
Dr. Stuart Ablon (29:13.006)
Of course.
Dr. Stuart Ablon (29:26.318)
Yes, sadly, yes.
Dr. Stuart Ablon (29:36.835)
Yeah. Well, so I think we've gotten worse and worse as humans at listening and trying to understand where somebody else is coming from when we don't agree with their solutions. And what happens is we get into this mode of like dueling solutions. They've got an idea for how they want to go about things. And I think that's the wrong idea. Here's the right idea. And that doesn't lead anywhere good. And it leads to more and more polarization.
And what I try to do, and this has come from my work with some pretty tough kids, is I say to myself, I may not love their solution to the problem. I may not be wild about that. But you know what? I bet there's a good reason behind it. I bet they have very good concerns. And if I could unpack the concerns underneath the solution that I'm not wild about, it might open up some other potential solutions.
Alison Cook (30:16.757)
Yeah.
Dr. Stuart Ablon (30:34.306)
that would still address their concerns, but would be okay with me as well. And that's really the skill that I think is missing right now in this polarized world that we're in, which is being open-minded to, I don't love your idea of how to go about this, but you've got a good reason, and I wanna hear what that reason is all about.
Alison Cook (30:54.56)
That is so, you just nailed it. It is that skill of understanding. I almost want you to say that again. I don't love your solution, but I understand.
Dr. Stuart Ablon (31:05.134)
I don't love your solution, but yeah, but I'm sure you've got a good concern there, right?
Alison Cook (31:10.89)
There's a valid reason underneath it that I can probably at the end of the day understand and even empathize with.
Dr. Stuart Ablon (31:16.738)
And I say that all the time to kids and families I work with, I'm sure there's a good reason. I just want to understand what that reason's all about. And if we can understand, and by the way, the same applies for adults where they may be choosing how to handle things with their kids in a way that I don't love. I don't agree with. But you know what I say to myself? I bet there's a good reason. I'm sure there's a good reason. And if I can understand what the good reason is, and I can express my concerns as well, maybe there's a different way that will.
Alison Cook (31:32.617)
Dr. Stuart Ablon (31:45.279)
address their perspective, their concern that will accomplish what they want without some of the challenges that come with the way they're approaching it right now.
Alison Cook (31:54.047)
Yeah, so that is the, just to summarize, in any relationship, I'm kind of hearing a couple of mantras here, a couple of takeaways that one is, it's any behavior that is frustrating to us is skill, not will, not to impute will, or to me, there's a moral connotation there, right? They're willfully trying to do this thing. Yes, yes.
Dr. Stuart Ablon (32:15.426)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Yeah, it's a judgment about their character almost, right? When, no, you know, every, I've yet to meet the kid or the adult who prefers doing poorly to doing well. We all wanna do well. And so if we're not, it's usually because we're having a hard time applying the skills that would be needed in that moment to handle the situation better.
Alison Cook (32:29.406)
Yes. Yes.
Alison Cook (32:39.776)
So reshifting our brain to saying to ourselves, what skill don't they have? And then I love this, this kind of correlating piece that you're saying is there's always a reason, there's something underneath there, that curiosity, if I can get to the root of why, or understanding their reason, why they're doing this, I may not love the outcome, but at least I'm starting with that empathy. And that's gonna take me so much further in the relationship.
Dr. Stuart Ablon (32:54.414)
Mm-hmm.
Dr. Stuart Ablon (33:05.228)
Yeah, and I...
Yeah, and if I can identify the concerns that are underneath the solution I'm not so wild about, it opens up the opportunity for collaboration as long as I don't identify the child's concern and then impose my own solution, which would be awfully ironic because what I want to do is I want to say, OK, I got beneath the solution that I wasn't wild about to understand why. Let me give you my why now, what I'm worried about, not my solution, but
My why. And now we both have our whys on the table. Let's see if we can come up with a solution that will address both our concerns. In other words, it's mutually satisfactory and obviously realistic and doable too.
Alison Cook (33:49.485)
That is light. That is unbelievable. If we could all do that. That's yeah.
Dr. Stuart Ablon (33:54.689)
And it's not easy. It's not easy. But I will tell you this. We talked about having these conversations proactively. If you go into a proactive conversation being really crisp, really clear on, what am I worried about? Not what's the outcome I want, because I shouldn't have that agenda. But what am I worried about? And I can put that in my back pocket for now while I just concentrate on unearthing, uncovering my child's concern or perspective. Then.
Alison Cook (34:22.528)
Mm-hmm.
Dr. Stuart Ablon (34:23.404)
When the time's right, I'll whip out my perspective. And now we're ready to collaborate.
Alison Cook (34:28.65)
That's amazing. How can people, I know you had mentioned you have a resource for my listeners, but how can people learn more? They're listening and they wanna learn more about this collaborative approach in your work. What's the best way to find you and what you're doing?
Dr. Stuart Ablon (34:43.532)
Yeah, sure. So I am very proud to direct a program, which is here in the Department of Psychiatry at Massachusetts General Hospital, called Think Kids. And at Think Kids, we support parents, teachers, all kinds of folks in trying to learn this approach. And we actually have a self-paced course for parents and caregivers where they can learn in detail.
about this approach and have it applied to their own particular family and kids. And we can provide a link for that. And if people want to use a coupon that we've created for this episode, best of you, they can plug that coupon in to be able to access that training free of charge, whether that's in English or Spanish. And there's all kinds of other resources, including parent classes.
all kinds of things that are right there on our website at thinkkids.org. That's probably the first place I'd suggest people go and people can easily find my personal website and resources too on the
Alison Cook (35:51.403)
That's amazing, thank you. These resources are so needed and I'm so grateful for all your years of research, your work in the trenches, everything you do is informed by both things, right? Your work in the trenches and in the research and I'm just grateful. I'm grateful for your wisdom and we will link to all of that in the show notes and just grateful for your time. Thank you for, know, most of my listeners are not necessarily in Boston and...
can get to this. So the fact that you're making so many of these resources available digitally is just amazing. Thank you.
Dr. Stuart Ablon (36:24.386)
Well, my pleasure. appreciate you having me on and sharing some of these ideas with your audience as well. The more people who can be exposed to some of the basics of this, the better for kids, for the next generation of adults, for us parents right now. So I appreciate the opportunity. Thanks for having me.
Alison Cook (36:43.361)
Yeah. Thank you. All right, I'm gonna just.