Insights

By Dr. J. Stuart Ablon

Why do some children struggle to meet expectations even when they have the motivation to succeed? Why might a child who excels in one area struggle so much with everyday tasks like completing homework, managing frustration, or adapting to changes in routine?

Too often, we interpret these struggles as a lack of motivation, effort, or willingness to cooperate. We assume children could meet expectations if they wanted to badly enough. But what if we're looking at the problem the wrong way?

When we better understand how children's brains work and the skills they bring to different situations, we can respond in ways that are more compassionate, more effective, and more likely to help them succeed.

This is especially important when supporting neurodivergent youth, whose brains may process information differently.

At Think:Kids, our work is grounded in a simple but powerful idea: Kids do well if they can.

The Skills Behind Challenging Behavior

Behavior doesn't happen in a vacuum. It is influenced by the interaction between a person's skills and the demands of their environment.

At Think:Kids, Collaborative Problem Solving® (CPS) helps adults identify the thinking skills that may be contributing to a child's struggles. These include:

• Language and communication: Expressing thoughts, understanding information, and communicating needs.
• Attention and working memory: Maintaining focus, keeping information in mind, and following through on tasks.
• Emotion and self-regulation: Managing frustration and other strong emotions and controlling impulses.
• Cognitive flexibility: Shifting between activities, adapting to changes, and considering different perspectives or approaches.
• Social thinking: Understanding other people's perspectives and navigating social interactions.

When children repeatedly struggle to meet expectations, we need to consider two possibilities: the expectations may be beyond what is developmentally appropriate for them, or they may be struggling with the skills needed to meet those expectations.

Our job is to understand which is happening rather than assume the child simply isn't trying.

What This Looks Like in Everyday Life

I once worked with a young person who could solve a Rubik's Cube in less than a minute. He had remarkable abilities when it came to these puzzles. Yet getting started on his homework could take him 20 minutes, and work that should have taken half an hour could stretch into hours.

It would have been easy to assume he simply preferred playing with his Rubik's cubes to doing homework. His parents had tried offering incentives to get him started and threatening to take away things he enjoyed when he didn't follow through.

But these strategies weren't solving the problem.

The young person struggled with cognitive flexibility, particularly shifting his attention from one activity to another. He also had difficulty maintaining his focus. The problem wasn't that he didn't understand the importance of homework or didn't want to succeed. He was struggling with the skills required to get started and stay on task.

So, we approached him differently.

We reassured him that he wasn't in trouble and explained that we wanted to understand why homework was so difficult. When we listened to his perspective, he explained something that surprised his parents: he actually found it easier to focus when there was some activity and noise around him rather than sitting alone in a quiet room.

Together, we explored possible solutions. Having the television on turned out to be too distracting, but listening to the radio and moving around while doing homework helped him concentrate. He was able to complete his work in a way that better matched how his brain processed information.

The important point is that we didn't abandon the expectation that homework needed to get done. We worked with him to find a way to meet that expectation.

When we understand what's hard for a child, we can move beyond arguments about whether they are trying hard enough and start solving the actual problem.

Collaboration Builds Skills, Not Just Solutions

One of the most important things to understand about Collaborative Problem Solving is that it does more than resolve an immediate disagreement.

When we work with children to solve problems, we give them opportunities to practice the skills they may be struggling with. They learn to communicate their concerns, consider other perspectives, think flexibly, tolerate frustration, and develop solutions.

These skills develop through practice and supportive relationships. They aren't built simply by telling children to do better or imposing consequences when they struggle.

This matters at home, but it matters in schools, too.

Educators work with classrooms full of students, each with different strengths, needs, and ways of processing information. Finding ways to support individual students while meeting the needs of an entire classroom is a real challenge.

Time is a scarce resource in schools. But when recurring behavioral difficulties escalate, they can consume enormous amounts of time and energy. Investing in proactive problem-solving can help prevent some of these cycles and support students in developing the skills they need.

In our work implementing Collaborative Problem Solving in schools, we've seen the potential for reductions in behavioral challenges and teacher stress, alongside opportunities for students to develop better problem-solving skills, flexibility, and frustration tolerance.

The approach requires effort and practice. But the question is not whether supporting students takes time. It's how we choose to spend that time.

Start with Empathy, Not Assumptions

For parents and caregivers, changing how we understand behavior can begin with a simple shift: instead of asking, "How do I get my child to do this?" we can start by asking, "What's making this so hard?"

Consider a child who struggles with reading because of dyslexia. By the time that child resists homework or becomes upset about school, they may have experienced repeated frustration and criticism. They may feel ashamed, misunderstood, or worried that others think they aren't trying hard enough.

Pushing the child to explain their struggles or work harder may only add to those feelings.

A more helpful starting point is to acknowledge that the experience is difficult, communicate that we want to understand, and recognize the child's strengths alongside their challenges.

We don't need children to be able to explain every aspect of their struggles before we can offer support. We need to show them that we're willing to listen, learn about their experience, and work with them.

Empathy doesn't mean agreeing with everything a child says or abandoning expectations. It means making a genuine effort to understand their perspective before trying to solve a problem.

That understanding creates a foundation for collaboration.

A Different Way Forward for Neurodivergent Youth

We've made important progress in understanding neurodivergence and child development, but there is still work to do. When children struggle to manage their behavior, adults often default to rewards, consequences, and attempts to motivate them to do better.

We need to keep shifting that response toward understanding the skills behind behavior and helping children develop those skills.

For parents, caregivers, educators, and other professionals, this starts with recognizing that challenging behavior can be an opportunity to learn something important about a child. It invites us to look beyond what we see on the surface and understand what may be getting in the way.

Collaborative Problem Solving offers a practical, evidence-based way to do that. By approaching children with empathy, curiosity, and a commitment to solving problems together, we can address immediate concerns while helping young people build the skills they need for the future.

Kids do well if they can. Our job is to understand what's getting in their way and help them succeed.