Community Calendar

Parents, caregivers and the community are invited to learn how the Collaborative & Proactive Solutions (CPS) approach is improving the way kids with behavioral challenges are being understood and treated in Maine.

• Learn how to solve problems collaboratively while teaching valuable life skills.
• Share ideas on how to identify communication gaps and brainstorm solutions.

This event is hosted by G.E.A.R. Parent Network, which empowers parents and caregivers of children with behavioral health needs to build on their family’s strengths and to advocate for their family’s needs.

Dr. Ross Greene is the originator of an innovative, research-based model for understanding and helping behaviorally challenging kids, as articulated in his well-known books The Explosive Child and Lost at School.

The model sets forth two important tenets: first, challenging behavior is the byproduct of lagging skills, not lagging motivation or poor parenting. Second, challenging kids benefit primarily from interventions aimed at teaching them the skills they’re lacking – and especially by helping them solve the problems that are set in motion by those lagging skills – rather than by trying to give them the incentive to behave adaptively.

Dr. Greene’s model has helped many parents, educators and staff in various facilities – inpatient units, residential facilities and prisons – do just that, and often with dramatic effect. Maine is one of the states that has been most receptive to this approach, especially in its system of juvenile detention and public schools. As Dr. Greene described, his goal is to have Maine be an example for the rest of the nation.

For more information, visit www.livesinthebalance.org -- the website of Dr. Greene’s Maine-based nonprofit organization.

G.E.A.R. Parent Network is a program of Crisis & Counseling Centers.

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