Question on kazdin method

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It's a bit odd to me that apparently several people here recommend both Kazdin and Ross Greene, because they are opposite methods. For Greene, offering lots of praise is Plan A, and you don't do any Plan A.

I kind of agree! The commonality they have is that they both see behavior as being changeable with effort. But as far as I recall, Greene doesn’t really provide any coherent instruction or theory about how to teach missing skills or what to do if Plan A and B fail. But I do think that reading both would give parents more of a sense that behavior is something they have some power to change instead of just react to, and both make parents more reflective about how their own behavior may contribute to their child’s behavior. And both encourage a more analytic approach to behavior.

NP but I was also puzzled that people were recommending both. The *only* commonality that I recall is both say you cannot react negatively to unwanted behavior in the moment. Just ignore it.

Greene specifically says his method *does not* address - or solve for - behavior directly. Screaming and rudeness at the dinner table after soccer on Wednesday may need an entirely different solution than screaming and rudeness before church on Sunday. You have to find the problem before you can solve the problem. Solve the problem, and the behavior will go away.

And no, Greene does not specifically teach most missing skills - they may develop with time and maturity, learning through observation or through explicit practice, or they may not. His method focuses on solving the problems you have now (or letting them go temporarily) to give everyone more energy (mental and physical) for more important things. I can't teach my kid patience and discomfort tolerance in a week, but I can give him a snack in the car on the way home from soccer so he doesn't get hangry, and let him skip church or go to a later service when he's up late studying the night before. It's recognizing that my kid *cannot* make it from soccer to dinner as-is, and no amount of behavioral modification training or wishful thinking will change that. He feels just as bad if not worse than I do when he screams and rages - he's not *choosing* to be "bad". He's having a hard time. It's my job to help him figure out why. In the long run, it does teach valuable problem solving skills.

weird. why would greene think you cannot modify behavior? and examining antecedents (like behavior triggered by hunger or tiredness) is something Kazdin pays a lot of attention to.

That's not what I said. I said his method doesn't try to modify behavior *directly*.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It's a bit odd to me that apparently several people here recommend both Kazdin and Ross Greene, because they are opposite methods. For Greene, offering lots of praise is Plan A, and you don't do any Plan A.

I kind of agree! The commonality they have is that they both see behavior as being changeable with effort. But as far as I recall, Greene doesn’t really provide any coherent instruction or theory about how to teach missing skills or what to do if Plan A and B fail. But I do think that reading both would give parents more of a sense that behavior is something they have some power to change instead of just react to, and both make parents more reflective about how their own behavior may contribute to their child’s behavior. And both encourage a more analytic approach to behavior.

NP but I was also puzzled that people were recommending both. The *only* commonality that I recall is both say you cannot react negatively to unwanted behavior in the moment. Just ignore it.

Greene specifically says his method *does not* address - or solve for - behavior directly. Screaming and rudeness at the dinner table after soccer on Wednesday may need an entirely different solution than screaming and rudeness before church on Sunday. You have to find the problem before you can solve the problem. Solve the problem, and the behavior will go away.

And no, Greene does not specifically teach most missing skills - they may develop with time and maturity, learning through observation or through explicit practice, or they may not. His method focuses on solving the problems you have now (or letting them go temporarily) to give everyone more energy (mental and physical) for more important things. I can't teach my kid patience and discomfort tolerance in a week, but I can give him a snack in the car on the way home from soccer so he doesn't get hangry, and let him skip church or go to a later service when he's up late studying the night before. It's recognizing that my kid *cannot* make it from soccer to dinner as-is, and no amount of behavioral modification training or wishful thinking will change that. He feels just as bad if not worse than I do when he screams and rages - he's not *choosing* to be "bad". He's having a hard time. It's my job to help him figure out why. In the long run, it does teach valuable problem solving skills.

weird. why would greene think you cannot modify behavior? and examining antecedents (like behavior triggered by hunger or tiredness) is something Kazdin pays a lot of attention to.

That's not what I said. I said his method doesn't try to modify behavior *directly*.

So how does he modify behavior? My kid at 6 started hitting me. A method similar to Kazdin worked extremely well. I’m not sure how sitting down to try to collaborate with a 6 yr old on what skills were missing would work! I know a family that believes their kid’s violence can only be addressed via fixing some other factor that underlies it (he needs more 1:1 time or whatever) and it’s not pretty.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Funny. I just paid a behavioral therapist who wanted to talk through the Kazdin method and start from scratch on basic parenting. I went and just read the book and am frankly insulted that this is all that there is. It is not rocket science and does not answer specific questions I have about the intersection of ADHD and behavior. I’m surprised that this is basically all that is pushed for parents to follow, when this is a reasonable approach for any parents to use anyway.

Working through it weekly with a clinician was invaluable. You can’t compare it to reading the books.

+100. What Kazdin does is give a blueprint for how to implement skills that are actually hard to implement correctly - like correctly calibrating negative consequences. He also is quite good at discussing the positive consequences that work for different ages - like advised that teens need much more low-key praise and appreciation, but they still need it.

These books are practical methods that apply to a range of underlying diagnoses (or no diagnosis). If you want a more theoretical understanding of ADHD you’ll have to look elsewhere. And also, the whole point of behavioral methods is that you sort of experiment and look at the behavior right in front of you. You don’t say “well I cannot do anything until I know the root cause”. You don’t necessarily need any diagnosis.

And this is where Kazdin and Greene are opposites, because Greene's philosophy is you MUST know the cause before you can solve the real problem.

Because Greene is a genius.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Funny. I just paid a behavioral therapist who wanted to talk through the Kazdin method and start from scratch on basic parenting. I went and just read the book and am frankly insulted that this is all that there is. It is not rocket science and does not answer specific questions I have about the intersection of ADHD and behavior. I’m surprised that this is basically all that is pushed for parents to follow, when this is a reasonable approach for any parents to use anyway.

Working through it weekly with a clinician was invaluable. You can’t compare it to reading the books.

+100. What Kazdin does is give a blueprint for how to implement skills that are actually hard to implement correctly - like correctly calibrating negative consequences. He also is quite good at discussing the positive consequences that work for different ages - like advised that teens need much more low-key praise and appreciation, but they still need it.

These books are practical methods that apply to a range of underlying diagnoses (or no diagnosis). If you want a more theoretical understanding of ADHD you’ll have to look elsewhere. And also, the whole point of behavioral methods is that you sort of experiment and look at the behavior right in front of you. You don’t say “well I cannot do anything until I know the root cause”. You don’t necessarily need any diagnosis.

And this is where Kazdin and Greene are opposites, because Greene's philosophy is you MUST know the cause before you can solve the real problem.

Because Greene is a genius.

Is he psychic?

[Anonymous]

Np. I also recommended Alan Kazdin. That guy was life changing. There’s no way he’s on this random DC forum. The PEP facilitator recommended his work to me.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Funny. I just paid a behavioral therapist who wanted to talk through the Kazdin method and start from scratch on basic parenting. I went and just read the book and am frankly insulted that this is all that there is. It is not rocket science and does not answer specific questions I have about the intersection of ADHD and behavior. I’m surprised that this is basically all that is pushed for parents to follow, when this is a reasonable approach for any parents to use anyway.

Working through it weekly with a clinician was invaluable. You can’t compare it to reading the books.

+100. What Kazdin does is give a blueprint for how to implement skills that are actually hard to implement correctly - like correctly calibrating negative consequences. He also is quite good at discussing the positive consequences that work for different ages - like advised that teens need much more low-key praise and appreciation, but they still need it.

These books are practical methods that apply to a range of underlying diagnoses (or no diagnosis). If you want a more theoretical understanding of ADHD you’ll have to look elsewhere. And also, the whole point of behavioral methods is that you sort of experiment and look at the behavior right in front of you. You don’t say “well I cannot do anything until I know the root cause”. You don’t necessarily need any diagnosis.

And this is where Kazdin and Greene are opposites, because Greene's philosophy is you MUST know the cause before you can solve the real problem.

Because Greene is a genius.

Kazdin method works for a lot of kids. It ended up being a band aid for mine which is why we switched to CPS/ Greene which got us long term improvements.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Funny. I just paid a behavioral therapist who wanted to talk through the Kazdin method and start from scratch on basic parenting. I went and just read the book and am frankly insulted that this is all that there is. It is not rocket science and does not answer specific questions I have about the intersection of ADHD and behavior. I’m surprised that this is basically all that is pushed for parents to follow, when this is a reasonable approach for any parents to use anyway.

Working through it weekly with a clinician was invaluable. You can’t compare it to reading the books.

+100. What Kazdin does is give a blueprint for how to implement skills that are actually hard to implement correctly - like correctly calibrating negative consequences. He also is quite good at discussing the positive consequences that work for different ages - like advised that teens need much more low-key praise and appreciation, but they still need it.

These books are practical methods that apply to a range of underlying diagnoses (or no diagnosis). If you want a more theoretical understanding of ADHD you’ll have to look elsewhere. And also, the whole point of behavioral methods is that you sort of experiment and look at the behavior right in front of you. You don’t say “well I cannot do anything until I know the root cause”. You don’t necessarily need any diagnosis.

And this is where Kazdin and Greene are opposites, because Greene's philosophy is you MUST know the cause before you can solve the real problem.

Because Greene is a genius.

Kazdin method works for a lot of kids. It ended up being a band aid for mine which is why we switched to CPS/ Greene which got us long term improvements.

I think some of this must have to do with age and underlying issues. My HFA child at 6 responded to Kazdin (which is really just traditional behavioral modification) and trying to “problem solve” why he was throwing things at me would have been pointless. Now as an articulate and calmer 13 year old, and approach like Kazdin wouldn’t work as well I think and it makes much more sense to include discussion and collaboration. But sometimes I still have to pull rank and issue commands. I worry that Greene gives the impression that parents are powerless to just … tell the kid what to do.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Funny. I just paid a behavioral therapist who wanted to talk through the Kazdin method and start from scratch on basic parenting. I went and just read the book and am frankly insulted that this is all that there is. It is not rocket science and does not answer specific questions I have about the intersection of ADHD and behavior. I’m surprised that this is basically all that is pushed for parents to follow, when this is a reasonable approach for any parents to use anyway.

Working through it weekly with a clinician was invaluable. You can’t compare it to reading the books.

+100. What Kazdin does is give a blueprint for how to implement skills that are actually hard to implement correctly - like correctly calibrating negative consequences. He also is quite good at discussing the positive consequences that work for different ages - like advised that teens need much more low-key praise and appreciation, but they still need it.

These books are practical methods that apply to a range of underlying diagnoses (or no diagnosis). If you want a more theoretical understanding of ADHD you’ll have to look elsewhere. And also, the whole point of behavioral methods is that you sort of experiment and look at the behavior right in front of you. You don’t say “well I cannot do anything until I know the root cause”. You don’t necessarily need any diagnosis.

And this is where Kazdin and Greene are opposites, because Greene's philosophy is you MUST know the cause before you can solve the real problem.

Because Greene is a genius.

Kazdin method works for a lot of kids. It ended up being a band aid for mine which is why we switched to CPS/ Greene which got us long term improvements.

I think some of this must have to do with age and underlying issues. My HFA child at 6 responded to Kazdin (which is really just traditional behavioral modification) and trying to “problem solve” why he was throwing things at me would have been pointless. Now as an articulate and calmer 13 year old, and approach like Kazdin wouldn’t work as well I think and it makes much more sense to include discussion and collaboration. But sometimes I still have to pull rank and issue commands. I worry that Greene gives the impression that parents are powerless to just … tell the kid what to do.

I think its very individualized. In our case we got about 5 months of improvement from our AuDHD 5 year old using Kazdin and we thought we had turned the corner. Then we hit a wall and fell into a downwards spiral with outbursts increasing in both frequency and violence. With the help of a therapist we analyzed and made a changes to what we where doing to try get back on track and it just did not work for our little guy any longer. Our therapist was at the point to be recommending Looking back the reasons I think it didn't work for us was:

1. Our child felt like his voice wasn't being heard. Working through the CPS process we've discovered a lot of unmet needs that he wasn't quick to verbalize in the moment that led to much of the conflict.
2. There wasn't enough we could do to positively reinforce good behavior. We got so desperate for improvement at the end that he was being offered ridiculous things (shopping cart full of whatever he wanted at Target/ weekend trip to Disney) for essentially not going out of his way to hurt us or destroy our home for a week. And no he never earned those things, thank God!

The swap to CPS/Greene is what got us sustained long term success. Look they call it a spectrum for a reason and there plenty of real world results and academic research that support both methods. For whatever reason we found out our kid values having input over whatever praise/ prize/ etc. we could reinforce good behavior with.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Funny. I just paid a behavioral therapist who wanted to talk through the Kazdin method and start from scratch on basic parenting. I went and just read the book and am frankly insulted that this is all that there is. It is not rocket science and does not answer specific questions I have about the intersection of ADHD and behavior. I’m surprised that this is basically all that is pushed for parents to follow, when this is a reasonable approach for any parents to use anyway.

Working through it weekly with a clinician was invaluable. You can’t compare it to reading the books.

+100. What Kazdin does is give a blueprint for how to implement skills that are actually hard to implement correctly - like correctly calibrating negative consequences. He also is quite good at discussing the positive consequences that work for different ages - like advised that teens need much more low-key praise and appreciation, but they still need it.

These books are practical methods that apply to a range of underlying diagnoses (or no diagnosis). If you want a more theoretical understanding of ADHD you’ll have to look elsewhere. And also, the whole point of behavioral methods is that you sort of experiment and look at the behavior right in front of you. You don’t say “well I cannot do anything until I know the root cause”. You don’t necessarily need any diagnosis.

And this is where Kazdin and Greene are opposites, because Greene's philosophy is you MUST know the cause before you can solve the real problem.

Because Greene is a genius.

Kazdin method works for a lot of kids. It ended up being a band aid for mine which is why we switched to CPS/ Greene which got us long term improvements.

I think some of this must have to do with age and underlying issues. My HFA child at 6 responded to Kazdin (which is really just traditional behavioral modification) and trying to “problem solve” why he was throwing things at me would have been pointless. Now as an articulate and calmer 13 year old, and approach like Kazdin wouldn’t work as well I think and it makes much more sense to include discussion and collaboration. But sometimes I still have to pull rank and issue commands. I worry that Greene gives the impression that parents are powerless to just … tell the kid what to do.

I think its very individualized. In our case we got about 5 months of improvement from our AuDHD 5 year old using Kazdin and we thought we had turned the corner. Then we hit a wall and fell into a downwards spiral with outbursts increasing in both frequency and violence. With the help of a therapist we analyzed and made a changes to what we where doing to try get back on track and it just did not work for our little guy any longer. Our therapist was at the point to be recommending Looking back the reasons I think it didn't work for us was:

1. Our child felt like his voice wasn't being heard. Working through the CPS process we've discovered a lot of unmet needs that he wasn't quick to verbalize in the moment that led to much of the conflict.
2. There wasn't enough we could do to positively reinforce good behavior. We got so desperate for improvement at the end that he was being offered ridiculous things (shopping cart full of whatever he wanted at Target/ weekend trip to Disney) for essentially not going out of his way to hurt us or destroy our home for a week. And no he never earned those things, thank God!

The swap to CPS/Greene is what got us sustained long term success. Look they call it a spectrum for a reason and there plenty of real world results and academic research that support both methods. For whatever reason we found out our kid values having input over whatever praise/ prize/ etc. we could reinforce good behavior with.

Did you just read books or did you work with a trained therapist? For severe issues you really need a trained therapist. It sounds like at a minimum the rewards weren’t properly calibrated.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Funny. I just paid a behavioral therapist who wanted to talk through the Kazdin method and start from scratch on basic parenting. I went and just read the book and am frankly insulted that this is all that there is. It is not rocket science and does not answer specific questions I have about the intersection of ADHD and behavior. I’m surprised that this is basically all that is pushed for parents to follow, when this is a reasonable approach for any parents to use anyway.

Working through it weekly with a clinician was invaluable. You can’t compare it to reading the books.

+100. What Kazdin does is give a blueprint for how to implement skills that are actually hard to implement correctly - like correctly calibrating negative consequences. He also is quite good at discussing the positive consequences that work for different ages - like advised that teens need much more low-key praise and appreciation, but they still need it.

These books are practical methods that apply to a range of underlying diagnoses (or no diagnosis). If you want a more theoretical understanding of ADHD you’ll have to look elsewhere. And also, the whole point of behavioral methods is that you sort of experiment and look at the behavior right in front of you. You don’t say “well I cannot do anything until I know the root cause”. You don’t necessarily need any diagnosis.

And this is where Kazdin and Greene are opposites, because Greene's philosophy is you MUST know the cause before you can solve the real problem.

Because Greene is a genius.

Kazdin method works for a lot of kids. It ended up being a band aid for mine which is why we switched to CPS/ Greene which got us long term improvements.

I think some of this must have to do with age and underlying issues. My HFA child at 6 responded to Kazdin (which is really just traditional behavioral modification) and trying to “problem solve” why he was throwing things at me would have been pointless. Now as an articulate and calmer 13 year old, and approach like Kazdin wouldn’t work as well I think and it makes much more sense to include discussion and collaboration. But sometimes I still have to pull rank and issue commands. I worry that Greene gives the impression that parents are powerless to just … tell the kid what to do.

I think its very individualized. In our case we got about 5 months of improvement from our AuDHD 5 year old using Kazdin and we thought we had turned the corner. Then we hit a wall and fell into a downwards spiral with outbursts increasing in both frequency and violence. With the help of a therapist we analyzed and made a changes to what we where doing to try get back on track and it just did not work for our little guy any longer. Our therapist was at the point to be recommending Looking back the reasons I think it didn't work for us was:

1. Our child felt like his voice wasn't being heard. Working through the CPS process we've discovered a lot of unmet needs that he wasn't quick to verbalize in the moment that led to much of the conflict.
2. There wasn't enough we could do to positively reinforce good behavior. We got so desperate for improvement at the end that he was being offered ridiculous things (shopping cart full of whatever he wanted at Target/ weekend trip to Disney) for essentially not going out of his way to hurt us or destroy our home for a week. And no he never earned those things, thank God!

The swap to CPS/Greene is what got us sustained long term success. Look they call it a spectrum for a reason and there plenty of real world results and academic research that support both methods. For whatever reason we found out our kid values having input over whatever praise/ prize/ etc. we could reinforce good behavior with.

Did you just read books or did you work with a trained therapist? For severe issues you really need a trained therapist. It sounds like at a minimum the rewards weren’t properly calibrated.

All under guidance from a therapist we met with biweekly and well as a Psychiatrist who monitored.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Funny. I just paid a behavioral therapist who wanted to talk through the Kazdin method and start from scratch on basic parenting. I went and just read the book and am frankly insulted that this is all that there is. It is not rocket science and does not answer specific questions I have about the intersection of ADHD and behavior. I’m surprised that this is basically all that is pushed for parents to follow, when this is a reasonable approach for any parents to use anyway.

Working through it weekly with a clinician was invaluable. You can’t compare it to reading the books.

+100. What Kazdin does is give a blueprint for how to implement skills that are actually hard to implement correctly - like correctly calibrating negative consequences. He also is quite good at discussing the positive consequences that work for different ages - like advised that teens need much more low-key praise and appreciation, but they still need it.

These books are practical methods that apply to a range of underlying diagnoses (or no diagnosis). If you want a more theoretical understanding of ADHD you’ll have to look elsewhere. And also, the whole point of behavioral methods is that you sort of experiment and look at the behavior right in front of you. You don’t say “well I cannot do anything until I know the root cause”. You don’t necessarily need any diagnosis.

And this is where Kazdin and Greene are opposites, because Greene's philosophy is you MUST know the cause before you can solve the real problem.

Because Greene is a genius.

Kazdin method works for a lot of kids. It ended up being a band aid for mine which is why we switched to CPS/ Greene which got us long term improvements.

I think some of this must have to do with age and underlying issues. My HFA child at 6 responded to Kazdin (which is really just traditional behavioral modification) and trying to “problem solve” why he was throwing things at me would have been pointless. Now as an articulate and calmer 13 year old, and approach like Kazdin wouldn’t work as well I think and it makes much more sense to include discussion and collaboration. But sometimes I still have to pull rank and issue commands. I worry that Greene gives the impression that parents are powerless to just … tell the kid what to do.

I think its very individualized. In our case we got about 5 months of improvement from our AuDHD 5 year old using Kazdin and we thought we had turned the corner. Then we hit a wall and fell into a downwards spiral with outbursts increasing in both frequency and violence. With the help of a therapist we analyzed and made a changes to what we where doing to try get back on track and it just did not work for our little guy any longer. Our therapist was at the point to be recommending Looking back the reasons I think it didn't work for us was:

1. Our child felt like his voice wasn't being heard. Working through the CPS process we've discovered a lot of unmet needs that he wasn't quick to verbalize in the moment that led to much of the conflict.
2. There wasn't enough we could do to positively reinforce good behavior. We got so desperate for improvement at the end that he was being offered ridiculous things (shopping cart full of whatever he wanted at Target/ weekend trip to Disney) for essentially not going out of his way to hurt us or destroy our home for a week. And no he never earned those things, thank God!

The swap to CPS/Greene is what got us sustained long term success. Look they call it a spectrum for a reason and there plenty of real world results and academic research that support both methods. For whatever reason we found out our kid values having input over whatever praise/ prize/ etc. we could reinforce good behavior with.

Did you just read books or did you work with a trained therapist? For severe issues you really need a trained therapist. It sounds like at a minimum the rewards weren’t properly calibrated.

All under guidance from a therapist we met with biweekly and well as a Psychiatrist who monitored.

Ok well, if the therapist was recommending that the reward be a full cart of toys and be awarded weekly then they weren’t actually designing a good program. As Kazdin explains rewards are supposed to be immediate and generally small. Depending on age you can have rewards that are delayed (like a point system that adds up to something bigger to be redeemed) but some part of the reward would still be immediate/daily.