In my everyday life, I try really hard not to complain about things unless I have constructive ideas for a better way. I want to be part of the solution. For me, solutions start with good questions, and this blog gives me opportunities to ask questions, which in turn gets me thinking about possible solutions. I have recently discovered a trio of resources that have created a vision of how we could start to answer some of the questions I’ve been asking.
The resources come from diverse areas of my life: a parenting group, a popular TV show, and an engineering course. It would be reasonable to wonder what all of these have in common, but I’m increasingly finding that the more I integrate the different areas of my life, the better I understand life generally. As that has happened, it has become easier to see the similarities across different resources and venues that come across my path.
Our parenting struggles have connected me with a diverse collection of Facebook groups, many targeting families dealing with challenging parenting issues. My newest favourite is called The B Team: Lives in the Balance, a support group for those trying to implement Ross Greene’s work, which can be found on a website of the same name, Lives in the Balance. The basic premise of Dr. Greene’s work is that children do well if they can. He points out that doing well is preferable to doing poorly, and if kids aren’t doing well, it’s because they are lacking skills, not motivation. Dr. Greene suggests that kids don’t need rewards and punishments to help motivate them – we are all motivated to live our best lives. What they need is time and support to build the necessary skills. He outlines a process for providing this, including limiting expectations to those a child can meet and then helping them find ways to meet others, in ways they are able. It is a beautiful framework for solving any kind of problem, focused very much on ‘going upstream’ to find the root of the behaviour and really listening to a child’s concerns to determine what is getting in their way, instead of making assumptions about what we think is getting in the way. This revolutionary method requires parents to think about what it is we are trying to provide for our children. It focuses on learning to ask the right questions and requires parents to find and articulate our own concerns, noting WHY certain things are important to us. It encourages and facilitates finding creative solutions and assumes the need to assess and adjust solutions until we find one that works for everyone involved.
With all the chaos of this stage of life, my partner and I sometimes find it challenging to connect and enjoy spending time together, and so we’ve made it a habit to pick shows we can watch together on a regular basis. One of the ones we are currently watching (just finished, actually) is New Amsterdam, a medical drama about a public hospital in Manhattan. It is the story of a young medical director who cares more about people than money. He wants to change the face of medicine to provide better care. His tagline is, “How can I help?” and he asks it in every interaction. He thinks outside the box and is not afraid to find new ways to address old problems. Many of the doctors in the show are a bit unorthodox, allowing intuition and active listening to guide them. One doctor in particular, an older neurologist named Dr. Kapur, makes sure to ask many questions to be sure he identifies the root problem. Several doctors focus on relationships with their patients over standard medical protocol. They apply creative solutions such as renting an apartment for a ‘frequent flyer’ patient, which costs the hospital way less money than treating him regularly for problems caused by homelessness.
In a quest to support my son’s self-directed learning, we found ourselves enrolled in an engineering course run by Mark Rober, the NASA/Apple-engineer-turned-YouTuber who creates fun story-based videos to inspire interest in engineering. His videos are a great combination of education and fun, and when my son suggested taking his Creative Engineering course, I thought it was a great idea. Then my son decided it wasn’t a great idea… but I was already hooked, so I found myself enrolled in an engineering course by myself. In the fast-paced, self-guided course, Mark outlines and walks you through the engineering process – Brainstorm, Research, Prototype, Final Build. He starts with identifying a problem, by thinking about how things work or don’t work in our everyday life. He then identifies the Requirements of the solution, sorting them into Essential and Non-essential and ordering them by importance. He stresses that we should not start with a preconceived idea about how to solve the problem, but be open to all possible ways of meeting the requirements. Thus, we started with a long list of possibilities, and narrowed them down based on feasibility, interest, and how many requirements were met by each. We then built a quick and dirty prototype to test how well our ideas met our needs, assessed its performance, and adjusted as necessary before putting too much energy into the actual production of our chosen solution.
As you can see, these three resources are very diverse. However, interestingly, they all suggest the following lessons:
- People do well when they can.
- Learn to ask the right QUESTIONS.
- Really LISTEN to the answers.
- Find the SOURCE of the problem.
- Be CREATIVE.
- Assess and ADJUST.
People do well when they can, not just children. This means that the focus should be on prevention where possible, because when we give people the right tools and supports, they are less likely to have problems that cost more money and heartache down the road. This might include initiatives like Housing First solutions, a Guaranteed Basic Income, and an education system that takes into account the divergent needs of various learners.
Learning to ask the right questions means thinking about what we need and why we need it. It means letting go of what’s already there and wondering about what it was meant to address. Often what is there is no longer meeting the need it was designed to meet. Asking the right questions is how we find the source of the problems. One question we’ve been asking a lot in my house and my teaching circles is “Why do we need education?” What are we trying to gain from this system and are there other/better ways to meet those needs?
Listening seems like a no-brainer, but many of us are not very good at it. We listen to respond instead of listening to understand. We hear what we want to hear or what agrees with our preconceived ideas, rather than really hearing the vast array of differing opinions. We feel attacked and get defensive rather than hearing the concerns of other people. We are afraid of other people’s truths. Alternatively, sometimes we only listen to a select few – those who agree with us, or those who we are used to hearing. Truly listening involves inviting stakeholders to the table from across the board – a mix of people representing a neurodiverse group from different socio-economic backgrounds, racial profiles, sexual identities, geographical locations, and people of varying ages and abilities. It means believing that everyone has something to bring to the table, even if we have to work hard to hear their perspectives. This might include hearing the pleas of Black parents who fear for the safety of their children, or listening to the legacy of trauma in Indigenous communities. It means believing survivors, using respectful language, and understanding that people have worth even when they are either too young or too old to be gainfully employed.
Finding the source of the problem is tricky. It often means looking in areas we hadn’t considered. It sometimes means putting preventative measures in one area to avoid problems in another area. This might include looking at the true effects and societal costs of poverty, racism, and a punitive justice system.
Being creative sometimes means listening to voices that haven’t been heard before. It means letting go of the systems that are so entrenched we don’t even see them anymore. It means daring to risk something that hasn’t been tried before. Any solution that feels daring or new would fit this suggestion, including any kind of change to government structures.
And lastly, assess and adjust understands that no solution will be perfect right away. It requires us to extend grace to ourselves and others, trusting the process and each other to find something that works long term. It means keeping faith that there ARE solutions and working to build systems that are fair for everybody, not just those who’ve traditionally had a voice in building them. It means spending more money on solving problems than punishing governments for their mistakes. It means not immediately reversing systems every time a new government is elected. It requires leaders who work together instead of against each other, and a society prepared to give the benefit of the doubt to people doing a job the rest of us aren’t prepared to do.
A friend recently pointed out that many of our systems need to “collapse and be rebuilt from the ground up.” I’m not keen on the collapse part, but I agree with the rebuilding. The question I have is how? How do we encourage the government, or even just our friends and neighbours, to look at the big picture? How do we learn, as a society, to ask the right questions, really listen for the answers, and risk creative solutions that address the true underlying issues? If people do well when they can, then how do we empower them to do well?
Out of the Well 