Shared Solutions: An Autonomy Supportive Approach
Grace’s 12-year-old son came home from school, dumping his backpack on the floor, then his coat, then his homework, littering the path along the way to his iPad on the couch, where he escaped into games.
Been there? I sure have.
So has Grace and she knows what can happens next. She was tempted to let it go because he’d be occupied for hours and she had a lot to do. On the other hand, she also knew that he’d have trouble giving up the games and putting his stuff away. In addition, he’d be too tired to do his homework. Resistance—even a battle—would likely ensue.
Who would have thought that researchers studying preschool children and their parents doing puzzles at the University of Minnesota—more than a thousand miles from Grace’s Connecticut home—would have anything to say about this? But they do. Led by Stephanie Carlson, these researchers bring young children with their parents in their research lab, give them puzzles that are slightly too difficult for them and watch how their parents deal with it.
Stephanie Carlson’s research has been centered on executive function (EF) skills—the attention regulation skills that help us use what we know, think flexibly, reflect, and use self-control to achieve our goals—because, as she says:
There’s quite a bit of evidence now that executive function skills in early childhood predict academic achievement later on as well as school attendance, and graduation from college. There are longitudinal studies showing that early executive function skills predict physical health and even financial well-being later in life.1
Given the importance of EF skills, Carlson wondered, “Exactly what helps children learn these skills?” She, Annie Bernier of the University of Montréal, and others began looking for answers by observing how parents managed their children’s behavior, including during the challenging puzzle task.2
Over the years, they have observed three parenting styles, which Carlson
summarizes3:
One style is to be overcontrolling, where the caregiver is doing things for the child and not really allowing the child to have much of an active role.
I’ve watched parents with the puzzles and they step in and take over.
Another style is to be under-controlling and uninvolved in what the child is doing—not really helping, even when children are struggling.
Here the parent sits by and doesn’t do much.
The third style is what we call autonomy-supportive: recognizing that the child needs to play an active role and work to solve problems on their own, but at the same time letting the child know that you’re there to support them and offer help—just enough help—when needed.
With the third style, the parent might suggest that the child look for a puzzle piece with blue on it or give the child a choice: “Do you think this piece or that piece might fit? It’s this third style—autonomy-supportive caregiving—that studies find is a positive force in children’s lives and a precursor to developing EF skills.
But doesn’t this approach make children so used to doing things their own way that they won’t listen to their parents?
Just the opposite, actually. Autonomy-supportive caregiving is really about the child or adolescent learning skills to manage their own behavior with the adult giving guidance and setting rules. And parents do have expectations, have rules and are consistent. Being autonomy supportive and providing structure go together. And, in fact, studies show that children who receive autonomy-supportive caregiving are more likely to follow the parents’ rules, even without being told.4
Wendy Grolnick of Clark University is also a pioneer in studying autonomy- supportive caregiving with children and adolescents. In one study, Grolnick and her colleagues even took on the issue of homework.5 The researchers gave homework assignments to a group of third graders and their parents, telling half of the parents that it was their responsibility to make sure their children learned this information and that the children would be tested on it later. The other half were simply told that this was a task to do together.
Then the researchers compared how the two groups of parents behaved, and it was like day and night. The parents who felt pressure for their child to perform tended to solve the problems for their child and to be more directive; in fact, they were pretty stern compared with the parents who didn’t feel pressured to perform.
The researchers also found that the children with more controlling parents were less able to perform the tasks on their own. Being autonomy-supportive doesn’t just help young people to feel choiceful and accomplished—it actually improves their learning.6
Grace had just read The Breakthrough Years, and decided to experiment with an autonomy-supportive approach I write about called Shared Solutions with her son. Here’s how it works.
To begin, everyone agrees to:
Speak for themselves, not others.
Treat others with respect and compassion.
Listen to each other’s perspectives and ideas without criticism or judgment.
Join forces to come up with and experiment with solutions that work for them and others.
After agreeing to these ground rules, you can begin the Shared Solutions process, which consists of five steps:
Step 1: State the Problem and Determine the Goal.
State the problem in the way that you as a parent own. This is not being permissive in any way. The adult is responsible for setting family rules. In Grace’s case, the issue is that there was conflict about doing homework and her son was not putting his things away when he got home from school. Both are rules in her family.
Describe your goal—sharing how resolving this problem could benefit everyone involved. Grace said that evenings would be much more pleasant if there was less tension over homework and clean-up time.
Step 2: Generate as Many Solutions as Possible.
Have your child or children think of as many ideas as possible. Grace told me that she had trouble letting go but her husband prompted her to let her son make suggestions.
Write down every solution without commenting.
Continue this process until there are multiple solutions—the more solutions, the better. Even silly suggestions are fine.
Step 3: Consider the Pluses and Minuses of Each Solution.
Talk about how each solution would work for the child and the parents. This involves practicing the skill of perspective-taking.
You can write down these plusses and minuses.
It’s important to abstain from criticism and continue to express confidence that you can resolve the problem.
Step 4: Select a Shared Solution as an Experiment
Select a solution as a change-experiment—a solution that comes the closest to working for all involved.
Determine the timeframe for experimenting with this solution.
Determine the criteria you are going to use to judge whether it is a success.
If consequences are needed for not following through, set them together. The goal is to try to ensure that consequences will be fair, consistent, and followed.
Set a time for reconvening to discuss how the solution is working or not.
Step 5: Evaluate the Solution as Necessary, and if It Isn’t Working, Repeat the Process and Arrive at a New Shared Solution.
It’s essential to see Shared Solutions as a process—as iterative, not punitive. If it doesn’t work or if you are at an impasse, have another meeting to begin the process again. Using Shared Solutions takes practice, but it’s worth it because it will help your child gain the skills they need for life.
The solution Grace’s son suggested was coming in through a different door. Literally—a different door! That’s something Grace never would have thought of. This door is right beside the shelf where he can put his stuff away so he will do that as soon as he comes in. Then he wants a choice—playing games first so he can relax before homework or doing homework first so he can fully enjoy the games when homework is done. They decided on a time limit of 45 minutes for games. He sets the timer when he sits down to play.
A few days into the change-experiment—it’s working. But if not, they’ll go back and begin again. Taking the sting out of homework and home chores is a better start to evenings together than resistance and battles plus Grace’s son is learning problem-solving skills in the process. Shared solutions helps to turn discipline challenges into skill-building moments.
Stephanie M. Carlson, interview by Ellen Galinsky, September 15, 2017. Some of the studies Carlson is referring to are summarized in an article we wrote together; Ellen Galinsky et al., “Civic science for public use: Mind in the making and vroom,” Child Development 88 (July 2017): 1409-1418, https://doi.org/10.1111/cdev.12892; Brenna Hassinger-Das et al., “Domain-general mediators of the relation between kindergarten number sense and first- grade mathematics achievement,” Journal of Experimental Child Psychology 118 (February 2014): 78-92, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jecp.2013.09.008; Megan M. McClelland et al., “Relations between pre- school attention span-persistence and age 25 educational outcomes,” Early Childhood Research Quarterly 28 (April 2013): 314-324, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecresq.2012.07.008; Terrie E. Moffitt et al., “A gradient of childhood self- control predicts health, wealth, and public safety,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 108 (February 2011): 2696, https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1010076108.
Annie Bernier, Stephanie M. Carlson, and Natasha Whipple, “From External Regulation to Self-Regulation: Early Parenting Precursors of Young Children’s Executive Functioning,” Child Development 81 (February 2010): 326–339, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8624.2009.01397.x; Alyssa S. Meuwissen and Stephanie M. Carlson, “An Experimental Study of the Effects of Autonomy Support on Preschoolers’ Self-Regulation,” Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology 60 (January 2019): 11–23, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.appdev.2018.10.001.
Stephanie M. Carlson, interview by Ellen Galinsky, September 15, 2017.
Julie C. Laurin and Mireille Joussemet, “Parental Autonomy-Supportive Practices and Toddlers’ Rule Internalization: A Prospective Observational Study,” Motivation and Emotion 41, no. 5 (2017): 562–575, https://doi.org/10.1007/s11031-017-9627-5.
Wendy S. Grolnick et al., “Antecedents and Consequences of Mothers’ Autonomy Support: An Experimental Investigation,” Developmental Psychology 38, no. 1 (February 2002): 143, https://doi.org/10.1037/0012-1649.38.1.143.
Wendy S. Grolnick, email message to Ellen Galinsky, February 4, 2023.