The End of "Why" Questions

There is a question that I've long struggled with, despite its standard use in most of our lexicons, therapist and parent alike.  It is arguably our most frequently used question: "why."  "Why did you (fill in the blank)." This is a standard parenting and therapeutic question.  It so frequently comes up with kids, particularly those with ADHD in response to their "impulsivity."  (See my post of 7/17/13 on "The Missing 'I' In ADHD").  

Asking "why" to a kid with ADHD is almost always silly question, albeit understandable.  Impulsivity means action without thought.  If I was thinking, I wouldn't have bleached the dog's fur.  It’s the Dennis the Menace response that lands him sitting in the corner – to no long term avail.  We ask "why" because we're programmed from infancy to do so.  If we understand why, we understand a lot.  But in the arena of human behavior, "why" often leads us down a dead end.  We've all been there - we ask "why" and receive no real satisfaction with the answer.  We are quite satisfied, however, with OUR answer of "why" which, as Ross Greene points out, is usually a theory, often creative, sometimes accurate, but used often as a figurative club to beat sense into the child.  Now I don't know about you, but I struggle enough with regular questions. When I'm being emotionally clubbed, I have a much tougher time.  When kids are being emotionally clubbed with our theories, they shut down.  

Indeed, the "why" question has been choice in my quiver of questions until recently. I'm using it less and less, and I may be even approaching the end of "why" questions altogether. The corner I've turned with "why" questions has come under the tutelage of Greene who wrote The Explosive Child and Lost at School.  I'm taking a certification program with him in the model outlined in these books. "Collaborative Proactive Solutions" (initially developed under the name of "Collaborative Problem Solving" until Greene's rights to his own intellectual property was challenged in court.  Another topic for another day.)

In the CPS model Greene asserts that "why" questions so often lead to a dead end. "Why did you hit your brother?" is likely to be responded to with a "He's a jerk" (often said much less graciously) or "He started it" or "He said I'm a jerk" and the like.  How does a parent or a therapist follow up to such a response?  Do we believe that knowing "why" will inhibit the problem from happening in the future?  That thinking is rooted in the Freudian theory of finding the "kernel" of the problem that, when explored, extricates the problem like a dandelion pulled from the ground extricating the entire root system.  The problem with dandelion pulling is that it invariably leaves a fragment of the root in the ground that regenerates.  Like the regenerated dandelion, the answer to “why” does not uproot the behavior which will invariably rear its ugly head again.  Knowing "why" does not give us the solution - the behavioral change - we want.  

We ask "why" I believe, due to our own inquisitiveness and desire, our need to figure things out and understand how things work. Why does the apple fall from the tree?  Gravity.  Why did my tennis serve not make it over the net? Simple, if I'm able to learn the mechanics of how to serve a tennis ball.  Why did I leave dirty dishes in the sink?  That's actually a complicated question with many variables and influences.  And that's just the dishes!  When exploring the cause of human behavior, it's quite difficult to find a satisfying answer to "why" mostly because the answer to "why" doesn't lead to behavioral change.  Maybe I didn't do the dishes because I was tired.  Maybe I didn't do the dishes because I'm angry at my wife for what(ever) happened yesterday and not doing them is my way to get back at her.  Maybe I didn't do the dishes because it's an expression of my sublimated rage for my mother's ignoring my emotional needs when I was three.  Yes, theories can be very creative.  

Greene famously talks about a child who he treated who was quite the behavioral challenge and had gone through many therapists, more interventions, all to no avail.  The common narrative about the child had to do with the "theory" (code for "why") of the tragic death of his father when he was a toddler.  It was taken as faith that if he could fully explore his grief, his behavior would be wholly uprooted and all would be well.  When Greene asked the child about his father's death, the kid looked at him quizzically and responded that there were no real memories of his dad.  The child was two years old when he died.  The theory connecting the behavior to the loss of the mother was not applicable.  This is not to say that dads are unimportant – or that the child might not benefit from some “dad” based discussion, but we have to include what kids' experience is in solving the problem.  

What's a therapist (or parent) to do?  That, says Greene, involves engaging the child in a very specific definition of what the problem actually is and then collaborating with the child to find a solution.  Which is a discussion for a different post (stay tuned).  In the meantime, I encourage you to consider: is the payoff for the "why" questions getting you where you want with your kids?