It Wasn’t About Will. It Was About Skill.
For a long time, everything I heard pointed to behavior.
“She’s choosing this.”
“She knows better.”
“She just needs to try harder.”
It all came back to will.
And if I’m being honest, that mindset makes you push harder.
More consequences.
More structure.
More pressure.
But it wasn’t working.
Then I heard something that stuck
Kids do well if they can.
Not if they want to.
If they can.
That one shift changed how I saw everything.
Because if a child can do something, they usually will.
So if they’re not, something is getting in the way.
That “something” is usually a skill
Not handling frustration.
Not shifting between tasks.
Not processing what’s being asked.
These aren’t choices.
They’re skills that haven’t fully developed yet.
And no amount of consequences builds a skill.
Then I found HBCC
HBCC teaches something called Collaborative Problem Solving.
It focuses on identifying lagging skills instead of reacting to behavior.
It’s not about letting things slide.
It’s about understanding what’s underneath.
And I’ll be starting their training in CPS soon, which I’m really looking forward to.
It made things clearer
Instead of asking:
“How do I stop this behavior?”
I started asking:
“What skill is missing here?”
That question changed everything.
Because now there was something to work on.
Something to build.
It also changed how I responded
Less reacting.
More listening.
More curiosity.
More working with my child instead of trying to control every situation.
It doesn’t mean there are no expectations.
It means we’re actually building the skills needed to meet them.
This isn’t a quick fix
It takes time.
It takes practice.
And it takes unlearning a lot of what we’ve been told.
But it works in a way that actually makes sense.
Why this matters
When everything is framed as will, kids get labeled.
When it’s understood as skill, kids get support.
That is a big difference.
If this resonates, I recommend learning more about Collaborative Problem Solving through HBCC: https://hbcc.us/
