Solution-Focused Strategies

Hey there, counselors, let’s talk about solution-focused counseling. I’m the first to admit that in grad school, I was not a huge fan of this particular theory, but I think it was just the textbook that we used because later on in my counseling career, after reading some more, getting a better understanding of what this really looked like, particularly with kids, I came to see that there is a lot of value. and evidence-based to it.

So let’s get into it, starting with some foundational basics. So this theory was developed by a husband and wife team, Steve DeShazer and In Su Kimberg in the 1970s. It is short-term goal-focused, Therapeutic approach that utilizes positive psychology principles to help people really hone in on their goals and move them towards their goals rather than focusing on the problem or their problems. As it’s at its core, it has a lot of the same foundational counseling skills and most theories. Curiosity, validation, listening. But unlike person-centered counseling, we can add asking because asking questions, as you’ll see as we dive into the techniques, is a core part of solution-focused counseling.  As are the following core foundational beliefs, okay? One, people already have inside of them everything they need. To be successful.  Okay, that’s probably like the biggest core belief. And then within that are also the ideas that small changes can be powerful.  Big problems don’t necessarily require big solutions. There’s always an exception to the problem, which can be built upon because no problem is constant.  Focusing on goals and solutions is more helpful than focusing on problems. Counselors can empower the people they serve by utilizing their strengths and cheerleading them. If it works, do more of it. If it doesn’t, do something different. That’s another biggie. There’s also a belief. inside solution-focused counseling, specifically with kids, that children have a desire to be surprised and to surprise others in a good way, and we can use this desire particularly when we’re talking to them about changing their behaviors. So why is this an important theory for us to know about? Well, first, because research indicates that it has a positive impact on children’s externalizing behavior problems. This is an evidence-based counseling intervention. It is also touted as being a trauma-sensitive theory and a theory that is effective across cultures. Solution-focused brief counseling is considered to be one of the most time-efficient theories to implement. Something extra to consider for those of us working in schools.  You can use many of these techniques with caregivers and staff as well, not just the target student that you’re working with.  Now, while some pieces can certainly be used with all grade levels and there are ways to add more play into several of them as well, we’ve really found that solution-focused counseling is most effective with second grade and up.  And to make your job easier in implementing all of the ideas inside this little training, make sure that you are checking out the solution-focused counseling toolkit that we have because it’s full of tools and activities that align specifically with this theory.

There are five broad core techniques inside. solution-focused therapy that apply to our work with kids. Counselors using this theory often incorporate all of these techniques within each session for a consistent structure, okay? And these are positives, scaling, goal setting and problem solving, cheerleading, and experiments and homework, okay? Now a quick aside here, very traditional solution-focused counseling also has a piece of the session where the counselor essentially takes a think break.  to reflect on the session and gather their thoughts before sharing a closing message that includes compliments and suggestions for change.  You can certainly incorporate this, but given our limitations, limited time with students. This is less common in school-based settings. Now, first up is this identifying and building on strengths and positives.  Okay, so at the start of counseling, this might mean identifying and leveraging the child’s existing abilities and strengths to solve a problem. Focusing on their strengths can really empower them and build their confidence. But this is easier with some kids than others. We’ve all worked with a kiddo before where we’ve asked, what is one of your strengths? What is something you’re really great at?  They’ve given a blank look, said nothing, or named one thing that is great, but is 0% applicable to the conversation.  In those situations, you might want to use a menu of sorts to scaffold and provide them with some options, some possibilities that they might connect with. If you’re really crafty, maybe you cut out outlines of tools, hammers, wrenches, measuring tape, and write the student’s strengths on them.  You can then explain to the child that they already have tools that are going to help them reach their goals.  Some other prompts besides what are your strengths that might be helpful and helping them to identify their strengths are what is something you’re really good at? What’s something you’re really proud of? What’s something you love about yourself? What’s something that you do that helps others? Now while identifying strengths may be the focus of the first session or two, it moves to identify find positives after that. Positives in the child’s life. Most simply and traditionally, this is just asking, like, what is something that is a little bit better since the last time we talked?  Or what’s something that’s been going well in your life, in school or home, or friends, that you hope continues, that you hope continues to feel good or positive for you?

Next is scaling, which is having the child scale the size or intensity of their problem or feeling, or sometimes even progress towards a goal. There’s a lot of different printable scales inside the toolkit, including ice cream scoops, a ladder, volume, sports scoreboard, and more. A scaling can look like identifying a number or a visual, but it could also be done through blobs of Play-Doh, how many blocks are in a tower, how big is a balloon.  Scaling encourages self-reflection, which gives kiddos a more accurate perspective on the size of their problems. It also helps them to focus on small wins or small steps towards progress, which builds momentum. Scaling helps with goal setting, a key component of solution-focused counseling. And because it provides a really like tangible, measurable way of setting goals by identifying what number your student wants to get to. And last, scaling. Helps our kiddos identify solutions easier because it’s hard to imagine a problem going away. Sometimes that feels just really unrealistic, but it is a little bit easier to believe that it could be just a little bit better, which scaling allows children to do.  Here’s some examples of questions you might ask. On scale one to ten, how big of a problem is this for you? On a scale of one to ten, how old did you focus your attention today? On a scale of one to ten, how good are things with friends lately? Hmm, what would you need to do to make this problem go from a nine to an eight? So we ask this because we’re never asking the child again how to solve the problem completely, right? You might make a big deal out of saying something like, my goodness, I wish we could shrink this problem from a 10 to a 1 with one strategy, but you know, most schools require us to take small steps to get there. Or I won’t ask you how to get this problem all the way to a one, but how about to an eight? What small thing could you do differently to make this problem feel like more of an eight? You can also ask, what makes you pick that level? Why is it not higher or lower? Or, okay, so you’re saying the problem is a nine out of ten. Why is it a nine and not a ten? What is already going on? a little okay that makes the problem just a little bit smaller. The idea here is continuing to help the student identify something positive or helpful in the situation. You can also tie scaling in with the miracle question, which we’ll talk about in a moment with questions like, okay, imagine you’re out of seven. What is your brain saying? What are you doing? What do the people around you think? If the number or level changed, how would you know? Tell me what would be different. So this strategy is really easy to pull into all different kinds of counseling conversations, even if you aren’t using the whole solutions-focused counseling framework. And there’s also, I should say, an entire video on scaling inside your counseling. compass if you want to dive even more into this or want an extra refresher on how to use scaling with your students.

The next major technique or major step in your counseling sessions with solution focused counseling would be goal setting or problem solving or both. You might focus more on goal setting in the first session or it might be something you incorporate each time. Setting goals is both for enhancing their motivation and bringing clarity into the counseling sessions. And of course it’s not just about the goals but also about the small action steps that are needed to get them closer to the goals. This is the kind of thing that you’ll likely want to provide your students with some Scaffolding examples of first. I mean, you can certainly just ask kids directly, like, what is your goal, or what is your goal for your behavior, or your learning, or your friendships. You probably already do this sometimes in class lessons or maybe with groups. They can answer verbally or through drawing or with figurines. And in solution-focused counseling, you might use the miracle question, but with kids, sometimes you might switch to calling it the magic question.  That’s what I did. Here’s one way that you could word it: imagine that tonight, while you are sleeping, a bit of magic happens. This magic has made your problem disappear. You woke up, and everything is how you want it to be at school with your friends, et cetera. Be kind of specific knowing their situation. How would you know that the magic solved your problem? What would be different? What would be different about you? What would you be feeling, saying, or doing differently? What will other people notice about you so that they can tell that this magic happened? Now, sometimes you might want to let the student answer as broadly as they would like, even including things that are outside their circle of control.  This can be really important for validating what they’re experiencing or for validating that there’s tough stuff outside of their control contributing to their problems. In order to help them find a goal within their circle, of control. Tell them that you are then going to zoom in to something in their magic scenario that is within their circle of control. Ask the student what zooming in sounds like and make that noise together and discuss what’s in their circle of control and what they would like to focus on as a pool.

Here’s a couple of specific examples of how to incorporate the miracle or magic question. Okay, example one. I’m hearing that school has been tough for you lately because you haven’t found people you can connect with and can play with at recess. If you had a magic wand and tomorrow everything was exactly how you wanted it to be, what would be different?  What would you be doing differently? Oh, so after waving that magic wand, you would be starting conversations with people at lunch and asking people to play. 11:28 That definitely sounds like a change from what is going on right now. Example two. Goodness, you really don’t like it when you have to work separately from your classmates. If you could wave a magic wand and make things exactly how you wanted them, what would you change? Okay, so you’d be sitting with your friends all the time.  In order to make that happen, what would you be doing all the time? You would be controlling your voice and your body so that you weren’t distracting your classmates and you’d be able to, to continue sitting with them. That makes a lot of sense. Now, while problem solving is clearly embedded inside goal setting through action steps and processing the miracle question, you might also need to do some direct problem solving with kids.  Inside that solution focused toolkit is a memory match game with different solutions to common problems that kids might face. And this is also where you can use the solution focused technique of exception finding. Exception finding builds on the belief that no problem is constant. There is always an exception to a problem, whether this means a time the problem was absent or that it was less intense.  Exception finding leads to the to solutions and also helps kids to recognize their own capacity and competence for change. Kids are able to more clearly believe that change and growth and improvement are possible. You can explore this directly with prompts like, tell me about a time when the problem didn’t happen. What was different? Or one time your problem was not quite as bad. What was something different about you that time? Something different about what you said or did or thought. For example, if a student struggles with distractions during academic work, you ask them to give you an example of a time that they were able to focus even though they were distractions.  They tell you that last week, one of their table buddies was drawing instead of being on task. So the student turned their body and eyes away from the distraction and completed their work.  That’s your opportunity to cheerlead big time about how hard that must have been and how impressed you are that they already have the skills and strategies to tackle this problem. You now have a foundation of both a strength and an exception to build off of. Now, I know that the praising that I just did there with the cheerleading component might sound a little strange.  Providing praise like that is definitely not part of child-centered counseling and it’s not always a part of other modalities as well, but it is with solution-focused counseling.  You can also be more creative with exception finding if needed. So there’s a visual inside the toolkit for helping kids to concretely see how even in a bad month, there could be a day or two that aren’t quite as bad. There’s also a pancake flipping activity for this. One side of each pancake has an example problem and the flip side, special is recommended to make it more fun, has an example exception to the problem. This technique of exception finding is also really helpful with teachers and caregivers. You might say, Tell me about a time when the student was engaged in their learning rather than attempting to distract their peers. Never, they’re always distracting their peers. Goodness, it’s so tough when the problem is so persistent. How about a day last week when they were Less distracting than usual. And last week they were a little less distracting when I gave them the opportunity to sit on the carpet instead of their table during our math lesson. There’s a little strategy, a little solution to potentially build on. Now, next up in the techniques, cheerleading, which it’s really just celebrating and praising the student for their strengths, their past problem-solving strategies, past choices that move them closer to a goal, and things that they’re already doing that are helping them to achieve their goals. The primary function of cheerleading is to bolster their confidence and pride so that they feel emboldened to build on those strengths and achievements and their future goals. Here’s some specific examples of what this might sound like. Wow. So even though the first math problem on your chest was really tricky, you were able to calm your body and keep going. Math tests can feel like a lot of pressure. So I’m really impressed you were able to remember that strategy and use it in the moment. You must be really proud of yourself for that. Though, I’m hearing that you’re really good at controlling your body in taekwondo classes because earning that next belt is really important to you. I think that’s so cool that even though there are probably a lot of things you might want to do with your body in class, you take your teacher’s instructions really seriously because you have a goal in mind.  That’s awesome. Oh my goodness. So you were able to walk away from that situation at recess. even though you weren’t even the person who broke the rule and it felt super unfair to you, that’s a really big deal because that’s hard for everybody. There’s two formulas that you might consider using for cheerleading. The first is wow and how. Wow, you compliment. How are you able to do the thing? This helps them in identifying their strengths and building solutions for the future. The second is you must be the kind of kid who notices when a specific problem arises and does the right thing slash buys a way to make the problem smaller because it’s what feels right to you. And last is collaborating on some sort of homework, which might come in the form of experiments.

Solution-focused counseling focuses both on the impact of small changes and what is within our control, which students can experiment with through their own thoughts, words, and actions. One way to do this is to just make a plan with the student for how they’re going to do something different.  That’s a really key phrase in solution-focused counseling that will help them get to their goal and to see what happens. 17:12 This can be a place to incorporate children’s desires to surprise adults. You might ask something like, oh, what is something that would really surprise me? surprise your teacher in a good way. That’s doing something different, experimenting, and then seeing what happens. All right, wrapping this training on solution-focused counseling up. Solution-focused counseling is a really helpful tool for school counselors. It is adaptable to different students and situations, although the research seems strongest as it’s related to externalizing behavioral issues. It is efficient. Sometimes the word brief is even included in the model. It’s evidence-based. With solution-focused brief counseling, solution-focused therapy, solution-focused counseling, you’ll primarily discuss the students’ strengths, their specific goal or goal. Exceptions to the problem, and cheerleading. And throughout, you’ll be using scaling.

Now, if this training got your brain super excited about solution-focused counseling, you want to read more, you want to dive in a little bit deeper. The book, my like top pick that I really, really enjoyed is Children’s Solution Work by In Su Kimberg and Therese Steiner. Two others that have been highly recommended to us are A Solution-Focused Approach by Gerald B. Sclare and Solution-Focused Brief Therapy in Schools by Michael S. Kelly.