The 7 Elements of Positive Communication

In addition to the LOVE communication skills taken from Motivational Interviewing, CRAFT prescribes positive communication skills as additional communication tools for your toolbox. You might be thinking: “wouldn’t that be nice…to just be positive!” But CRAFT breaks it down into seven elements, all within your reach. These elements will improve any kind of communication, but they are especially useful for making requests. What we have found with these seven elements is they are both straightforward and difficult to do, so practice is important.

“Positive communication” does not mean only saying nice things and avoiding conflict. Here’s what it does mean: (For examples and more explanation, see our chapter on Positive Communication in Beyond Addiction.)

Be Brief

Most people say more than necessary when they haven’t planned it in advance, especially when nervous or angry. Try to hone in on your central request ahead of time, and stick to it. Script, edit, and rehearse what you want to say as concisely as possible. Extraneous words can drown out your core message (as in the “waa waa waa” of Charlie Brown’s teacher).

Be Specific

Vague requests are easy to ignore or misunderstand, and are often difficult to translate into concrete behavior. In contrast, referring to specific behaviors instead of thoughts or feelings makes change observable, measurable, and reinforceable. For instance, instead of telling your child to “be more responsible,” specify a behavior you want to see more of: “On school days, I want you to get up when your alarm goes off.”

Be Positive

Where “positive” entails describing what you want, instead of what you don’t want. This shifts the framing from critical and complaining to supportive and doable, and ties into positive reinforcement strategies, since it’s easier to reward someone for doing something—a concrete, verifiable thing—than for not doing something. Being positive in this way decreases defensiveness and rebellion and promotes motivation. Framed positively, “Stop coming home late” becomes “Come home by curfew time.”

Label Your Feelings

Kept brief and in proportion, a description of your emotional reaction to the problem at hand can help elicit empathy and consideration from your child. For best results, state your feelings in a calm, nonaccusatory manner. If your feelings are very intense, it can be a good strategy to tone them down. So if you were feeling “furious and terrified” you might say “frustrated and worried.”

Offer an Understanding Statement

The more the other person believes that you “get” why he is acting the way he is, the less defensive he will be and the more likely to hear you and oblige. Plus, trying to understand your child’s perspective builds your empathy, which will help the relationship.

Take Partial Responsibility

Sharing in a problem, even a tiny piece of the problem, decreases defensiveness and promotes collaboration. It shows your child that you’re interested in solving, not blaming. Accepting partial responsibility does not mean taking the blame or admitting fault; it communicates “We’re in this together.”

Offer to Help

Especially when phrased as a question, an offer to help can communicate non-blaming, problem-solving support. Try asking, “Would it help if…?” Or simply, “How can I help?” A little goes a long way to improve communication and generate ideas. (“Yeah, if you texted me a reminder, that would help.”)

There are classic communication traps you can recognize a mile away… if you know what to look for. Here are some of the most common.

The Information Trap: If only he knew the facts he would see things differently and change. Information can be helpful, especially when it fills a gap. It is less helpful to tell your child something he already knows. When you do have fresh information, offering it in a “sandwich” as you learned in Section 3 will maximize the chances that it gets across. But there are no magic words for change, so try to be patient. Improving the quality of your communication over time will help, as well as being a valuable change in and of itself.

The Lecture Trap: This is a deeper information trap. One sign that you have entered this trap is when you find yourself talking “at” your child about what you think he should do, what his problems are, what went wrong last week, and so on, rather than talking “with” him.

The Labeling Trap: Labels are not necessary for change, and at times get in the way. This trap results in a conversation being about labels and not behavior (“You’re an addict.” —“No, I’m not”).

The Blaming Trap: When you’re worried, frustrated, or sad about a situation, it is easy to get stuck in the blaming trap—who is at fault or who is to blame? This trap shuts down a conversation and backs your child’s motivation into a corner.The Taking-Sides Trap: If you take only one side of a discussion, it’s practically a set up for your child to take the other, and she may end up defending behaviors she actually feels ambivalent about. Instead of one side against the other you can be on the same side, the side of constructive conversation, considering different options together.

The Question-and-Answer Trap: Closed questions set off this trap and result in an interview, or worse, an interrogation (“Did you get high last night? Did you forget your phone? Did you do your homework?”). Open questions are more likely to steer your conversation to a productive exchange.

Helping with Actions

This section will cover a variety of critical tools for encouraging change in your child’s behavior and motivation. It follows “Helping with Self Care” and “Helping with Words” because the skills in those sections are the foundations of sustaining change and keeping things on track day-to-day. The tools in this section will help you understand motivation and how it is different for different people, how to reinforce new and positive behaviors as well as how to deal with negative behaviors, how to understand and allow for ambivalence in your child (and the sometimes jagged upward course of change), and very importantly, paying attention to collaboration with your co-parent.

How To Solve A Problem

We start this section with the topic of problem solving because that’s what you are facing! Your child’s substance use, as well as the ensuing problems with communication, behavior, friend choices, school performance, and emotional development (you name it!). We will discuss all of these issues, but as we start this process we want you to have a general strategy for approaching ANY problem.

CRAFT (among other behavioral approaches) sets out seven steps for solving problems.* This approach will take you beyond painful avoidance strategies and unreliable quick fixes to help you work through problems thoroughly and systematically. As you practice with these steps, try to apply (and give yourself credit for) what you already do well, and take the time you need to learn what would be useful that you don’t already know.

Define the problem as narrowly as you can.

Often what people take as “the problem” is actually many

smaller problems lumped together. No wonder they feel overwhelmed. When you describe a problem, be on the lookout for multiple problems embedded within your description, and tease them apart. The idea is to tackle one relatively discrete problem at a time. Solutions are more manageable with a series of smaller problems and you’ll feel more accomplished and optimistic as you get through each one.

Brainstorm possible solutions.

In this step, your task is to write down as many solutions as you

can think of, to foster a sense of possibility and give yourself some choice. Brainstorming is an open, free-for-all process of allowing every idea in the door as they come, to be sorted and refined later. Your inner critic will tend to dismiss ideas out of habit or fear; but some of these could be viable options if you gave them a chance. List without judging. Try not to rule out anything before you’ve written down every conceivable solution to your problem.

Eliminate unwanted suggestions.

Now that you have an exhaustive list of potential solutions, you can examine them more closely and cross out any that are unappealing. Eliminate options that you can’t actually imagine ever doing, have too many downsides, or seem unrealistic. If you end up crossing off every idea, then return to step 2 and brainstorm again.

Select one potential solution or goal.

Pick one solution that seems doable to you, that you can

see yourself trying this week. Hint: a doable goal is put in brief, simple, and positive terms (what you will do, not what you won’t do or haven’t been doing), is specific and measurable, reasonable and achievable, in your control, and involves skills you already have or are learning. (For a detailed discussion of goal setting, see Chapter 8 of our book, Beyond Addiction.)

Identify possible obstacles.

Next, identify potential obstacles that could get in the way of completing your task. By anticipating problems you can plan strategies for dealing with them. This can include specific, predictable obstacles as well as a more general awareness that unforeseen challenges may arise, which can lend you some emotional resilience in dealing with them.

Address each obstacle.

Design specific strategies to cope with each obstacle. Not just, “I’m sure I can deal with it,” but exactly how you will get past it and move forward.

See how things go.

After you’ve carried out your plan, evaluate the process… How did it go? Look at what went well and what was more challenging in the implementation. Did your strategies for dealing with obstacles work well? Did obstacles come up that you hadn’t predicted? Is there anything you would do differently next time? This is how you figure out what works and what doesn’t work for you.

Parent Collaboration

When a child struggles with substance or other behavior problems, communication often breaks down between the adults who love that child.* Most people struggle to not get defensive or lose their cool in situations they don’t understand or know how to control, and it’s not uncommon for parents to feel at wits’ end with each other when their child is doing risky, upsetting things. Disagreements are understandable. After all, misalignment can easily happen in the best of circumstances over lower-stakes issues like bedtime and vegetables; the more serious the issue, the more polarizing it can be. But helping depends in no small part on finding a way to collaborate with your co-parent (and anyone else involved in raising your child).

As you try to help your child change their relationship with substances, it will be important for every adult involved to give clear directions and consistent consequences (positive and negative). Change, even change for the better, is difficult and your child will feel ambivalent about it. It will be hard for her to make different friends, or not be high at parties, or leave earlier than other kids. The more ambivalent she is, the more important it is for you to make your expectations clear. Different expectations (explicit or implied) between you and your partner amount to mixed messages for your child.

Additionally, the more agreement you can reach with your partner, the less stressed you will each feel and the happier you will both be. And with less conflict and stress in general you can, in turn, be more positive with your child.

Alignment and collaboration with your partner doesn’t mean across-the-board, united-front agreement on “the party line,” especially with older children. Children over sixteen live in the adult world enough to know that uniform agreement is not realistic. Alignment can mean understanding what you agree on, what you don’t agree on, and what the “policy” is in any case (“Your father and I have a somewhat different feeling about this, but we’ve decided it’s important for you to be home by midnight”). You can acknowledge differences and still align your expectations.