WELCOME TO MY SOUTH SHORE CPS BLOG!

Hello Parents, Teachers, Counselors, Grandparents, Therapists, Psychologists, Social workers, and anyone interested in children!  I am so glad you found my page and I hope this will be the first of many posts talking about Collaborative Problem Solving!  First, I would like to introduce myself.  My name is Dawna Andronico Donaghey.  I was born, raised, married and raised my own children on the South Shore of Massachusetts and live in the beautiful seaside community of Squantum, MA.  I am blessed to be greeted by bright sunrises over the water to the east overlooking Boston Harbor and gorgeous sunsets to the west overlooking the bay with a view of the John F. Kennedy Library and the famous painted gas tanks you will see driving by on the Southeast Expressway.  

My college experiences started at Bridgewater State University where I explored so many topics that interested me.  I have always been curious about what makes us all so different from one another and yet so much the same. Are all babies afraid of heights and loud sounds?  Why are some of us extroverts and some shy?  I still have so many questions today and over the years I have looked for answers to questions big and small.  Some of my favorite courses at Bridgewater were in Special Education, Speech Therapy, Theater, Music.  It was a course on the Theory and Development of Play that lead me to spearhead a playground and tree planting project in my neighborhood and later become interested in Community Organizing, which lead me to Boston University School of Social Work.  Once there, the pull  toward Education lead me to a Master's in Counseling and the beginning of a career in schools.  

Once I saw the struggles of students, especially the kids who were often disciplined, I began again to search for answers.  How can we care for kids in a compassionate and loving way, instead of relying on rewards or punishers described by B.F. Skinner!  Surely there is more to us than a pigeon pecking for food and clearly, no one would suggest electric shocks to teach a child!  Preposterous!!  However, that is exactly the doctrine many of us have been lead to believe.  What if I told you that using rewards and punishers to teach children to behave well was simply WRONG!  Yes, I said it.  It is wrong.  Let me explain.  

In 2008, after leaving education because of the problems I witnessed with supposed discipline of kids, which once included expulsion of a Special Education 10th grade minority student for whom a "Manifestation Hearing" determined that her poor behavior was not related to her disability, and after seeing this child literally expelled from her school, and left with no options but to drop out, the horror of witnessing this lead me to try to change things once again, but I knew I needed more power.  I learned early on from Community Organizing courses at BU that there are 3 sources of power:  Money, People or Knowledge!  Seek knowledge and truth I told myself and set out once again to find it.  

Eureka!  I did find it!  ... and it changed my life!  I was working now in a mental health setting trying to help kids from the inside out, within their families and communities with wrap around services that allowed me to advocate for them inside and outside of schools, inside and outside of families.  One family was struggling with outrageous behaviors form an pre-teen who had been adopted along with her younger brother.  I had heard about a book, "The Explosive Child" and this seemed to fit with the behaviors I was seeing.  I saw that one of the authors, Stuart Ablon, was giving a training in Vermont, so myself and the mom decided to go together to see what we could learn.  That was it!  I was hooked.  I discovered Collaborative Problem Solving!  We immediately started using the philosophy and the approach with this child and a near catastrophe was averted.  

I started learning as much as I could about the model, and began using it in Family Therapy.  I told everyone who would listen about this miraculous approach and started taking more and more courses from Think:kids at Mass General.  I became Certified, and then became a Certified Trainer!  I am now not only using CPS every day in my work, but I am blessed to be able to share it with more and more people!  I am hoping to provide a training with a very, very special community supporting foster and adoptive families and foster grandparents soon and I am so excited!  

Stay tuned for tips, updates, discussions, thoughts, and lots of information about how you too can start to use a compassionate, evidence based, well researched, loving, kind, thoughtful, skill building approach to child rearing, teaching and raising kids!  You won't be sorry and it might even change the life of a child you know.  

Thanks for visiting my page and for getting to know me a little bit.  I can't wait to see what the future holds for my blog and for all of you who are reading, watching and listening about Collaborative Problem Solving!  Have a wonderful day filled with sunshine and happiness.  Bye for now!