Thread: Binary Tree Longest Increasing Path (Recursive)

Im writing some code to get the longest Increasing path needs to return the number of edges. The Issue I am having is with how to write code to return if there is more than one sequence in the tree.

//             1
              / \
             2  3
            /
           1
          /
         2
        /
       3

The Above tree will return 3 vs the 2 it should be (Edges not nodes)

public static int longestIncreasingPath(BinaryNode<Integer> root) 
	{
		if(root == null)
			return 0;
 
		BinaryNode<Integer> left, right;
		left = root.getLeft();
		right = root.getRight();
 
		int leftSide = 0; int rightSide = 0;
 
		if(left != null && left.getElement() > root.getElement())
			leftSide =+ 1 + longestIncreasingPath(left);
		else
			leftSide =+ longestIncreasingPath(left);
 
		if(right != null && right.getElement() > root.getElement()) 
			rightSide =+ 1 + longestIncreasingPath(right);
		else
			rightSide =+ longestIncreasingPath(right);
 
		return leftSide > rightSide ? leftSide : rightSide;
	}

Maybe someone can help me with this and explain a method to figuring this out. I just have a hard time with recursion techniques. Im fairly good in loops and any other logic, but recursion just destroys me.