Lost at School: Why Our Kids with Behavioral Challenges are Falling Through the Cracks and How We Can Help Them

About this book

From a distinguished clinician pioneer in working with behaviorally challenging kids and author of the acclaimed The Explosive Child comes a groundbreaking approach for understanding and helping these kids and transforming school discipline. Frequent visits to the principals office. Detentions. Suspensions. Expulsions. These are the established tools of school discipline for kids who dont abide by school rules have a hard time getting along with other kids dont seem to respect authority dont seem interested in learning and are disrupting the learning of their classmates. But theres a big problem with these strategies: They are ineffective for most of the students to whom they are applied. Its time for a change in course. Here Dr. Ross W. Greene presents an enlightened clear-cut and practical alternative. Relying on research from the neurosciences Dr. Greene offers a new conceptual framework for understanding the difficulties of kids with behavioral challenges and explains why traditional discipline isnt effective at addressing these difficulties. Emphasizing the revolutionarily simple and positive notion that kids do well if they can he persuasively argues that kids with behavioral challenges are not attention-seeking manipulative limit-testing coercive or unmotivated but that they lack the skills to behave adaptively. And when adults recognize the true factors underlying difficult behavior and teach kids the skills in increments they can handle the results are astounding: The kids overcome their obstacles; the frustration of teachers parents and classmates diminishes; and the well-being and learning of all students are enhanced. In Lost at School Dr. Greene describes how his road-tested evidence-based approach -- called Collaborative Problem Solving -- can help challenging kids at school. His lively compelling narrative includes: tools to identify the triggers and lagging skills underlying challenging behavior. explicit guidance on how to radically improve interactions with challenging kids -- along with many examples showing how its done. dialogues Q & As and the story which runs through the book of one child and his teachers parents and school. practical guidance for successful planning and collaboration among teachers parents administrations and kids. Backed by years of experience and research and written with a powerful sense of hope and achievable change Lost at School gives teachers and parents the realistic strategies and information to impact the classroom experience of every challenging kid.