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

Dr. Ross W. Greene is associate clinical professor in the Department of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and the author of both Lost at School and The Explosive Child.  He is also the founder of a non-profit organization called Lives in the Balance (www.livesinthebalance.org) through which he disseminates the model of care described in his books, Collaborative Problem Solving.  Dr. Greene consults extensively to general and special education schools, inpatient psychiatry units, and residential and juvenile detention facilities, and lectures extensively throughout the world.  His research has been funded by the U.S. Department of Education, the National Institute on Drug Abuse, the Stanley Medical Research Institute, and the Maine Juvenile Justice Advisory Group.

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 principal's office. Detentions. Suspensions. Expulsions. These are the established tools of school discipline for kids who don't abide by school rules, have a hard time getting along with other kids, don't seem to respect authority, don't seem interested in learning, and are disrupting the learning of their classmates. But there's a big problem with these strategies: They are ineffective for most of the students to whom they are applied.

It's 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 isn't 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 areenhanced.

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 it's done.

• dialogues, Q & A's, 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.

Publishers Weekly

Psychiatrist and Harvard professor Greene follows up The Explosive Child with an in-depth approach to aid parents and teachers to work together with behaviorally challenging students. Greene's philosophy is driven by the recognition that "kids who haven't responded to natural consequences don't need more consequences, they need adults who are knowledgeable about how challenging kids come to be challenging." Greene's "Plan B" system, which is fully and clearly explained in the course of the book, emphasizes identifying challenging behaviors-acting out, hitting, swearing, poor performance in class-and then working with students to find actual, practical ways to avoid them. Helpfully, Greene uses a fictional school for examples, devoting several pages to illustrative anecdotes in each chapter, greatly increasing the material's accessibility. Greene's technique is not fail-proof, principally because it requires the good will and hard work of all participants; a section on implementing Plan B in the face of real disagreement or apathy would have been helpful. However, Plan B has all the qualities of accessibility, logic and compassion to make it a solid strategy for parents and educators.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Introduction ix

1 School of Hard Knocks 1

2 Kids Do Well If They Can 10

3 Lesson Plans 49

4 Let's Get It Started 74

5 Bumps in the Road 113

6 Filling in the Gaps 148

7 Meeting of the Minds 184

8 School of Thought 230

9 Lives in the Balance 280

Assessment of Lagging Skills and Unsolved Problems (ALSUP) 287

Sources 289

Books Cited and Other Recommended Reading 293

Acknowledgments 295

Index 297