Lost at School Read Free Page A

we’re disciplining kids in our schools address the actual factors that set the stage for kids’ social, emotional, and behavioral challenges? If not, then what should we be doing instead?
    What we’ve been thinking about challenging kids—that they’re manipulative, attention-seeking, coercive, unmotivated, limit-testing, and that these traits have been caused by passive, permissive, inconsistent, noncontingent parenting—is way off base most of the time. As a result, the interventions that flow from these ways of thinking have been way off base as well. You see, if you believe that passive, permissive, inconsistent, noncontingent parenting has caused a kid to behave maladaptively, then you’re going to put a great deal of effort into being rigid, firm, consistent, and contingent, typically through use of consequences (rewards and punishments). We live in a culture where many adults think of only one word, only one intervention, to deal with kids who don’t meet adult expectations: consequences. Consequences can mean rewards (in schools, this might include special privileges or stickers, happy faces, and tickets or points that can be exchanged for tangibleprizes) for appropriate behavior, or punishments (being deprived of privileges, being given extra assignments, time-outs, suspension, detention, expulsion) for undesirable behavior. Consequences are wonderful when they work. They are less wonderful when they don’t work. And they often don’t work for the kids to whom they are most frequently applied. 1
    That’s because there are really only two goals imposed consequences help us achieve: (1) teaching kids basic lessons about right and wrong ways to behave, and (2) giving kids the incentive to behave the right way. But—and this is important—the vast majority of challenging kids already know how we want them to behave. They know they’re supposed to do what they’re told. They know they’re not supposed to disrupt the learning of their classmates or run out of the school when they’re upset or embarrassed. And they know they’re not supposed to hit people, swear, or call out in class. So they don’t need us to put lots of effort into teaching them how we want them to behave. And while this may be hard to believe, most challenging kids already want to behave the right way. They don’t need us to continue giving them stickers, depriving them of recess, or suspending them from school; they’re already motivated. They need something else from us.
    The premise of this book is that kids with behavioral challenges lack important thinking skills, an idea supported by research in the neurosciences over the past thirty years on kids who are aggressive and have difficulty getting along with people and those diagnosed with ADHD, mood and anxiety disorders, oppositional defiant disorder, conduct disorder, and language-processing disorders. The thinking skills involved aren’t in the traditional academic domains—reading, writing, and arithmetic—but rather in domains such as regulating one’s emotions, considering the outcomes of one’s actions before one acts, understanding how one’s behavior is affecting other people, having the words to let people know something’s bothering you, and responding to changes in plan in a flexible manner. In other words, these kids have a developmental delay, a learning disability of sorts. In the same way that kids who are delayed in reading are having difficulty mastering the skills required for becoming proficient in reading, challenging kids are having difficulty mastering the skills required forbecoming proficient in handling life’s social, emotional, and behavioral challenges.
    How do we help kids who have traditional developmental delays? First, we assess the factors that are interfering with skill acquisition and then provide specialized instruction to teach them the skills they’re lacking in increments they can handle. When you treat challenging kids as if they