Thank you Dr. Greene

I attended an amazing presentation last Thursday by Dr. Ross Greene, child psychologist and author of "The Explosive Child" and "Lost at School".  He spoke about dealing with challening kids.  You might know one in your life - explosive anger, hitting, running, refusing to follow instructions...  I could go on and on, but you probably get my drift.  I'm going to spend the next few days blogging about the wisdom he shared with the group.  You can also read about his philosophies on his website - www.livesinthebalance.org.

Rhonda

I have always believed that kids who misbehave, disengage, drop out, or otherwise resist being successful in school are dealing with something more than a lack of interest, laziness or a failure to try.  I didn't have anything to back this up, other than maybe a mother's intuition.  Finally, I have met someone who shares this point of view - and has the neuroscience to back it up!

But don't take it from me.  I'll have Dr. Greene explain in his own words, which are from the very first paragraph of his book, "Lost at School". 

The wasted human potential is tragic.  In so many schools, kids with social, emotional, and behavioural challenges are still poorly understood and treated in a way that is completely at odds with what is now known about how they came to be challenging in the first place.  The frustration and desperation felt by teachers and parents is palpable.  Many teachers continue to experience enormous stress related to classroom behaviour problems and from dealing with parents, and do not receive the support they need to help their challenging students.  Half of teachers leave the profession within their first four years, and kids with behavioural challenges and their parents are cited as one of the major reasons.  Parents know there's trouble at school, know they're being blamed, feel their kids are misunderstood and mistreated, but feel powerless to make things better and are discouraged and put off by their interactions with school personnel.

Dr. Greene goes on to talk about how our school discipline models are broken, and getting tougher with kids isn't working.  He cites some amazing statistics - zero tolerance polices designed to make schools safer or offer a more effective way of dealing with behaviour have actually increased behaviour and dropout rates.  But schools continue to hand out expulsions and suspensions - 110,000 and 3 million respectively each year in the US.

But what Dr. Greene made clear is that it doesn't have to be this way.  Here again are his words:

"I interact with hundreds of challenging kids every year.  These kids would like nothing better than to be able to handle the social, emotional, and behavioural challenges being placed on them at school and in life, but they can't seem to pull it off.  Many have been getting into trouble for so long that they've lost faith that any adult will ever know how to help them.

Dr. Greene gave us a few key mantras during his presentation on Thursday.  Here's the first: Kids do well if they can.  It's up to us as adults to figure out why so we can help.

Tomorrow, I'll share some of Dr. Greene's advice on what each of us dealing with a challenging child needs to figure out before we can help.