CHAPTER 1
School of Hard Knocks
It was early October, and the students in Mrs. Lori Woodsâ sixth-grade class were hard at work on a social studies assignment. There was, however, one clear exception, a boy named Joey. Mrs. Woods had already had a few difficult moments with Joey, especially at times when he refused to work on class assignments. That Joey was clearly not working on his social studies project was an irritation; that he was now distracting two other kids pressed Mrs. Woods into action. She walked over to Joeyâs table.
âJoey, is there a problem?â Mrs. Woods whispered. âBecause youâre bothering the students around you.â
Joey looked up at his teacher. âI donât know what to do.â
âJoey, the instructions are on the board. How can you not know what to do?â
Two kids seated near Joey snickered.
âBecause I donât!â
Now most of the other kids were watching.
âBack to work, everyone,â said Mrs. Woods. She turned her attention back to Joey. âJoey, letâs talk about it at my desk so we donât disturb your classmates.â She began walking toward the front of the room, but Joey didnât budge. Mrs. Woods turned back around.
âJoey, come up to my desk, please.â
âNo way,â Joey said under his breath, but loudly enough to once again draw the attention of his classmates.
âExcuse me?â
Joeyâs face reddened. âIâm not coming up to your desk.â
The entire class was now riveted, awaiting the teacherâs response.
âJoey, if you donât come up to my desk now, Iâll have to send you to the office.â
âIâm not going there, either.â
âJoey, now!â
âNo way.â
Mrs. Woods walked over to one of the students near the front door of the classroom. âTaylor, please go to the office and tell Mrs. Westbrook that we have a problem in our classroom and that we need Mr. Middleton to come immediately.â Mrs. Woods hoped that the threatened arrival of the assistant principal might persuade Joey to rethink his stance.
Taylor dutifully jumped out of her seat and ran to the office. Mrs. Woods walked to the doorway of the classroom and turned to address the rest of her students. âI donât want to have to say this again: Get back to work.â
âWhatâs up?â asked Mr. Middleton when he arrived, a little out of breath. Mr. Middleton had been an assistant principal for twelve years (a science teacher for sixteen years before that), and was known among the faculty as a congenial, even-keeled man who was probably miscast as the schoolâs primary disciplinarian.
âJoey was disrupting the class so I told him to come up to my desk and he refused. Then I told him that he had to go to the office and he refused. So there he sits.â Mrs. Woods motioned in Joeyâs direction.
Mr. Middleton looked over his glasses into the classroom. âLetâs see what I can do.â
Mr. Middleton walked over to Joey, leaned down, and spoke softly. âJoey, I understand we have a problem. Why donât we talk about it in my office?â
Joey exploded. He jumped out of his seat, his head hitting Mr. Middleton in the jaw. âIâm not going to the freaking office!â he screamed and ran toward the door. The other kids gasped. Stunned by the blow to his jaw, Mr. Middleton grasped vainly at Joey. Joey pushed Mrs. Woods out of the way, screaming âI hate your guts!â As he passed Taylorâs desk, he blurted, âIâm going to kill you!â Taylor recoiled as Joey ran out of the classroom. He ran down the hallway to the front of the school and out of the building with Mr. Middleton giving chase. As Mr. Middleton ran past the main office, he yelled to Mrs. Westbrook, the secretary, âGet Mrs. Galvin!â Mrs. Westbrook hurried into the principalâs office and told Mrs. Galvin, the school principal, that Joey had just run out of the building with Mr. Middleton in his wake. Mrs. Galvin bolted out of her office to assist in the chase. Mr. Sizemore, one of the physical education instructors, heard the commotion from the copy room and sprinted after Joey as well.
Mr. Middleton and Mr. Sizemore found Joey hiding behind a car in the school parking lot and forcibly escorted him back into the school. The two men planted Joey in a chair in Mrs. Galvinâs office. âCall his mother,â puffed Mrs. Galvin to Mrs. Westbrook as she reentered the office.
With Mr. Sizemore and Mr. Middleton still holding his arms, Mrs. Galvin looked sternly at Joey. âAre you going to sit in that chair without them holding you?â
Joey strained against the grasp of the two men. âGet these creeps off of me.â
âThey will let go of you when you calm down and tell me youâll sit in that chair until your mother arrives.â
Joey tried to break out of the hold of the two men, his face red, tears streaming down his cheeks. âGet them off of me!â
Mrs. Galvin was still catching her breath. âThey will let go of you when you calm down. We will not have this kind of behavior in our school.â
Joey continued to struggle against the two men. âJoey, just calm down,â Mr. Middleton tried to soothe despite the pain in his jaw.
âScrew you,â said Joey, struggling slightly less.
âJoey, we donât talk that way in this school, either,â said Mrs. Galvin.
âScrew you, too,â said Joey, glaring at the principal but struggling still less.
âCome on, Joey, just relax,â said Mr. Middleton. âI donât want to hold you like this.â
âSo let go!â Joey seethed. âYou already hurt my arm.â
âWe donât want to hurt you,â said Mr. Middleton, âbut we canât let you go running out of the school again. Itâs dangerous. Please just calm down so we can let go.â
Joeyâs mother, Ms. Lowell, arrived ten minutes later. âWhatâs going on here?â she demanded breathlessly.
âThey hurt me,â Joey glared at Mrs. Galvin.
Ms. Lowell looked at Joeyâs arms, then at Mrs. Galvin, seeking an explanation. Mrs. Galvin was a straight-talking administrator who prided herself on running a tight ship and making sure that the kids in her school got a good education.
âHe threatened the life of one of his classmates,â the principal said. âThatâs just unacceptable. He then ran out of the school and needed to be physically escorted back. Thatâs why his arms are a little red.â
Ms. Lowell tried not to raise her voice. âJoey, you threatened another kid?â
âI didnât mean it.â
âWhy did you run out of the school?â asked Ms. Lowell.
âI didnât know what to do on the social studies project,â Joey mumbled.
Ms. Lowell was uncomprehending. âYou didnât know what?â
âApparently he was refusing to do his work,â said Mr. Middleton. âMrs. Woods asked him to come up to her desk and he refused to do that, too. Then she told him to go to the office and he refused again. Then I tried to talk to him and he ran out of the classroom.â
âI didnât know what to do!â Joey insisted.
âI should add that he hit Mr. Middleton in the jaw and shoved Mrs. Woods during this episode,â said Mrs. Galvin. âThatâs called assault, and it is just totally unacceptable in this building.â
Joey slumped in his seat, again mumbling, âIt was an accident.â
âJoey, I canât believe you did that,â said his mother. Joeyâs eyes welled up.
âOn purpose or not, Joey will be spending the next five days at home,â said Mrs. Galvin.
Ms. Lowell looked at the principal, eyes wide. âWhat do you mean?â
âI mean heâs suspended from school for five days. We will not tolerate this sort of thing in our school. Joeyâs classmates have a right to a safe learning environment, and that right was violated today. I also need to talk with the superintendent about whether other action needs to be taken.â
âOther action? Like what?â
âWhen a student assaults a teacher in this school system and threatens to kill people, our school discipline code says we need to notify the police. And Mr. Middleton and Mrs. Woods will have to decide whether they want to press charges.â
âThe police?â shrieked Joeyâs mother. âFor an accident?â
âBased on what Iâve heard, I donât share Joeyâs view that it was accidental,â said Mrs. Galvin. âFor now, you need to take Joey home. We can discuss other developments once I have more information. Joey needs to understand that this type of behavior is unacceptable.â
âHe already knows this behavior is unacceptable,â said Ms. Lowell.
This observation was met with silence.
Ms. Lowell had heard enough. âLetâs go, Joey.â She looked at Mr. Middleton. âIâm very sorry you were hurt.â Joey followed his mother out of the office, his hands jammed deep in his jeans pockets, his head low.
The two administrators watched through the window as Joey and his mother got into the car and drove off.
What are we going to do about Joey?
More than ever, thatâs the big question. Because there sure are a lot of Joeys out there. Kids who canât seem to function in a classroom, have a hard time getting along with other kids, donât seem to respect authority, arenât responding to the school discipline program. Kids whose problems donât get better. Sometimes we read about them in the newspaper and see them on TV, especially if they hurt someone badly enough or are led out of the school in handcuffs. The stakes are high. When we donât help the Joeys, we lose them.
How are we going to help Mrs. Woods? Another big question. Mrs. Woodsâ classroom is full of kids with all kinds of academic, behavioral, emotional, and social challenges. Sheâd like nothing better than to be able to give all of them the help they need. Sheâs put a lot of time and energy into helping her challenging students over the years, but often hasnât had much to show for her efforts. At a minimum, she needs some way of making sure the challenging kids in her class donât disrupt the learning of the other kids. But she also has high-stakes testing to worry about, lessons to plan, countless meetings to attend, and the latest school system initiatives to digest and implement, so sheâs pressed for time as it is. When we donât help Mrs. Woods, we lose her, too.
What about Ms. Lowell? Itâs a scary, lonely, callous, frustrating world out there for parents of challenging kids, even more so if the kid is challenging at school. Ms. Lowell has grown accustomed to feeling blamed for her sonâs difficulties, accustomed to the stares of people who identify her as the parent of âthat kid.â Sheâs all too familiar with the different medicines used to treat challenging kids, along with the books and TV shows that characterize her as a passive, permissive, uncaring, unmotivated, uneducated parent. There are millions of Ms. Lowells out there, all wishing there was a better way, one that actually worked.
If weâre going to start helping Joey and Mrs. Woods and Ms. Lowell, we need to start paying much closer attention to what we now know about how kids come to be challenging. Then we need to consider some important questions. Does the way weâre disciplining kids in our schools address the actual factors that set the stage for kidsâ social, emotional, and behavioral challenges? If not, then what should we be doing instead?
What weâve been thinking about challenging kidsâthat theyâre manipulative, attention-seeking, coercive, unmotivated, limit-testing, and that these traits have been caused by passive, permissive, inconsistent, noncontingent parentingâis 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 youâre going to put a great deal of effort into being rigid, firm, consistent, and contingent, typically through use of adult-imposed consequences. We live in a culture where many adults think of only one word, only one intervention, to deal with kids who donât 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 tangible prizes) 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 donât work. And they often donât work for the kids to whom they are most frequently applied.1
Thatâs 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. Butâand this is importantâthe vast majority of challenging kids already know how we want them to behave. They know theyâre supposed to do what theyâre told. They know theyâre not supposed to disrupt the learning of their classmates or run out of the school when theyâre upset or embarrassed. And they know theyâre not supposed to hit people, swear, or call out in class. So they donât 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 donât need us to continue giving them stickers, depriving them of recess, or suspending them from school; theyâre 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, autism spectrum disorders, and langu...