Lost at School Quotes

“A kid shouldn't need a diagnosis to access help.”
― Ross W. Greene, Lost at School: Why Our Kids with Behavioral Challenges are Falling Through the Cracks and How We Can Help Them

“The reality is that well-behaved students aren’t behaving themselves because of the school discipline program. They’re behaving themselves because they have the skills to handle life’s challenges in an adaptive fashion.”
― Ross W. Greene, Lost at School: Why Our Kids with Behavioral Challenges are Falling Through the Cracks and How We Can Help Them

“The long-term answer to a kid not caring about your concerns is to care more about his.”
― Ross W. Greene, Lost at School: Why Our Kids with Behavioral Challenges are Falling Through the Cracks and How We Can Help Them

“The essential function of challenging behavior is to communicate to adults that a kid doesn’t possess the skills to handle certain demands in certain situations.”
― Ross W. Greene, Lost at School: Why Our Kids with Behavioral Challenges are Falling Through the Cracks and How We Can Help Them

“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.”
― Ross W. Greene, Lost at School: Why Our Kids with Behavioral Challenges are Falling Through the Cracks and How We Can Help Them

“When is challenging behavior most likely to occur? When the demands being placed on a kid exceed his capacity to respond adaptively.”
― Ross W. Greene, Lost at School: Why Our Kids with Behavioral Challenges are Falling Through the Cracks and How We Can Help Them

“Half of teachers leave the profession within their first four years, and kids with behaviour challenges and their parents are cited as one of the major reasons.”
― Ross W. Greene, Lost at School: Why Our Kids with Behavioral Challenges are Falling Through the Cracks and How We Can Help Them

“A philosophy: Kids (and adults) do well if they can. A mantra: Challenging behavior occurs when the demands and expectations being placed upon a child outstrip the skills he has to respond adaptively. Knowledge: Traditional school discipline does not teach skills or help kids solve problems. Some goals: Significantly improve your understanding of the challenging kids in your classroom and school. Create mechanisms for responding to their needs proactively rather than emergently. A mission: If we were going to start doing right by the challenging kids in our school, what would that look like?”
― Ross W. Greene, Lost at School: Why Our Kids with Behavioral Challenges are Falling Through the Cracks and How We Can Help Them

“Whether a kid is sulking, pouting, whining, withdrawing, refusing to talk, crying, spitting, screaming, swearing, running out of the classroom, kicking, hitting, destroying property, or worse, you won’t know what to do about the challenging behavior until you understand why it’s occurring (lagging skills) and pinpoint the specific situations in which it occurs (unsolved problems). Lagging skills are the why of challenging behavior. Unsolved problems tell us when the behavior is occurring.”
― Ross W. Greene, Lost at School: Why Our Kids with Behavioral Challenges are Falling Through the Cracks and How We Can Help Them

“Challenging behavior occurs when the demands and expectations being placed upon a child outstrip the skills he has to respond adaptively.”
― Ross W. Greene, Lost at School: Why Our Kids with Behavioral Challenges are Falling Through the Cracks and How We Can Help Them

“The school discipline program isn’t working for the kids who aren’t doing well and isn’t needed by the kids who are.”
― Ross W. Greene, Lost at School: Why Our Kids with Behavioral Challenges are Falling Through the Cracks and How We Can Help Them

“In the CPS model, holding a kid accountable means that the kid is participating in a process in which he’s identifying and articulating his own concerns or perspectives, taking yours into account, and working toward a realistic and mutually satisfactory solution”
― Ross W. Greene, Lost at School: Why Our Kids with Behavioral Challenges are Falling Through the Cracks and How We Can Help Them

“it’s just that we shouldn’t operate on the assumption that a diagnosis provides a great deal of useful information. A kid shouldn’t need a diagnosis to access the help his caregivers already know he needs.”
― Ross W. Greene, Lost at School: Why Our Kids with Behavioral Challenges are Falling Through the Cracks and How We Can Help Them

“Does the way we’re disciplining kids in our schools address the actual factors that set the stage for kids’ social, emotional, and behavioral challenges?”
― Ross W. Greene, Lost at School: Why Our Kids with Behavioral Challenges are Falling Through the Cracks and How We Can Help Them