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 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 the matter, 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 for becoming proficient in handling life’s social, emotional, and behavior challenges.
Ross W. Greene: Lost At School, p. 7.
We’ve witnessed a disturbing trend in recent years: the almost automatic inclination to use medication to treat kids who have difficulty regulating their emotions. While medication can be useful, even indispensable in some instances, jumping the gun on medicating kids whose difficulties are poorly understood is far too common. Pills don’t teach skills, and there are many factors that could set the stage for a kid to be irritable or anxious that medication won’t address. Some kids are irritable or anxious because of chronic problems that have never been solved, such as school failure, poor peer relations, being bullied, or having an unrecognized learning disability. Medication doesn’t solve these problems.
Ross Green: Lost at School, p. 21