Post #1 { L O S T @ S C H O O L}

As I began to read this book really made me reflect on that idea of an article that I read last semester about “The Blueberry Story”. None of us are perfect parents or teachers and many of these kids are born with innate personalities that are extremely hard for anyone to deal with. Sure, we can try our best to parent/teacher around these personalities, but I think there so much to do on training parents/teachers out there on how to do so. Definitely, it is not an easy task for teachers who have not received the proper training to help or instruct students with different behaviors.

- “Kids do well if they can” – they already know how we want them to behave thus rewards and punishments have the opposite effects. These kids are misunderstood and over punished.

- A kid shouldn’t need a diagnosis to access help.

- They often cry or withdraw when they don’t have the skills to communicate.

- “Shelving emotions so they can think rationally is a difficult skill”.

- They are functioning at a much younger developmental level.

- It is hard to teach flexibility if they are inflexible themselves.

Greene states that these kids would do well if they could but for some reason they are “lagging skills” to be able to do so. I never really thought about that before. The fact that they are behaviorally at a two-year old age level – Sometimes, teachers consistently complains that their students seemed to be at that age level, not even considering the fact that this actually was the case and he needed to learn those behavior skills. That made sense to me. We help many kids with learning difficulties or otherwise, why couldn’t we treat behavioral difficulties with the same insight.

Question - Are you agree with the statement that some students behave a certain age level for the reason that he didn't learn those skills at the age he was supposed to do so?