Lost at School

From the renowned authority on education and parenting, “an in-depth approach to aid parents and teachers to work together with behaviorally challenging students” (Publishers Weekly)—now revised and updated. School discipline is broken. Too often, the kids who need our help the most are viewed as disrespectful, out of control, and beyond help, and are often the recipients of our most ineffective, most punitive interventions like detention, suspension, and expulsion. These students—and their parents, teachers, and administrators—are frustrated and desperate for answers. Dr. Ross W. Greene, author of the acclaimed book The Explosive Child, offers educators and parents a different framework for understanding challenging behavior in neurodiverse children. Dr. Greene’s Collaborative & Proactive Solutions (CPS) approach helps adults focus on the true factors contributing to challenging classroom behaviors, empowering educators to address these factors and create helping relationships with their most at-risk kids through collaborative problem solving and proactive solutions. This revised and updated edition of Lost at School contains the latest refinements to Dr. Greene’s CPS model, including enhanced methods for solving problems collaboratively, improving communication, and building relationships with kids to reduce school behavior problems. Dr. Greene’s lively, compelling narrative includes: • Tools to identify the problems and lagging skills causing challenging behavior and support emotional regulation • Explicit guidance on how to radically improve interactions with challenging kids and reduce challenging episodes—along with many examples showing how it’s done using de-escalation strategies • Practical guidance for successful planning and collaboration among educators, parents, and kids including IEP and behavior intervention planning Backed by years of experience and research and written with a powerful sense of hope and achievable change, Lost at School gives teachers and parents the realistic strategies and information to impact the classroom experience of every challenging kid (and their classmates) without relying on punishment-based discipline.

Ross W. Greene, PhD, is a clinical psychologist and the originator of the innovative, evidence-based approach called Collaborative & Proactive Solutions (CPS), as described in his influential books The Explosive Child, Lost at School, Lost & Found, and Raising Human Beings. He developed and executive produced the award-winning documentary film The Kids We Lose. Dr. Greene was on the faculty at Harvard Medical School for over twenty years and is now founding director of the nonprofit Lives in the Balance. He is also currently adjunct Professor in the Department of Psychology at Virginia Tech. Dr. Greene has worked with several thousand kids with concerning behaviors and their caregivers, and he and his colleagues have overseen implementation and evaluation of the CPS model in countless schools, inpatient psychiatry units, and residential and juvenile detention facilities, with dramatic effect: significant reductions in recidivism, discipline referrals, detentions, suspensions, and use of restraint and seclusion. Dr. Greene lectures throughout the world and lives in Freeport, Maine.