But for some, parents and teachers will need to work together to resolve the child’s behavioural challenges.

Greene was on the faculty at Harvard Medical School for over 20 years, and is now founding director of the non-profit Lives in the Balance ( www. The book also pointed out that sticker charts and punishments can be counterproductive for children who have not yet developed the skill set to meet these goals consistently. As a parent who has gone the sticker chart route too many times, I ruefully recognized Greene's description of children who become obsessed with the reward without really learning much from the steps required to get there.

Using Plan A, you are the one to decide the solution to a given problem, and you’re imposing that solution on your child. We are losing our most vulnerable kids, largely due to perspectives that are outdated and counterproductive, and disciplinary practices that are punitive and exclusionary. If you are the child’s grandparent, teacher, neighbor, coach, or therapist, this book should, at the least, help you understand.

My only criticism is that in a 293 page book, the section on working with explosive children without the language skills to use this collaborative approach is really only 7 pages long and usurped by more examples of children with language skills, rather than examples of how to use Plan B on children with lagging communication skills. Thankfully, I can still put this book to use in the classroom, as I am a teacher and work with special needs children who do have language skills. We live in a society in which many adults, when faced with a child who isn’t meeting expectations, can think of only one word: consequences.But these kids are in a bad mood a lot, so they have trouble handling frustration and solving problems a lot, too.