Forbes - Help for Billy: a beyond consequences approach to helping challenging children in the classroom

ALSO BY HEATHER T. FORBES

Beyond Consequences, Logic, and Control: Volume 1

Beyond Consequences, Logic, and Control: Volume 1

Spanish Edition

Beyond Consequences, Logic, and Control: Volume 1

Russian Edition

Beyond Consequences, Logic, and Control: Volume 2

Dare to Love

100 Daily Parenting Reflections

Heather T. Forbes, LCSW

Beyond Consequences Institute, LLC

BOULDER, COLORADO

A Beyond Consequences Approach to Helping Challenging Children in the Classroom

Copyright Heather Forbes, LCSW, 2012

All rights reserved. Except for brief quoted excerpts, no portion of this book may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher.

Published by:

Beyond Consequences Institute, LLC

www.BeyondConsequences.com

Print ISBN: 978-0-9777040-9-5

Ebook ISBN: 978-0-9847155-4-1

Cover design by:

Bobbi Benson

Wild Ginger Press

www.WildGingerPress.com

Author photo by:

Haroon Ahmad

Chromatic Studios

www.ChromaticsStudio.com

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TO KELLEY

Thank you for forever expanding my understanding of trauma. You have helped me to more deeply understand the world through the eyes and heart of pain, fear, overwhelm, and thus, of love.

Sistas always!

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www.help-for-billy.com

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H eather Forbes has written a monumental and long overdue road map for families, educators, and professionals who have been baffled with the complex challenges traumatized children present in the school system. Help for Billy is a well-organized and systematic approach to understanding the impact of traumatic psychological and neurodevelop-mental damage, which is highly prevalent in high-risk children.

Very few educators and professionals truly understand complex trauma, traumatic autism, and brain damaged learning disabilities. Most school systems focus on traditional concepts such as ADHD and Oppositional-Defiant Disorders when the core issues are the traumatic brain and behavioral manifestations of complex traumatic childhood development.

Heather Forbes is the first author and trauma therapist who has the clinical and research experience and vision to have developed an extremely pragmatic manual to help guide families and educators who are struggling with traumatized children. These are typically the children who are labeled and categorized when in fact, their true developmental disabilities have not been recognized. Too often, developmentally challenged and traumatized children present with a multitude of symptoms and misdiagnoses. Heather Forbes has cleared the way for a better understanding of the true nature regarding traumatic experiences affecting the brain and learning.

This book should be mandatory reading for all schools and professionals working with this very complex population of children. This book also provides a great deal of caution for parents and professionals to be more open and comprehensive when faced with a traumatized child in the classroom.

Expertise, creativity, compassion, and clarity are the most salient aspects of this book.

Dr. Ronald S. Federici

Developmental Neuropsychologist

Care For Children International, Inc.

Help for ____________________

(Insert your childs name here.)

I nsert in the space above the name of your child or student who is finding the classroom challenging. While this books title reads Help for Billy, it can also read Help for Jessica or Help for Michael or Help for Brandon or any other name that will make this book personal to your life.

Create your own custom title to this book so that it becomes very real for and applicable to the academic challenges you and your child or student face every day. School is supposed to be a wonderful experience for children, but for some children the exact opposite has become the norm.

School environments are designed for children who have their natural love for learning intact and for children whose systems are hardwired to be able to sit in a classroom and stay focused. But when a child comes along who does not fit this description, we have continued to expect this child to change and to fit into this predetermined mold, no matter how much he or she is unable.

In my work with parents and schools, I continually get the questions Why cant this child be like the other kids? and Why cant he just sit and behave and be normal?

These comparative questions are reflective of how the mind works. To make sense of our world and of specific situations in our lives, we compare. We naturally compare by size, shape, color, and other attributes. And we, unfortunately, do it with children, even though we have been advised by psychology experts not to compare children, not to compare siblings in a household, and to allow each child his individuality.

In my trainings, I began comparing Child A with Child B to show why these two children are so different. However, the labels Child A and Child B seemed so impersonal. We are talking about real children, children with hearts and souls who are precious and tender beyond this world. So instead of treating this comparison as a sterile scientific data exchange, I named the two children. Child A became Andy and Child B became Billy. These two names were chosen because they can be gender neutral. Andy is short for both Andrew or Andrea. And we all are familiar with the famous female tennis player Billie Jean King, as well as Billy being short for William.

Andy is the child who fits the classic academic mold. Billy is the child who does not. This book is dedicated to giving understanding as to