As the title suggests, it will be suggested in this paper that attachment is a useful concept and that attachment disorders need to be addressed for infants and children to develop into responsible, caring, and mature adults for whom the everyday ability to learn from experience and adapt appropriately to an ever changing world. There will be no…

Life events can include the Tuesday afternoon cooking class with the group worker or the Saturday afternoon football game, but in the sense that Fritz Redl thought of them, these activities are only threads in a fabric of living that includes all the elements of daily life: playing, working, school-based learning, learning through activities,…

The goals and model of the Safety Harbor (Florida) Exceptional Student Center for severely emotionally disturbed children are based on three major assumptions: success in school has a high positive correlation with success in society; most severely disturbed students can be returned to mainstream school programs; and the majority of severely…

A token reinforcement program at a residential center operates on a point card system which measures daily work quality and attitude, academic involvement, self-maintenance, peer and adult interactions, and self-control in behavior disordered children. Issues in the program's administration, including unresponsiveness and use of daily feedback,…

The author relates how the idea behind the school he founded came from events that transpired in the incarceration of a 16-year-old client, Eddie. Eddie, who was charged with trespassing and stealing, pleaded to the author that he wanted "a program" instead of going to jail. However, the court found him guilty and sent him to jail. Years later,…

Three children (ages 8, 12, and 14) with developmental disabilities and severe behavior problems were successfully trained to use self-management procedures to sustain attention to preacademic/academic tasks. A prompting ribbon (motorized red/green ribbon) was designed to help the children visually monitor time while increasing sustained…

The article compares three levels systems (with levels representing stages toward self-management) for elementary, junior and senior high, and residential programs serving behaviorally disordered students. Levels systems offer structure within which various individualized treatments are implemented. A step-by-step procedure for developing a levels…

A long-established agency for troubled children was following a philosophy based on behavioral control and treatment of pathology. As staff examined their beliefs about the process of change, the climate evolved from enforcing behavior control to empowering youth to develop positive strengths. A charter school was created and new behavior…