248 The Explosive ChildQuestion: What message do you give the other
students at your school if you continue to apply
interventions that aren’t helping Rickey behave
more adaptively?
Answer: That you’re actually not sure how to help
Rickey behave more adaptively.
Question: What’s the likelihood that the students who
aren’t explosive would become explosive if you
did not make an example of Rickey?
Answer: As a general rule, slim to none.
Question: What message do we give Rickey if we
continue to apply strategies that aren’t working?
Answer: We don’t understand you and we can’t
help you.
Question: Under what circumstances do we have
the best chance of helping Rickey learn and
practice better ways of dealing with his inflexibility
and low frustration tolerance: in school or
suspended from school?
Answer: In school.
Question: Why do many schools continue to use
interventions that aren’t working for their explosive
students?
Answer: They aren’t sure what else to do.
Question: What happens to students to whom these
interventions are counterproductively applied for
many years?