ABSTRACT
Jonah was red-haired, lanky, and in constant motion. He was a member of a substantially separate behavioral classroom in the Waterloo Elementary School in a socioeconomically mixed town outside Boston and was in the third grade. The teachers could no longer handle him, even in a group of six boys and girls. He was constantly disrupting the class, falling out of his seat, calling out, or suddenly getting up and bolting. Although he was somewhat more reasonable on a one-on-one basis, as soon as he was in a group he was impossible to manage. The teachers felt they had tried everything and now wanted him out of the class. After evaluating the situation and meeting with the teachers and the parents, we decided to set up a small classroom for Jonah and provide an aide who would teach him one-on-one and begin working with him therapeutically throughout the day. We planned to reintroduce him to the classroom once we had established a therapeutic relationship and the aide felt that she could manage him in the larger group. Medication was not an option for the parents, as they had a relative who had been on Ritalin and had an extremely bad reaction to this supposedly safe drug. We could guarantee neither efficacy nor freedom from side effects and therefore settled on this model.
