Behaviorally challenging kids and their caregivers need your help! There are still way too many people who don't yet understand why kids exhibit challenging behavior and who are still using counterproductive discipline strategies that often only make things worse.

If you want to help Lives in the Balance take action on behalf of behaviorally challenging kids and their caregivers, here's what you can do now:

✓ Sign the The Bill of Rights for Behaviorally Challenging Kids: The Bill of Rights delineates a set of principles for understanding and helping kids with social, emotional, and behavioral challenges. What should you do with it? You have several options:

• Print it out and post it in a prominent place in your home, school, or treatment facility and let the people you live or work with know that those are the principles guiding your work with challenging kids
• Sign it and help Lives in the Balance gather 5,000 signatures (and get other people to do the same thing). Once we've collected those signatures, we'll send them to key policy-makers to let them know about how challenging kids ought to be understood and treated. 

✓ Read the News:  In the new Good and Bad News section of the website, you can read stories from the news media about how behaviorally challenging kids are being treated.  Yes, it's the bad news that usually makes the headlines...and yes, there's more work to be done.

✓ Donate a Care Package: If you know someone who badly needs to hear about the CPS model -- whether it's a school teacher, principal, or superintendent...or a mayor or governor...or someone overseeing a restrictive therapeutic facility -- you can anonymously send them a package from Lives in the Balance containing all kinds of materials to educate them, provide them with new tools, and help them move in the right direction.

✓ Take Action:  At Lives in the Balance, we're committed to advocating on behalf of behaviorally challenging kids and their caregivers.  We'd be delighted to keep you informed of what's coming down the pike and ways to get more involved...and the best way to make that happen is to sign up for our newsletter, Action Plan B.  Make sure you keep us informed if challenging kids are being treated in ways that are inhumane and ineffective in your neck of the woods. And you can read about action Lives in the Balance has taken recently on behalf of challenging kids in this section, too.  

✓ Make a Statement: Let the world know where you stand on how challenging kids should be understood and treated by ordering a Lives in the Balance t-shirt or bumper sticker.