Abstract
An ongoing problem in working with difficult children in schools is the tendency to respond to the multiple challenges they present by focusing primarily on the behavior they display and on their academic performance. While this is unavoidable, the failure to acknowledge their subjective states and to reflect on how they experience themselves and the world often results in the development of interventions that miss the needs of these children and leaves them alone to cope in an environment that feels punitive and dismissive of them. It is a failure that confirms their image of themselves as difficult and unlikable and conveys to them that what they feel and what they need does not matter to others.