The Parent's Problem Solver

Chapter One

Chapter 1

THE NEW FLAVOR

OF DISCIPLINE

Twenty years ago, a sixty-pound redheaded dynamo by the name of Sam charged into my office and made me rethink everything I'd learned about discipline during my pediatric training. He was a typical high-energy seven-year-old boy-only he hated school and refused to behave no matter what kind (or amount) of discipline or guidance I recommended to his parents. Like many other parents, Sam's mother and father wondered if they were doing something wrong. If Sam's rebelliousness was at all tied in to how they were handling things, then more than anything else in the world, they wanted to fix their mistakes.

And here were Sam's parents, sitting in my office waiting for me to explain why no amount of threats or bribes, yelling, negative reinforcement, limits, time-ins or time-outs, consistency, "good" communication, or learning from consequences was making one bit of difference. If anything, the attempts to reshape Sam's behavior were sending him into a wild tailspin. Indeed, all the textbook instructions, the same ones my colleagues and I had been dispensing for more than a decade, ... read full excerpt from The Parent's Problem Solver: Smart Solutions for Everyday Discipline Dilemmas and Behavioral Problems ebook