My advice to educators is collaborate with parents; they know a lot about their kids.

If we're being unilateral, then communication does not happen, the relationship does not happen.

Kids are overprogrammed these days.

A lot of parents aren't exactly sure how to go about solving a problem with a kid in a way that's mutually satisfactory - doing that with their child feels very foreign to a lot of people. It probably explains why so many parents tell me their kids don't listen to them and why so many kids tell me that they don't feel heard.

We have forgotten that those skills on the more positive side of human nature have to be taught, have to be modeled, have to be practiced.

People don't scream or swear or pout or sulk when there's compatibility. But most growth occurs when there's incompatibility. When it comes to resilience, when it comes to pulling yourself up when you've fallen down, you don't learn those things when things are going well. You learn those things when you're struggling.

The idea that we can take this lump of clay and mold it into a form of our choosing is absolutely ludicrous.