Be your kid's collaborative partner, but also be a collaborative partner with the folks at school. Schools can be pretty unilateral too. Show them you know how to collaborate. Show them this is not about power. Let them know detentions and suspensions and paddling don't solve the problems that are affecting kids' lives. Those problems can be identified and solved but not by being punitive.

If a solution isn't mutually satisfactory, it's not going to stick.

You want to teach all kids the skills that are on the better side of human nature: empathy, appreciating how one's behavior is affecting other people, resolving disagreements in ways that do not involve conflict, taking another's perspective, honesty.

It's a whole lot more productive to be in problem-solving mode than it is to be in behavior modification mode.

Over 18 years of us solving problems together, my daughter has shown me that she's got a good head on her shoulders, that she is pretty good at solving the problems that affect her life. If she wants my input, she gets it.

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.

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