For a very long time, people have been saying to me, "What if you want to do this approach with every kid?" For a behaviorally challenging kid, you're parenting this way just to help bring the kid's behavior under control and to greatly reduce conflict. But 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.

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

Parents are much more likely to be attuned to what they don't like than they are to the expectations that the kid is having difficulty meeting.

If we're sitting at dinner and there's no conversation going on because everybody's got their head someplace else in their iPhone, that's a family problem that needs to be solved.

Being completely in control is a fantasy.

It's so crucial to really get a good handle on what's getting in the way of the kid completing a homework assignment. It can be so many things.

People still look askance at a kid in the supermarket who's pitching a fit and think the parent is not sufficiently in control or not being sufficiently punitive. That's an issue for a lot of parents as well.