Being completely in control is a fantasy.

Solutions can't be imposed. That just fosters resentment.

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.

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.

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.

Being completely in control is a fantasy.

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