Kids are overprogrammed these days.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.