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.

You're your kid's partner, not the person who's pulling all the strings.

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

Everybody is talking about the behavior. Behaviors float downstream to us. We need to paddle upstream. The problems that are causing the behaviors, that's what's waiting for us. It's a crucial paradigm shift.

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.

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.