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Hello Mark, I have downloaded your book and looked over most of it and I'm seeing a lot of helpful strategies. My husband seems to want to close his eyes and the nightmare will go away. I want to deal with the problems head on. Our son will not comply with anything we tell him. I'm scared of his violent outbursts due to many holes in our walls and doors. We have dealt with the law, med. professionals, etc.. We have diagnosis of ADHD, ODD, and bi-polar. I currently am trying to place him in a medical residential center, but it is taking months. And I don't think that we have much time left. He currently is in an outpatient behavioral health center. He won't take the meds. The psychotherapist said that he could use residential treatment. He talks about hating his life all the time. Drugs, alcohol, sex and wrong friends are his choices. He quit school at 16 and will be 17 on 9/3/09. He said he is leaving soon. He wants to be emancipated! He currently is working ...

If your youngster is belligerent, mouthy and downright disobedient, it's time to take a closer look at the reasons why. All kids go through times when they just will not obey but the youngster with Oppositional Defiant Disorder (ODD) is one who will never obey and one who will always push the family's boundaries. The youngster with ODD is an instigator. He loves to poke and prod and do all the tiny things behind the scenes to get his siblings in trouble. He is the youngster that challenges everything you say. Most often this youngster will not have friends. He may or may not have trouble in the classroom. Many kids with this disorder do fine in school but act out at home. This is generally thought to be because the youngster, understanding at an early age that his behavior is not socially acceptable, can hold it together during class hours but at some point, that youngster will need release. At home, he feels safe and knows he is loved. There is no longer any need fo...

Before my daughter started hanging around with 2 particular girls in her 2nd year of high school, our relationship was OK. Slowly things got bad to worse. Disrespect, breaking curfew, grades slipping …the whole gamut. Now she is out of high school and luckily will be starting college in the fall. Using the OPS program has helped and I wish I would have known about it 2 years ago.

Hello Mark, Thank you for your e-mail and encouragement. I am going through all the weekly sessions very carefully, reading everything, watching everything and implementing it as guided. We are now in week 2 and I would like only to say how I am getting on with the situations with the help of the programme. Literally, I would say that I feel like learning how to play a piano. I have the notes in front of me, I have my teacher and now it is just up to me how I am going to perform. What I have figured out for myself is that: -I need to know my notes very well, read again and again and try to get to the very inside of the 'music'; -I need to shape myself in a way which is going to help me to touch the keyboard with the right intensity-not too strong, not too quick, but just right, allowing me to live with the music and to feel it.... If I miss something, music sounds false. That is what happened one day when I forgot to praise my child for his good behaviour at school, but I did ...

Mark, Thanks so much for this wonderful program. It took me longer to complete than 4 weeks, but I kept at it. I realized today that my son's addiction to online games is under control, he's turned to his X box games and I haven't been requiring him to earn this reward. I took the controller today. We still have alot of work to do, and but he's really come around. He has really been working hard and helping me outside. My 14 yr old daughter fixed our riding lawn mower last night by herself! She put the belt back on, and fixed the deck so its level. She asked me to come outside - but I explained I had dinner on the stove and couldn't leave it. She remained calm and fixed it and mowed the front yard. I praised her and told her how great that was and that I couldn't do it on my own. I asked her to show me how she did it. We're making progress. T. Online Parent Support

Hello Mark, You cannot imagine what a relief your e-mail has been to me. Thank you for your time, understanding and support. Unfortunately, I could not reply immediately as 'my monster' took the cable and battery of my laptop on Sunday. Here is just a quick update of my ’weekend drama', but also I would like proudly to say 'I made it!’ thanks to you. My son went out again with his rebellion school friend at 11.30pm. I stayed calm. He came back 2 hours later and went to bed. I left everything for the morning. In the morning I was determined not to leave him to sleep till lunch time as it had happened before. I called him and told him that if he did not get up in 10 min, was not going to have his pocket money on Monday. I did not believe it would work. He had never got up before after being called just once. I used to be coming back for 5, and 5 and 5 more min...But soon after that, I heard the door of the bathroom opening and my son already....dressed. Next ...

 Here are some quick tips for all you parents with an out-of-control teenage daughter... • Ask yourself, “What have I done to contribute to the rift between us?” Think about when the trouble began. How old was she and what was going on in your family life? I have counseled hundreds of father/mothers and daughters whose relationships were badly damaged and getting worse. For healing to begin, it was important for the father/mother to understand what part she had in fueling the fires of defiance. If you’re willing to take an honest look at yourself, you will find some answers. • Avoid Blame. While some people claim that when a daughter is rebellious her father/mother is to blame, this usually is not true. Blaming the daughter for the difficulties does nothing to fix the problem either. There are many circumstances that contribute to the predicament. • Be Willing to Negotiate. The “fix my daughter” approach won’t work. Both father/mother and daughter have to be willing t...

Dear Mark...I need some advice...My 14 yr old daughter has been at her dad's all summer. In talking to her she says she does not want to come home and wants to stay with her dad. She says she likes it there, no one is bitching at her all the time and that if we make her come home she will make our lives a living hell. How do you respond to that? ~ J. `````````````````````````````````````` I get this question a lot... I always recommend that the former parent [you] allow the child to stay with the other parent [dad]. However, what usually happens is the dad eventually experiences the same parent-child conflict that the mother did, resulting in his request [or demand] that the child move back to mom's. Bottom line: The more you convey that you "need" her to live with you - the more she will feel a sense of what I call "retaliation gratification" [i.e., a feeling of exacting revenge against "the bitch"].    So, you should "act...

Are you finding raising adolescents to be difficult? If so, you are not alone. Raising adolescents in a successful way requires good communication skills. Moms & dads do not automatically posses the skills necessary to communicate with their adolescents in an effective way. Communication skills like any other kind of skill must be learned. The following tips can help you reach your adolescent and make the difficult job of raising adolescents that much easier. Possessing a loving, evolving, healthy relationship with an adolescent means getting to know him or her as a person; this is especially important when we consider that a primary task of successfully navigating through adolescence is identity formation. Moms & dads, and anyone who works with troubled adolescents, will need to focus on taking intentional steps towards forming a meaningful relationship with the adolescent. A primary mechanism of discerning, learning, and understanding the personality characteristics and...

--> Mark, I have watched the on-line course and have been following all of your instructions. My 16 year old son never wants to go to get his haircut. I usually let it go, but has been months since the last time it was cut and at that time it wasn’t cut short because he was having a fit about it. Today I told him (with my poker face) that I was taking him to get his hair cut and he said no he wasn’t. I told him that if he chose to ignored my request, that he would choose the consequence of grounding and losing his cell phone for 24 hours. He refused to give me the cell phone. I told him that he was still grounded and that the 24 hours didn’t start until he gave me the phone. He said he wasn’t giving me the phone and then said that he was going out to his friend’s house because he has all summer to be grounded. I told him if he refused to ignore my request for the 24 hour grounding and no cell phone that he would choose to be grounded for 3 days without anything. He wal...

"Ignoring" behavior is an over-rated parenting strategy -- however, in some cases, it is the best strategy. Thanks to more than 50 years of research, we know how to change kid’s behavior. In brief, you identify the problem-behavior, define its positive opposite (the desirable behavior you want to replace it with), and then make sure that your youngster engages in a lot of reinforced practice of the new behavior until it replaces the unwanted one.    Reinforced practice means that you pay as much attention as possible to the positive opposite so that your youngster falls into a pattern: Do the right behavior, get a reward (praise or a token); do the behavior, get a reward.    JOIN Online Parent Support   Real life is never as mechanically predictable as that formula makes it sound, and many other factors will bear on your success—including your relationship with your youngster, what behaviors you model in your home, and what influences your youngster is expose...

Our nearly 4-year-old daughter seems to cry all the time. Recently she wept because we were late picking her up and she thought we weren't coming. Once a classmate told her "You are late," so she cried. I used to get annoyed with her crying and would yell, but then I learned that encouragement and patience helped much more. However, with a full-time job I lose patience with her sometimes. We really want her to be more confident, but have no idea of how to do this. Please help. -- C.J. `````````````````````````````````````````````````` First have your doctor examine her to be sure there is nothing physical that is creating her anxiety. It never hurts to be sure that nothing physical is wrong. Many young kids have ear problems that do not actually hurt, but that irritate and stress them out. These ear problems also can affect hearing, which of course affects her language and her understanding of things being said around her. DO check her hearing. Then work on her self-...