When speaking to parents with challenging children, there is often an urgency to address the specifics of what to do when a problem behavior shows up.

In other words, the understandable desire is to fix the problem right now. After all, you want an answer when your son is melting down in the grocery store because you wouldn’t buy him the cookies he wants. The message I get is, ‘Dr. Cale, please tell me how to fix him now!’ They want the magic juice to make it all go away.

Yet, this could be a mistake. For most challenging children, kids with ADHD, or strong-willed children, such an approach will likely lead to failure. The problem here begins not with a failed parenting strategy but a flawed understanding of how positive change is sustained over time.

In parenting and life, there are two games to master: the inside game of mental clarity and control and the outside game of effective action.

The Inside Game is about your own personal psychology. This ‘inside game’ is either run automatically through the programming and habits (good and bad) that you acquired unintentionally, or you realize that this programming is changeable through your effort and awareness. At that point, you begin the lifelong process of learning to run your brain rather than having it run you. Most people are the victims of their programming, simply running habitual patterns of thought that drive emotion and........

© The Saratogian