Drawing the Line: Ten Steps to Constructive Discipline--And Achieving a Great Relationship with Your Kids

In the bestselling tradition of "1-2-3 Magic" comes a unique and controversial approach that tells parents in order to eliminate conflict with their child, they must first create it. The authors introduce a ten-step program that shows parents how to create and engineer conflict to help their children break inappropriate habits and learn more productive ways of behaving.

Using straightforward explanations and illustrative examples, the authors make quick work of misbehaving children by putting the onus for training squarely on parents' shoulders. "Our job as parents is to teach kids new skills-and to hold them to increasingly skilled, mature, and sophisticated standards of behavior." The authors are adept at blending concise bits of information with step-by-step instructions, though some techniques they advocate are akin to playing Pavlovian headgames with a far less capable opponent. ("When you know when, where, and why your kids are liable to act up, you can use this information to engineer conflict. In other words, you can set up your kids so that those target behaviors will emerge. And then you can Draw the Line.") While Weiss and Wagner's behaviorist point of view might not be a good fit for every parent, their advice is, on the whole, common sense.
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