Child psychologist.
Former firefighter.
Father of three.

The first time my volunteer fire department's pager went off in the middle of the night, I was a graduate student in psychology. I leapt out of bed, threw on my gear, and held on to the back of a fire engine racing through the dark to a house with flames coming out of a second-floor window. I was twenty-six years old and had never been to a real fire.

What I noticed that night, and on every call after it, was that the experienced firefighters were not running on adrenaline. They were calm. Not because they were brave, but because they had planned and prepared for the moment in advance. They knew exactly what each person would do when they arrived. Adrenaline was channeled into a sequence of trained moves, not panic.

A few years later, working as a child psychologist with parents of challenging boys, I started to see the same pattern in reverse. Loving, smart parents were trying to put out their kid's emotional fires with no extinguisher and no plan. They got swept up into the chaos every time, and then carried around shame for losing their cool.

I realized that the discipline that lets firefighters stay calm under conditions that would send anyone else into panic works just as well in families. That insight became the foundation of how I work with families now, and the foundation of Challenging Boys.

I'm a father of three myself, so I know what it feels like to lose your cool with a child you love more than anything. The plan I teach parents isn't a way to be perfect. It's a way to feel more confident, be more effective, and be more connected. It will also help you recover and repair faster after those inevitable moments when things get off track. I know you're a loving parent, I want to help you love being a parent.