Challenging Boys Blog
by Dr. Timothy Davis, author of
Challenging Boys: A Proven Plan for Keeping Your Cool and Helping Your Son Thrive.
The Universal Need for Parental Acceptance
Child development is so complex that there are practically no certainties. There are experienced, well-meaning, well-credentialed experts lined up on all sides of almost every major issue in parenting. This uncertainty and confusion of conflicting expert opinion can...
Sticker Charts/Reward Charts/Behavior Charts: The Five Most Common Mistakes Parents Make When Using Reward Charts
Sticker Charts/Reward Charts/Behavior Charts: The Five Most Common Mistakes Parents Make When Using Reward ChartsReward charts (also sometimes called “sticker charts” or “behavior charts”) are frequently employed by parents to deal with their young children’s...
Cultivating Positive Parenting
Carl Rogers was one of the most important psychologists of the twentieth century and his work, along with that of Abraham Maslow, formed the basis for the creation of today’s Positive Psychology movement. In 1957, Rogers described what he believed were the necessary...
The Power of Positive Parenting: Gottman’s Magic Ratio
The Power of Positive Parenting: Gottman's Magic RatioMarriage and family researcher, John Gottman, has observed that spouses in happy, stable marriages engage in positive expressions of feelings and actions towards each other about five times as often as they engage...
Review of The Explosive Child, by Ross Greene
Review of The Explosive Child, by Ross Greene Ross Greene’s book, The Explosive Child, is one of my three all time favorite parenting books (click this link to see my three must read parenting books). In this book, Dr. Greene argues that conventional parenting...
Stop Blaming Yourself: Work the Problem People!
Stop Blaming Yourself: Work the Problem People!As if raising a challenging boy wasn’t stressful, exhausting and difficult enough, parents of challenging boys also have to contend with the advice, judgment and blame of friends, relatives, and strangers at the...
The Parent Diary: A Powerful Tool for Decreasing Power Struggles
It is the nature of power struggles (or of just about any other challenging interaction that we get into with our children) that we find ourselves time and time again caught up in them by surprise. In spite of our best intentions to keep calm, not yell, and avoid the...
10 Best Parenting Books for Parents of Challenging Boys
These are my absolute favorite books on parenting of all time. Each one is well worth the read (and the first one doesn’t even require reading because it's an audiobook!). Before I begin, I want to add a plug for my new book: Challenging Boys: A Proven Plan for...
Oppositional, Rebellious, Difficult, Defiant, Explosive, Spirited, Challenging … What’s in a Name?
Who are Challenging Boys? They are kids who get tagged with many negative labels: oppositional, difficult, defiant, manipulative, willful, noncompliant, rigid, angry, temperamental, and rebellious and they tend to make life difficult for their parents and teachers....