Thank you for such nice, concise, no-nonsense presentation of some of the best developments in the mental health profession. This is very enlightening, and indeed very useful, for everyone who deals with kids. It could keep a lot of us from banging our head against various walls!

This is really interesting. I wish you would write more about it. Is there a good book on temperament? Thank you so much.

Thank you for this informative piece. I wish it would be longer. It is so interesting and like you say so practically useful. I think we all have this understanding of our children but it really helps to see it organized and clearly stated. I really would like to know more. Please write more about this.

Thank you Monda for this valuable information. But I would like to ask for more too! This is too important to leave it so brief. Any good books you can recommend?

Thank you all for your feedback and interest.

I'm in the process of a Big move. I will dig out my references and boxed books and will pass them on to you, as soon as humanly possible.

My Best wishes to all of you,
Monda

Some good reads on Temperament are:

- Jan Kristal, "Working with Children's Behavioral Styles"

- William Carey, "Understanding Your Child's Temperament"

- Helen Neville, "Understanding Temperament Tools"

- (Perhaps too technical) Stella Chess and Alexander Thomas, ``"Temperament in Clinical Practice"

Thank you for the book recommendations, Monda. I'll save them for the Resources page of this site.

Clara, I'm glad you are putting them to good use.

Thank you for the book recommendations Monda. I really appreciate it.

I'm running this little article again because I've been getting a lot of comments about how useful it was. Take a look at the books Monda recommends in the comment she has left. I apologize for being late in developing the Resources page here!

This is great. It is so important to see what they call ODD as power struggle. I really appreciate these brief and concise tips. really useful.

Examining power struggles between children and adults (or even other children) is very important. I think we can derive very useful insight from it. And I've always suspected that this reward and punishment approach we have to child rearing is a bad idea. It had never occured to me that kids can see positive reinforcement and rewards as manipulation. Of course! They're not stupid.

this is very helpful. thanks. i know all this but you forget things!

Wish I'd know all of those when the kid was young! Will use them with grandkids, if I ever have any! Thanks.

Friends: Let's not forget that all these techniques can be practiced with our friends, co-workers or anyone we care to have a good relationship with.

Good point Monda. You're so right. All the strategies that work with children work with adults too. Maybe one difficulty in raising children is that we forget that they are people -- and that all people are really children in many ways.

I really like this recap. it's useful not having to go look things like this up in a book. this much is all you need anyway. So much of those pages they stuff how-to books with are drivel.

Good ideas for the battles at home too!

Oh absolutely Jeanne! These are tried and true anywhere!

I would love to hear of these strategies in action. I am so guilty of behavior that increase power struggle! (Not all of the ones listed above, though!)