Is your child playing video games instead of doing schoolwork? Is he avoiding social situations—and is his behavior worsening as a result of constant gaming? I’ve heard the desperation and concern in the voices of many, many parents whose kids seem to spend all their time playing video games, as if possessed by some mysterious outside force. As one parent said, “I worry that my son might be addicted. When I shut the game off, he freaks out and goes ballistic! I just don’t know what to do.”

“My 13-year-old daughter’s bedroom is so awful it looks like a tornado just ripped through it! When I ask her to clean it up, she either ignores me or starts screaming at me.” If this sounds like your child, you are not alone. It’s incredibly frustrating to deal with a kid who is refusing to take care of her space. So what’s a parent to do? Read on for more information and ideas that will help.

There’s no such thing as a perfect consequence that will make your child’s behavior “magically” change. Rather, there are effective and ineffective consequences. Ineffective consequences teach your child how to do time—how to be grounded for a few weeks, or how to live without his video games or cell phone. Effective consequences have two main goals: to teach your child and to hold him accountable. It’s a very important distinction, and could mean the difference between seeing change or becoming frustrated and resentful about your child’s behavior.

Does your child ignore your requests to clean his room? Does he seem unable or unwilling to do even the simplest household chores? How do you teach a child to be responsible without nagging and screaming? In addition to being a mom herself, Janet Lehman, MSW, is a social worker who successfully ran residential treatment homes for troubled teens for years. Read on to learn practical ways to get your child to be more responsible.

Summer vacation has arrived, and so have calls to the support line from parents who are pulling their hair out about their kids now that school is out. Why is the end of school an invitation for kids to cause trouble—with siblings, friends and parents?

Being consistent is the hardest thing of all, many parents tell us. And it’s so true—it’s easy to lay down a rule and then let it slide when you’re tired or in a hurry. In this article, James Lehman explains why consistency is the key to your child’s behavior—and tells you ways to keep on track when you feel like giving up.

How many times has this happened to you? You set a limit on behavior, and your kids ask, “Why?” or ignore your limits entirely. Or perhaps it’s a war of inches—your adolescent tests you by coming in a few minutes later past curfew each time he goes out. Then he accuses you of being petty when you enforce the limit with a consequence. No matter the method, it’s infuriating for parents when their kids push against the structure they set. And for some parents, it’s hard to limit their child’s behavior in the first place. How can you set limits effectively and get your kids to listen? James Lehman explains how in this article.

I think a lot of parents feel it’s important to explain their reasoning to their children in an attempt to get them to understand. Realize that along the way, wanting your child to understand can easily shift into wanting their approval, or their acceptance of your reasons. When this happens, parents can get stuck in a dynamic where they’re over-explaining things to their children. I personally think that once you’ve given your child a reasonable amount of input, any further explanation defeats the purpose.

I’ve worked with a lot of children and teens with behavior problems over the years—and believe me, very few of their parents liked their friends. It’s like the national anthem of parents: “It’s not my child; it’s those kids he hangs out with!” When I hear that, I always say, “Maybe that’s so, but the reason he hangs out with that group is because he’s similar to them. And just like you’re saying, ‘It’s those other kids he hangs out with,’ those other kids’ parents are saying it’s your kid who’s the problem.”

Recently, I talked with the mother of a 16-year-old girl on the Parental Support Line about her daughter’s behavior outside of the house. This mom had just begun the Total Transformation program, but had questions about how to use its techniques to make her daughter follow the rules when she was away from home.

Some children think they’re the center of the universe, and behave as if everyone should revolve around them like the planets orbit the sun. From the 10-year-old “diva” who demands center stage at all times to the 17-year-old who takes out his frustrations on his family when his girlfriend breaks up with him, this attention-seeking behavior can be exhausting for everyone.

As every parent knows, fights over bedtime can be one of the biggest power struggles you’ll have with your child, whether they’re five or fifteen. The truth is, many kids just don’t want to go to bed at night. For most of them, I think it’s because they’re afraid they’re going to miss something. With others, it might be because they’re frightened of the dark, or afraid to go to sleep. And for some kids, they simply want to be in control. Bedtime just becomes another arena in which kids will try to fight with you.If you’ve ruled out fear of the dark, fear of bedwetting, and fear of not waking up, that leaves us with oppositional behavioral issues—the power struggle.

If you are a parent who negotiates constantly with your child, you probably feel like you’re living with a little lawyer who “objects” to every rule and request and wears you down with endless questions and challenges. With some kids, everything becomes a negotiation, and it starts from the time they get up in the morning until the time they put off going to bed.

The alarm goes off and the morning battle begins: you knock on your child’s bedroom door to wake him, but you have to go back time and again to make sure he’s actually up, your voice rising with each “wake-up call.” As the minutes tick by and he still hasn’t gotten out of bed, you resort to screaming and yelling in his face, and then tear the blankets off the bed. In desperation, you pull him out of bed by his feet, though you know you won’t be able to do that for many more years.