The following is our top ten list of guidelines for managing your child's behavior. While we consider each of them to be equally important, we purposely listed the first three ahead of the others as we consider these to provide the base upon which parents can successfully manage children's behavior.

I was sitting in a local food court the other day having lunch when I spied a young toddler with his mother, sitting in his stroller while they were eating lunch. I caught his eye, and proceeded to cover my face with my hands for a moment and then suddenly open them up while delivering a big, smiley "peek-a-boo". He squealed with delight, waiting for me to do it again . . . and again . . . and again. Each time, the laughter was bigger, and the fascination greater as he watched my face disappear and then appear again.

It is sometimes very difficult to decide how much independence and/or freedom you should allow your teen at any given time. We know that one of the primary developmental tasks of adolescence is to learn how to make good decisions independently of parental guidance, but it is not always easy to assess how well this task has been negotiated. "Behavioral autonomy", as this developmental task is referred to, is a necessary skill for functioning in the adult world.

Imagine this scenario: You've just instructed your six-year-old not to go inside anyone's house without first coming and asking for your permission. Next thing you know, you're standing at the kitchen sink washing dishes and you look out the window just in time to see your child enter the neighbor's house across the street with her little friend of the same age. You think to yourself, "What is wrong with that child? Didn't I just tell her not to do that?" Yes you did, but for some reason it didn't completely take.

Remember when you were nine or ten years old and you had that elaborate doll collection? Or maybe it was baseball cards . . . or trains . . . or model cars? If you did have a collection of some sort, you'll also remember that you used to spend hours arranging and rearranging your treasured items in a number of ways including by color, size, order of favoritism, etc. You would view your collection over and over in its various prioritized arrangements. Each item would have a specific meaning to you, and the space occupied by the item would also have some implication as to the degree of importance or appreciation you had.