No child’s perfect, right? So what’s a parent to do when they’re at their wit’s end – whether because of toddler tantrums or teen defiance? The first step in tackling challenging behavior is ...

This post was written with Jessica Minahan and originally appeared in the Harvard Education Letter. About 10 percent of the school population, or 9–13 million children, struggle with mental health ...

Understanding why certain behaviors occur and the appropriate techniques to address them can help parents mitigate their impact. Many parents of young children face behavioral concerns like children ...

As a psychologist specializing in working with kids and adolescents with very challenging behavior, I spend a lot of time thinking about how to help kids stay “regulated,” which in essence means calm ...

The main idea behind this model is that many behaviors we do are what we call learned behaviors. However, when we say that behaviors are learned, we don’t mean that you purposely taught your child to ...

Challenging behavior at work involves crossing social and professional norms in a way that disrupts work and upsets co-workers. To manage such behavior, you must learn how to understand what happened ...

Children with autism tend to engage in challenging behavior more than other children, which impacts their ability to engage appropriately with instructional tasks. Existing literature has established ...

Many people confuse negative reinforcement with punishment, but these are two different concepts. Negative reinforcement can be used as a strategy to encourage specific behaviors. You probably already ...

Two months into this past school year, I was approached by a few teachers about the challenges they were having with students. The year was just beginning, but these teachers—two new to the profession ...