Introduction A lot of people associate the word science with cold, remote abstractions, the opposite of your relationship to your kids. But scientists who investigate parenting and child rearing are finding out all kinds of things that can make family life not only easier for parents and children but also warmer, closer, and happier. In psychology and related fields researchers are studying everything from the most effective way to ask your child to do something (the way that''s most likely to lead to the child doing it) to how and why parents punish so much even though it doesn''t work very well. The body of good research produced by these scientists grows more robust and useful every day.1 Their findings confirm some instinctive parental habits. For instance, research on the effects of comforting touch is telling us more and more about how good for your kids it is, not just psychologically but biologically, to be hugged by you. When you follow the urge to hug your child frequently, the likely good effects include not only reducing stress and promoting bonding and attachment but also strengthening the child''s immune system. The research also shows why other ingrained parental habits make life only more difficult for adults and children alike.

Take nagging, for example. We (I say "we" because I''m a parent, too) tend to act as if repeatedly reminding a child to do something makes the child more likely to do it, but the science clearly shows that the opposite is true: more reminders equals less chance of compliance. There''s good science out there, and parents need it more than ever. They''re pulled in more directions than ever before and get less help than ever from other adults. They have less time with their families because of the normalizing of the two-career couple (or, for that matter, the three-job or four-job couple) and the technology-assisted expansion of work to fill even the smallest gaps in the day, so that parents are never beyond the reach of e-mails or text messages that draw them away from family time and back to work. There are also more single parents than ever before: in the United States, 41 percent of births are to an unmarried parent, and many parents are raising kids largely alone because of divorce. More grandparents have primary responsibility for rearing children, and there are more blended families in which different approaches to raising children can come into conflict. And, crucially, parents are increasingly isolated, cut off from the support systems and sources of advice that have traditionally helped with child rearing, such as neighbors and grandparents.

2 That all translates into more and different kinds of stress on parents. You try mightily not to pass this stress on to your kids, but its effects can sneak up on you. Take, for example, that typical twenty-first-century mini-storm in which you get an emergency text message from the office and then your toddler melts down or your preteen goes into attitude overdrive. "Just my luck," you may think. "This is the last thing I need right now." It''s natural to think of the simultaneous onset of work-related and family-related crises as a coincidence-bad parental luck-but they''re often deeply connected. A number of studies show in detail how stressors on parents modify how they interact with their children, often in ways that increase noncompliance. When a parent is under stress, especially when stress is made worse by isolation, the effects can be measured by changes in tone of voice, the quality of prompts to children, patience, and the ability to pay attention to a child-all of which can make a child more difficult to manage.

Just a little more edge in your voice, just a little more or less slack in reaction time can make the difference between a child doing what''s asked of him and pitching a fit. And, of course, a difficult child is another stressor, which in turn stretches and isolates the parent even further, and the whole cycle goes around faster and faster. Feeling on their own and in need of support, parents increasingly turn to our age''s principal substitute for community and extended family: the Internet. Studies show (yes, somebody''s studying this) that parents go online for advice more than they go to their own parents or to others who are raising children of the same age. And there is indeed some useful information to be had online if you know where to look. The problem is that much of it is not presented in a way to make it useful to nonscientists, and, more important, even the best advice is buried in an electronic infinity of bad advice, bad science or anti-science, and confident admonitions to do things that won''t work and may well make your life worse: talking your child''s tantrums to death, for instance, or whupping the badness out of your child, or using time out for hours until your child learns her lesson. It can be difficult to tell the good advice apart from the bad, especially when you''re not an expert and in a hurry. And you probably are in a hurry, especially these days.

I direct the Yale Parenting Center, a service for families at Yale University that works with parents who want help with their children. Families in nearby cities and states come to the center for face-to-face sessions, and through our online setup we work with others from across the nation and in other countries. We see all kinds of kids and parents, all sorts of situations and problems, including some very extreme ones, but typically we focus on families that are dealing with the common challenges of child rearing. Sometimes these parents need a little help to get them through a rough patch, a child''s particularly challenging developmental stage, or a sticky situation-of which we''ve seen all kinds, including a lot of out-of-control tantrums, teasing and fighting among siblings, children who won''t do homework or practice an instrument, and every kind of teen attitude you can imagine. And sometimes they don''t have a pressing problem at all, and they''re just looking for assistance with normal day-to-day parenting, like managing multiple kids'' schedules or preparing for a fast-approaching transition to adolescence. We''ve seen thousands of children at the Yale Parenting Center, from toddlers to teens. But it''s important to make clear that the methods I''m presenting to you in this book are not just the product of my own experience. They''re drawn from the findings of science, which means that they''re drawn from the experiences of a much larger pool-thousands of scientists and all the many, many people they have studied.

These experiences have been systematically collected and analyzed, and that analysis is continuously tested and refined. Science does not have all the answers, of course, but it''s our best means of accumulating information and improving knowledge over time. The scientific method has allowed us to make gradual progress to the point that we can control diseases that used to be incurable; it''s why we can send a spaceship to Mars, which used to be a science-fiction fantasy; and it''s why we can now effectively treat formerly intractable afflictions like anxiety and depression. This book is based on what scientists in psychology and allied fields-not just me, but a whole profession''s worth of fellow investigators-have learned that can help you do everything from toilet training your child to dealing with typical teen issues like enforcing curfews and managing greater independence. The parents I meet need a guide that bridges the gap to the best science and makes it immediately available to them in the most practical ways. So that''s what I set out to do in this book. I''ve already written a book for parents that focuses on the particular challenges of dealing with defiant and oppositional children ( The Kazdin Method for Parenting the Defiant Child ); this book, by contrast, is intended for parents who are dealing with the kinds of everyday challenges that come up in most households. It brings the most useful results of the research on parenting and child development to you in the form of concrete tools and strategies for your home, illustrates their applicability with everyday examples, provides guidelines on how to use the tools to address fresh situations that may come up in your household, and focuses on routine everyday life behaviors that are challenges to most parents most of the time.

This is a parenting handbook for daily life, in other words, at a time when many parents feel, for good reason, that they need more guidance than ever before. Think of this book as a how-to manual that not only offers effective solutions to common parenting problems but also shows you how to break down and deal with the bewilderingly infinite variety of challenges that come up as you raise your children. It''s a book you can turn to when dealing with typical concerns ranging from specific behavior problems to more general matters that transcend the label of behavior, like attitude or character. It will help you work on a concrete issue, such as toilet training or teeth brushing, teaching a child to accept "no" without a tantrum, or smoothing out a conflict-ridden after-school or curfew routine. It will show you how to help your child take more responsibility for doing homework, practicing an instrument, doing chores, or coming home on time. And it will offer ways to help a child develop interests and qualities like respect for others, honesty, good friendships, or altruism. Parents aren''t concerned only with behavior, of course; they''re urgently interested in their children''s character and developing attitude toward the world. But those larger traits will inevitably be expressed as behavior-an honest child will tell the truth; a generous child will perform acts of generosity.

By building those behaviors we also work on developi.