One of my favorite ways to talk about your behavioral relationship with you children is to relate it to a bank account that houses positive interactions.

These positive interactions are the number one currency when it comes to developing relationships and managing our children's challenging behavior.

Every time you engage positively with your child, you make a deposit into this account. Conversely, every time you have to give your child feedback or deliver a reprimand, this counts as a withdrawal.

The more genuine and impactful the positive interaction, the bigger the deposit. The more harsh and negative the reprimand, the bigger the withdrawal.

It must be our goal as parents to work to keep our behavioral bank account balance in the positive because this is the currency with which we need to use to address challenging behavior.

If we attempt to make a withdrawal where there is nothing left in the account, the debt starts to build and our children...