John's Articles
School Principal Asks About Discipline
Posted on 10/25/2022
Q: I am a principal at a private church-affiliated school. Contrary to my graduate school training and most of my peers’ practice, I believe disciplinary actions should "fit the crime."...
Read MoreNo New Tricks To Raising Kids
Posted on 11/30/2021
What is “gentle parenting”? It did not take much investigation for me to conclude that it is merely a rebranding of the same old, same old parenting babble America’s mental health establishment...
Read MoreThe Drama of a Child's Feelings
Posted on 4/20/2021
One of the more unfortunate consequences of relying on advice from mental health “experts” concerning parenting matters has been a one-dimensional understanding of child discipline. Because of the...
Read MoreParents Can Recover From Not Getting Over the 'Hump of Parenting'
Posted on 10/20/2020
Q: In a recent column, you identified toddlerhood as “the hump of parenting.” As a grandmother who managed to raise five kids who were out of the house in their early twenties and are responsible...
Read MoreWhere We All Went Wrong
Posted on 8/25/2020
My profession, psychology, began demonizing traditional childrearing in the late 1960s. I was in graduate school at the time and on fire for the promise that the proper use of psychological...
Read MoreWhat to Do About an Aggressive 3-Year-Old
Posted on 4/21/2020
Q: My three-year-old son tends to react physically when he's mad at a preschool classmate instead of talking it out and letting the teachers intervene. We have encouraged him to use words when...
Read MoreThe Biggest Mistakes Parents Make (and How to Stop Making Them!) - Part 2
Posted on 2/11/2020
This is the second in a series of three columns on the Biggest Mistakes Parents Make (and How to Stop Making Them!). Last week, I identified giving children explanations for parental instructions,...
Read More"The Doctor" Is the Tool Every Parent Needs
Posted on 10/15/2019
I have good news for parents: You do not need more than a few tools in your disciplinary tool-bag. One especially valuable tool, one that belongs in every modern home, is the “Doctor.” The Doctor...
Read MoreReplace Psychological With Old Fashioned Parenting
Posted on 9/24/2019
As my regular readers know, I am a certified heretic in my field: child and family psychology. To the point, I am convinced that psychological parenting theory, which began to inform American...
Read MoreEmancipation of Adult Children Can Be Messy
Posted on 6/4/2019
When children were raised, reared, or simply brought up, they emancipated “on time.” Upon high school graduation, children went to college, into the military, or became employed. Some, like my...
Read MoreWe're Living in a Child's World
Posted on 5/21/2019
Concerning major behavior problems, parents often tell me they’ve “tried everything.” In more than forty years of doing this “parenting expert” gig, I’ve never run across a parent who was telling...
Read MoreUse 'Alpha Speech' to Get Child to Obey
Posted on 5/14/2019
Q: My 7-year-old son, an only child, is giving me fits. He’s overly active and will not cooperate in any instruction I give him. In addition, if I tell him not to do something, it’s a guarantee...
Read MoreYou Can't Win 'Em All
Posted on 3/5/2019
I’ve been writing this column for forty-three years and speaking publicly for nearly as long. If there’s one thing I’ve learned it’s that when it comes to my subject matter, you can’t win ‘em...
Read MoreToday's Parents Don't Know How to Properly Convey Authority
Posted on 1/17/2018
Four sentences into her Wall Street Journal article on recent research into spanking (“Spanking for Misbehavior? It Causes More!” December 17, 2017), the author, Susan Pinker, makes two grievous...
Read MoreStrike While the Iron Is Cold
Posted on 11/17/2017
Recently, a mother asked how she and her husband could make their 16-year-old son stop talking disrespectfully to them. So far, she said, they'd complained, threatened and occasionally taken his...
Read More3 year-old Tantrums
Posted on 9/8/2015
Copyright 2015, John K. Rosemond Q: Our first, a girl, just turned three and has suddenly started throwing tantrums. She can begin a tantrum when she’s alone in her room if something...
Read MoreLosing Tickets on the Ticket System
Posted on 12/16/2014
Q: I’ve been trying for two months with little to no success to get your “ticket” system to work on my 4-year-old daughter. The target behaviors are ignoring me when I tell her to do...
Read MorePiling On
Posted on 4/28/2014
In football, "piling on" occurs when defensive players continue to fall on top of an offensive player after he's been tackled. Because it's unnecessary as well as dangerous, piling on is...
Read MoreOut of the Garden
Posted on 4/28/2014
Occasionally a behavior problem is so BIG that nothing short of what I call "nuclear discipline" will do. Your great-grandparents called it "lowering the boom." Regardless of terminology, the...
Read MoreThe Ticket System for Corrective Discipline
Posted on 4/28/2014
I developed "Tickets" in response to the observation that time-out only works with children who are already fairly well behaved. (Then again, just about any demonstration of parental disapproval...
Read MoreDaily and Weekly Report Cards (for School Problems)
Posted on 4/28/2014
Daily and Weekly Report Cards are a variation on Daily and Weekly Charts, the difference being that they target school misbehavior and performance. Daily Report Cards are generally suitable for...
Read More"The Doctor" Makes House Calls
Posted on 4/28/2014
Shortly after I finished graduate school, a friend of mine shared with me a book called Indirect Hypnosis, written by Milton Erickson, a most unorthodox psychiatrist if ever there was one....
Read More