I cannot stress this one point enough and so I will say it one more time. All behavior has a purpose. Children are not intrinsically bad. They do not come into the world with a master plan rob, cheat, kill, or steal. They do not even deliberately set out to push your buttons. Well, okay, so maybe some of them get a real kick out of pushing your buttons, but even "button pushers" do so for a reason.

If you want to change a child's misbehavior into an acceptable behavior -- notice, I do not say eliminate the misbehavior because every behavior you take away must be replaced with another -- then the first place to start is to try to understand the purpose fueling the misbehavior.

What is the child's motive for pushing your buttons? Pulling the cat's tail repeatedly? Pretending not to hear you when you call? How and why do children learn to steal? Hurt others? Hurt themselves?

Did you know that some three and four-year-olds are already contemplating suicide somewhere in the world today? I did not know that -- until I worked with a couple of them who tried! I did not think it was possible for a child that young to be so miserable so depressed, so despondent, that their life was no longer worth living. The children who hit, hurt, and cannot sit still get attention because they disrupt our lives. However, there are also children out there --mostly girls -- who learn to turn the anger inward. Instead of breaking furniture or giving someone a black eye, they simply self-destruct. Why?

To answer that question, it is important to first identify what the behavior is. Unfortunately, we do not do that very well. We tend to lump all the child's behaviors together in one ball and if the child is disruptive and causes us enough woe, we call him or her "a bad kid" and if the child manages to stay out of our hair, she or he very well could earn the label of "a good kid".