Most parents know that asking “How was your day?” is not likely to get their kids talking about their days in a meaningful way. The kind of information we really want—whether they learned something new, had trouble with a friend, triumphed or failed—is usually hard to get from a tired kid at the end of...

What do you do if your little one wakes during the night from a bad dream and refuses to go back to sleep? Or what if your little one refuses to go to sleep at bedtime because he has had bad dreams several nights in a row? And what if your child has been inconsolable...

Whenever I walk into a preschool or early elementary classroom and see a Behavior Chart, I cringe. One child who couldn’t control her impulses went home crushed because her name ended up on “red.” Another child was reminded that he wasn’t good enough for his teacher. And a child went home with a stomachache and...