“Helping out one’s child isn’t coddling and isn’t a bad thing in itself, says Alan Kazdin, a Yale psychology professor and head of the Yale Parenting Center. It helps them feel cared for, nurtured and protected, which is important to help them venture out into the world on their own.

Moreover, there’s no evidence that “tough love” works, Kazdin tells the Health blog.

That said, parents shouldn’t be doing things for their children to the point that they impede children’s daily functioning, such as leaving kids feeling like they can’t go to school without the parent there.”

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Click below to watch a clip from the Today Show in which Dr. Kazdin explains the key to avoiding and managing your child’s temper tantrums.

“Forget everything you may have read about 
coping with children’s temper tantrums. Time-outs, sticker charts, television denial—for many, none of these measures will actually result in long-term behavior change, according to researchers at two academic institutions.

Instead, a set of techniques known as “parent management training” is proving so helpful to families struggling with a child’s unmanageable behavior that clinicians in the U.S. and the U.K. are starting to adopt them.”

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“Noël Plummer can’t imagine making a conscious
decision to inflict physical pain on her 8-year-old daughter as a punishment. She’s only slapped her daughter once, without thinking, when her then-5-year-old was having an enormous tantrum.

She’s never hit her again.”

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Psychotherapy experts say that as Americans work to reform the medical care system, they should also redesign how mental health care is delivered. In a new paper, Yale University’s Dr. Alan Kazdin, a former president of the American Psychological Association, believes that we must acknowledge a basic truth — all of our progress and development in evidence-based psychotherapy has failed to solve the rather serious problem of mental illness in the United States.

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