There was a simple reason for the child’s behavior. Unknown to the parents. It will always be a dichotomy because you do not have perfect information as a paren

There was a simple reason for the child’s behavior. Unknown to the parents. It will always be a dichotomy because you do not have perfect information as a parent. I don’t think I am saying to train children like animals, yet to use simple cause an effect to better reason about parenting decisions. If your hypothesis is wrong about the behavior your efforts to change it will fail.