But some parents — particularly those weary of never-say-no techniques and child-rearing books suggesting that children should call the shots — I have three so

But some parents — particularly those weary of never-say-no techniques and child-rearing books suggesting that children should call the shots — I have three sons, aged seven, five, and three, and... well, let's just say that I have become a connoisseur of child-rearing books, and "children should call the shots" is not exactly a running theme. The hippy-dippiest of such books in my library, The Discipline Book by Sears and Sears, uses the phrases "fix your child's behavior" and "train your child" on page three. I think there are certainly a lot of parents who mis-discipline their children because they want their children to be their friends, or because they don't want to suffer the short-term pain of dragging a tantrumming child to his room in exchange for maybe eventually preventing tantrums in the long run. (I certainly plead guilty to the second error.) But "be an authority figure" is not a new concept in the child-rearing literature, and it's not even an old concept that the Dog Whisperer has rediscovered. Maybe there are parents whose children are driving them nuts, but who are so full of themselves that they never even think to crack a book on the subject of disciplining children, and then they watch this TV show about dog training, and dawn breaks over Marblehead.