I sometimes think these people who write this stuff are either not parents or happen to have very calm children. My wife would of made these same comments if we only had my first daughter to use as a basis of comparison. She was the best mother in the world she thought, look at how good our little girl is, THEN my son was born.

My son had an extremely hard time understanding and communicating until he was almost four years old. He doesn't have any mental disorders or anything, he was just a little behind and very stubborn. No amount of verbal communication would EVER change his behavior for a few years. He would attack the animals in the house like it was a game, putting them at risk and no amount of non physical discipline would ever change that behavior. He just didn't have the mental maturity to understand the discipline. To him animals were toys that could be played with in any way he deemed entertaining, including throwing them down the stairs if we didn't stop him.

My wife was in tears day after day, chasing him down, watching his every move as our mischievous little man did one bad thing after another, seemingly immune to discipline of all kinds. Stern talk, time outs, behavioral tricks and all kinds of techniques were tried and tested with absolutely no change in behavior. The only thing that he responded to in the end, was physical stimuli, since it was the only thing he understood right away and worked.

Our little man is just about to enter kindergarten and now that he can fluently communicate with us, there's no longer any need for it. His bad behavior has pretty well all stopped and he's the most loving little guy in the world now.

It's so easy to be an arm chair critic these days, when you don't have to walk the walk day in and out for years.

Anyone who has had to deal with a similar situation reading this will understand the situation. Some hypothesis sound really good on paper, until you go and apply them. We never had to use physical discipline of any sort with my daughter, and I think that's where some of these articles come from. People who have never actually raised children, or parents who never had to deal with a child that was "difficult".