Such "active ignoring" and other techniques Ms. Bernal uses are part of a treatment known as teacher-child interaction therapy.

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Background checks are a must, as is some policy that dictates the parameters of adult-child interaction, including whether an adult and child can ever be alone together.

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Parents often torpedo their discipline efforts by giving vague, conditional commands and not giving kids enough time to comply with them, says Dr. Verduin, who practices parent-child interaction therapy.

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"TCIT benefits misbehaving kids, but it also benefits behaving kids, " said Melanie Fernandez, director of the Parent-Child Interaction Therapy Program at the Child Mind Institute in New York, a nonprofit focused on child mental health, which has been researching TCIT for several years.

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Likewise, depriving a child of ordinary social interaction is also abuse, but there's nothing wrong with sending a school-aged boy to stew alone in his room for an hour after he hits a younger sibling.

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Having the back and forth interaction between a parent and a child from birth builds communication and cognitive skills from the beginning.

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