ABSTRACT
Simply put, for children to succeed (whether in therapy or life) they need their parents' love, parental guidance, and limits, and they need their parents to understand and appreciate their "real life" struggles, feelings, and temperament. Successful treatment requires parents to accommodate to the needs of the child; clarify, set, and reinforce behavioral expectations; and follow through on the tasks required to support the child's social and emotional development. As a result, the therapist needs to gauge the parents' ability to provide this care and then to evaluate the parents' capacity to make changes in their own behavior to meet the child's needs.
