Parents of misbehaving teenagers often feel as if they have tried everything.

They ground their children, take away privileges, have heart-to-heart talks, reason, get angry, put them on medication, call the police, send them to boot camp or threaten to kick them out of the house.

Many times, these age-old approaches do not help.

"A parent using traditional parenting strategies makes a bad problem worse," said Mark Hutton, author of My Out-Of-Control Teen. "Counseling -- and I'm a counselor -- counseling is a waste of time and money."

New Ways To Communicate

Hutton and many other therapists and psychologists argue for a more positive approach than threats and punishments. A key to this approach is learning new ways to communicate with teenagers.

"Whenever we use a negative like, 'Don't do that,' there's some kind of mental block that teenagers have with that. So you want to turn everything into a positive," said Hutton.

Instead of saying, "Don't yell at me," Hutton suggests saying, "I need you to talk to me in a calmer tone of voice so I can hear you."

J. Eileen Welker, who wrote an extension fact sheet for Ohio University titled "Make Lemons into Lemonade: Use Positives for Disciplining Children," agrees with the approach.

"The word 'don't' seems to come easily to our lips, so it takes practice to learn to rephrase our limits and rules," wrote Welker. "The rewards of guiding children rather than commanding them won't necessarily come right away. But in the long run, it helps children learn to be morally well-developed, socially appropriate, self-directed and happy kids."

Hutton said that a lot of parents come to him looking to get counseling for their teenager, when they don't realize that they are the ones that might need the guidance. So Hutton developed a system to teach parents the tools they need to help their teenagers.

"I teach parents how to be the therapist, how to develop a therapeutic alliance with their kids, because then and only then will the kid listen to the parent with respect to discipline," said Hutton.

Don't Wait For Bad Times

Hutton said the first mistake a lot of parents make is waiting until things go intensely wrong before getting involved.

When things are going well, they breathe a sigh of relief and hope it will continue. But when things go wrong, they suddenly show their children active involvement.

"When things are gong wrong, and the kid is seeking negative attention, the parent is instructed to provide no intensity at all. Poker face, no expression of intensity at all," said Hutton about his therapeutic approach. "Act like you are unaffected. The kid is going to try and keep pushing your buttons. You have to just pretend like you don't have buttons."

Hutton also tells parents to pour on the intensity and the positive attention when things are going well.

Make Kids Work

The second mistake Hutton said a lot of parents make is spoiling their children too much and not making them work hard to earn things.

"Because these privileges are unearned, they become dependent on the parents for free handouts of this stuff and freedom," said Hutton. "And wherever there is dependency, there is also resentment. And wherever there is dependency, there is also a kid that is emotionally underdeveloped."

Hutton tells parents to make their children work for everything.

"We take dependency out of the equation by having the kid earn everything," said Hutton. "And when you take dependency out of the equation you have taken resentment out of the equation and a strong sense of entitlement."