Parenting Tip: How to discipline your teens

Time outs might work with your four-year-old, but they won't work anymore when she reaches 14. Still, there are other, effective ways to set a teen straight, says Dr. Lisa Sacco, a licensed psychologist with Orenstein Solutions in Cary.

"The main thing you want to have with a teenager is credibility," she tells me.

Sacco says it's important to use a combination of limit setting and responsiveness, that natural warmth and love that goes between parent and child, when raising your teen.

"If you have all limits and all rules and no warmth, you tend to have a kid who feels bullied," she said. And if you just want to be friends with your child and not set limits, "this is a disaster of equal proportion and in some cases worse."