A flood of contradictory publications claim widely different methods to be "evidence-based." What then are the key principles for success with challenging youth? Amidst all the confusion, how do we identify powerful universal truths? The answer lies in a "consilience," which involves drawing information from multiple fields of knowledge.…

Decades of studies show that children's behavior is shaped by relationships in the "social ecology" of family, peers, school, and community. But in recent decades the prevailing scientific dogma was that genes determine destiny. Now it is clear that experience changes genes. For better or worse, environmental experiences including nutrition,…