"Are there any behaviors you want to address?" Ian Schere asks Hefel.

"Well, whenever I tell her to do something, it's 'Nooooo!'" Hefel confides.

"OK," Schere says with a grin. As a licensed clinical psychologist, he's seen many a contrary child and many a frazzled parent. At 19, Hefel is a mother of two, including Aubrey's 1-year-old brother, Aiden. And she's homeless.

She waited for a coveted spot at the Salvation Army's Transitional Living Center in San Diego, a 12-unit facility, where homeless moms and their children can stay for up to two years while getting a fresh start, including help with her parenting skills through Parent-Child Interactive Therapy (PCIT), which is gaining attention nationally.

Schere leaves the room, but not before giving Hefel an earpiece, which she slips in while Aubrey's distracted by the dollhouse. "OK, tell her there are two rules," Schere says softly into the microphone attached to his headset. He's watching mother and daughter and taking notes in the room next door, equipped with one-way glass.

"There are two rules," Hefel repeats to Aubrey.

Following Schere's prompt, Hefel tells her overactive 2-year-old that she has to sit at the table. If she gets down, all the toys will be put away.

Aubrey absently nods at her mother and keeps playing. Schere tells Hefel to praise certain of Aubrey's behaviors, to ignore others. He praises Hefel as she does so. When Aubrey gets antsy, he encourages Hefel, who visibly relaxes and patiently counsels her child.

Schere is one of few in the country trained in PCIT. It was developed, he explains, by Sheila Eyberg, director of the Child Study Laboratory in the Department of Clinical and Health Psychology at the University of Florida.

The goal is to teach parents specific skills that will establish or further a nurturing and secure relationship with their children and, at the same time, increase the child's positive behavior and decrease the negative.

"One of the principles of PCIT is that we teach parents the importance of giving positive attention to your child for doing the behaviors you like and to ignore those behaviors you don't like," Schere says.

Then he explains why.

"Research shows that both positive and negative attention will typically increase the behavior that you're giving the attention to. If you give your child attention by saying 'No!' 'Stop it!' or yelling at them, you're not going to make the behavior stop. That may temporarily suppress that behavior, but it does nothing to teach the child to act a different way. So what you get are kids who are not listening and feeling bad about themselves and their parent."

Hefel says Aubrey's a screamer. She screams at the top of her lungs when she's frustrated - and when she's excited - both of which occurred during the play session. Hefel, who admits to not having as much patience as she'd like, says the therapy has proved invaluable to her.

"It has really shown me how to understand and talk to her," Hefel says. "I used to yell a lot."

With Schere's guidance, Hefel and her daughter are breaking a cycle of negative interaction.

"I'm very excited about this program, because it's effective," Schere says. "It truly gets the results that you anticipate getting. It teaches parents effective ways for managing their children's behavior, while simultaneously enhancing the relationship and positive feelings between parent and child."

It's not about caving to the kids, he underlines. It's about mutual respect.

"When people, in general, are asked to do something, the way they feel about the person doing the asking has a very strong effect on how quick and likely the person is to respond," Shere explains, saying you can see this as much in adult interactions and those between adults and children.

"When parents are respectful and understanding and ask you to do something, you want to reinforce that by complying. This is all rooted in some very sound fundamentals of human behavior," he says. "When a child feels good about the interaction between him and his parent, he will actively work, and work hard, to maintain that positive interaction."

In other words, he adds, if parents give praise and positive attention to behaviors they want to see more of, the child will actively try to do those behaviors to get that positive attention. "When you're dealing with children between 2 and 7, the target age of PCIT, attention by the parent is the single most important thing to that child and so is the strongest motivator for that child to work harder."

Sounds simple enough to anyone who has lived with a young child. And easier said than done.

"It's not rocket science," Schere says. "But the hard part is doing it in a consistent way. It's a new way of doing things and it takes practice to do it. It's not the norm for many parents." Part of PCIT's strength as a therapy is the practice, over and over, on developing the parents' skills.

"Our normal inclination is to treat our children the way we see people being treated or how we were treated ourselves, typically the way parenting was modeled by our parents and how they were parented by their parents. We've learned a whole lot since our grandparents were raising our parents."

Hefel says her mom is much more patient than she is. Bad role models aren't her problem.

She left Virginia in September, after it was decided she and her kids were just too much for her mother. For a while after arriving in San Diego, she lived with a friend, until she realized that was too much, too.

"I don't want to be a burden," Hefel says.

She works at a restaurant and is focused on getting back on her feet, finishing school. A bright young woman who wants to be a nurse someday, Hefel recognized she was having problems with the kids and, despite her circumstances, wants to be the best parent she can.

"Pam suggested I try it," Hefel says of Pam Peterson, director of the Transitional Living Center.

Hefel says she's a lot less stressed. So is Joyce Warbington, also in the Transitional Living Center program. She left a violent home on the East Coast with her 4-year-old son, Melik. She, too, has seen enormous progress in herself and her son, who was having difficulty dealing with his peers in preschool. She says an unstable and fearful former home life didn't help, but PCIT has.

Schere says, so far, PCIT is generally used in programs serving at-risk parents and children, specifically to break the cycle of abuse. Peterson says the therapy has worked wonders for Salvation Army clients

"It should be required for every parent in the world," Peterson says.

Hefel, smiling as she watches her daughter play with another child outside the therapy room, nods at that.

"I only wish I'd had this kind of course in high school, that everyone could have it."

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