If you have a child, whether she is a toddler, or he is 16 years old, you've probably wondered what does it take? Who knows how to raise a good kid?

"You're in over your head," says Matt O'Connor, a father of six. "You feel like that a lot of times. And we have no idea if what we're doing is right-- no idea."

The O'Connors, with one girl and five boys, have a lot of action going on at their house.

"Fighting is going on all the time, with one or two all the time, they really are," Matt says.

Veronica Reyes says she's found raising boys to be tougher than girls. "They're just more hyper. They're just more boys," she says.

Children just have more energy - more willingness to push parents over the edge.

Ruth Rotenberg says, "There are times when they say things to us in a voice, and we'll say, 'Did you hear us speak to our parents like that?' But how do you learn? You learn by example."

How do you handle the child who just won't listen, the child who will not cooperate? A parenting expert in Charlotte, North Carolina recommends moms and dads stop making their children the center of their universe.

John Rosemond is a family therapist and author. He says, "In the average American family I maintain the female is married to her children. She's not married to her husband. Her husband has become her parenting aid. He's there to take instruction from her, fill in for her when she gets exhausted, doing, fixing, paying attention."

Rosemond spends a lot of time speaking to parents nationwide. He's not only a popular public speaker, he's an author of books like the one titled "Because I Said So."

"Today's parents have been seduced by a warm, fuzzy, very uncommonsensical vision of children into thinking the more you do the better you are," He says.

The Wall family, with eight girls and one boy, says a McDonald's lunch is a rare treat. But they often see parents who don't know when to say no.

"I think you'll find that a lot with parents today who tend to give and give and give. I don't know if the child will ever appreciate it," says mother Sue Wall.

"Today's mother, if the child comes home and complains that the teacher made him upset, feels compelled to fix it. She calls the school, she goes to the school. She wants a change of teachers and so forth," Rosemond explains.

By letting children have too much of a say so - family counselor and author Don Elium says children get the wrong message. They need fewer choices.

"When you say, 'Do you want the red shoes, the green shoes, the blue shoes, the shirt or the skirt,' you're putting them in a space in their minds that they're not ready for," Elium says. "And the worst part is they start assuming they get choices in everything."

Raising a good kid is a daily struggle. Tomorrow, some solutions for parents trying to raise good kids.