If you read "Transforming the Difficult Child" then you saw that they recommended setting the bar very low when training a child, so they almost have to succeed. They call it "setting them up for success", iow, setting them up to listen to you. The story they told was of training Shamu to jump out of the water the laid the rope on the ground and gave him a fish whenever he swam over it. They just kept raising the rope higher.

Youth lives by personality, age lives by calculation. -- Aristotle on a calendar