Clinicians must work to increase the levels of self-control of their hyperactive, impulsive, or aggressive child clients to treat their academic, social, and personal problems effectively. Outcome studies of cognitive behavioral interventions have contributed data suggesting that effective application of these interventions does increase the children's self-control. These interventions teach the child cognitive strategies to use in gaining self-control over maladaptive behaviors. Verbal self-instruction and problem solving are the two basic cognitive behavioral intervention approaches applied to children deficient in self-control. Verbal self-instruction is often applied to self-control problems affecting academic performance and other intrapersonal situations. One verbal self-instruction package consists of five steps: cognitive modeling; overt external guidance; overt self-guidance; faded, overt self-guidance; and covert self-instruction. Problem solving training is often applied to self-control problems affecting social skills and interpersonal situations. Common elements of problem solving interventions include modeling, overt rehearsal, role-playing, and feedback. While verbal self-instruction and problem solving training showed positive results for increasing children's self-control on training tasks, they were less positive in producing generalization of self-control to other situations. Guidelines for more effective applications of these interventions include: (1) integrating response-cost contingencies and conceptual teaching into training procedures; (2) assessing mental age or level of cognitive development; and (3) combining cognitive behavioral strategies with other treatment approaches (psychostimulants, child self-monitoring, training family members). A seven-page reference list concludes the paper. (NB)