Do you want to know how to help a child with ADHD without medication? Wel, I've done it.
I'm Nicholeen Peck, I'm a parenting expert and communications expert and in this video,
we're gonna be talking about what you can do for your ADHD child and not include medication.
In this video, I'm gonna share some of my experiences working with children with ADHD
and I'm gonna share with you some things that you can do to help your child with ADHD feel
more confident and happy and have less anxiety in their lives. Years ago, when I was a young
mother and I had these toddlers of my own. My husband and I decided that we would do
treatment foster care for troubled teens. So, we brought teens into our home between
the ages of 12 and 18 years old and many of them had ADHD. Now, this meant that they have
higher anxiety oftentimes. They have a hard time focusing. Sometimes they're a little
bit more wild than other children. Sometimes they struggle with boundary and she's upset.
You know the drill. But one thing that I've noticed with all of the children that came
to my home was, they all came on different medication. So, that was just part of the
way they were when they came and I thought to myself, "Do they really need all these
medications?". Now, maybe for some children with ADHD the answer might be "yes" they do.
But I felt like for years these children just had gone to psychiatrist office and they been
adjusting medication to try to solve their behavioral problem forever. Without ever actually
doing any behavior training. It's very important to add training to any behavior modification.
Now, I teach self-government. Self-government is all about changing a person's heart or
helping a person choose to have a change of heart. As well as having a change in behavior.
So, I wanted something even more than a change of behavior for the foster children that I
was working with. I wanted them to have a heart shift for the rest of their lives and
to know that they are capable of controlling themselves. So, I decided that my goal it
was kind of a secret goal. But my goal is to help children get off of all their medications
if possible and just teach them the skills that they needed in order to live happy, productive,
and in control lives. I remember one of my first foster daughters that came to my home.
She said, "I hate that I have to take all this medication. I wish I didn't need to.
I feel like I'm so broken. Am I going to be on this for the rest of my life?". I felt
bad for her. I thought that's a good point unless it's really necessary? Do you really
have to be on it? Now, I do know sometimes it's necessary but I also know sometimes we
overmedicate our children these days. Back in the old days, when a 7-year-old boy was
active, couldn't stay on his chair very well, having a hard time paying attention. Everyone
sai, "Well, that's an active 7-year-old boy", and nowadays people think because the 7-year-old
boy doesn't act on cue he might be medicated and they give him a label sometimes of ADHD.
Now, maybe he has it maybe he doesn't. But the solution is the same. So, let's talk about
what that solution is. I'm gonna share with you some of the nuts and bolts of teaching
self-government. So, teaching self-government is a type of parenting where you create an
environment where a person learns self-mastery. Now, I wanna warn you, when I do a self-government
training for couples it's a 3-day event. My teaching self-government course has 20 hours
of training on it. So, this little bit is going to be a very tiny piece of the puzzle
that you'll need. But I do think it will help you get started. The first thing that your
children needs to know is they need to know that you have the parental authority. That
you're the teacher, that you're the leader, that you're the one that instructs and they're
the ones that follow instructions. They're the ones that have to learn. They are the
learners, that is their role. It's so important that our children learn their roles. In fact,
as part of my teaching self-government program, I actually recognize that many families were
having a problem understanding each other's role and because of this I actually created
a book called, Roles the secret of family business and social success. In this book,
Roles there is a family who seems to have a hard time bonding, get along with each other,
and they get distracted a lot. So, maybe some of their children could even be perceived
as having ADHD. But we didn't make that clear in the book. What you do see though is you
see the family understanding and acknowledging who each other is in the family to each other
and taking responsibility based on their roles. There's a young woman that I worked with and
she has ADHD very obviously, a traditional case of ADHD. She had a hard time focusing,
there's a lot of loud outbursts that happened, she's fidgeting a lot, s he gets bored very
easily, she talks out of turn, all of those kinds of things. But this particular girl
also knows who she is. With her parents, she knows who she is. She knows who she is as
a sister to her siblings. She understands her role. This makes a big difference in her
life. In fact, there was a time when I know she didn't understand her role as well and
the more she gained an understanding of who she really was to the people around her, the
better her behavior came. So, I know it seems like that cant be one of the main solutions
but absolutely is. If the child does not understand who you are and who they are then they will
continually act out and not focus on following your leadership. For other children who came
to my home who had ADHD, we try to keep things simple. That's important because you have
a hard time focusing when you have ADHD, right? So, you cant have things very complex. You
gotta make sure that you can keep track of the list of items that you need to do. So
that means, [inaudible] to not be too long and it needs to be very predictable. So, we
taught them skills. We taught them 4 basic skills that they would need for success in
our home. These 4 basic skills are taught in the set of children's books that I have.
These children's books each teach one of the 4 basic skills. The read one teaches following
instructions. The green one teaches accepting "no" answers and criticism. The blue one teaches
accepting consequences and the purple one teaches disagreeing appropriately. These skills
are also taught in my teaching self-government parenting course. If a person learned all
4 of these 4 basic skills, it actually takes care of 99% of their behavioral problems.
So, each of these 4 basic skills has a skill set attached to it. Now, I know that seems
complex but it's actually simple for children. Because it's a repeated list of things that
are very intuitive and they're always used together. So, it's very predictable, it doesn't
shift or alter based on different circumstances. In fact, it's one skill that you can use in
lots of different circumstances. For instance, the accepting a "no" answer are to look at
the person, keep a cam face, voice, and body, say "okay" or ask to disagree appropriately,
and then drop the subject. Those 4 things naturally follow each other when a person
is self-governed. Do you like this information about ADHD? Well, then give this page a like,
and let's move on to our next step. So we keep it simple. These skillsets for the 4
basic skills keep things very simple. I also keep the way I correct my children very predictable.
So, it is important that children with ADHD are consistently corrected. This means, we
don't give them allowances for their behavior that goes off base, you have to correct it.
If there's one mistake I see parents make with children with ADHD is going, "Well, they
have ADHD. So, this is how they are I don't have to correct it." This is not a good idea,
correct it. Even with the toddler, you correct it and their pre-frontal cortex are very small
and their life experiences are very few. But you're still correct is, right? So you don't
have a problem in the future. The sooner you correct something with any person. No matter
how they process the better. Because then they can form good habits. So, don't let the
bad habits go. Don't take it personally because it's not worth that, but definitely correct
them. In fact, calmy correcting them can be just a thing that helps them recognize, they've
got to work on correcting themselves. If you consistently correct them and they get the
opportunity to accept their negative consequences and those corrections on a regular basis.
Then they will soon be giving themselves corrections before you even get the opportunity too and
that after all, is what it means to be self-governed. So whether your child is on medication or
not on medication. Whether they even have ADHD or not. These principles can have lasting
change to help your child and your whole family have more self-government which leads to family
unity and increase bonding. So, if you've enjoyed this video I have more for you. There's
a free a class that I would like to give with you. The next video is called, The expectation
trap vs The cycle for success. Go there and learn how to stop your family from being trap
by the expectation trap and increase your family problem-solving skills. Click on the
link now and I'll see you there.