Hey, welcome back to Live on Purpose TV. I'm Dr. Paul and today, we're talking about parenting
a child with ADHD. ADHD tends to be very complicated constellation of symptoms. There's no blood
test that we can give to examine whether your child has ADHD. It's really a diagnosis that
is based on symptoms and what we observe on children. The funny thing is when you look
through the system list, all of them are things that most children do at least occasionally
to some level. So when we make a diagnosis of ADHD, it's because many of this symptoms
are appearing at a level that is higher than we would expect from those kids. Having said
that, think we over diagnose of it in our society? And there are cases that we miss.
But either way it's a challenging constellation of behaviors. Now, this video is not intended
to be a diagnostic video, that's not what we are going today. But if you are a parent
with a child with ADHD or if you suspect that or if you don't care about the diagnosis but
you're having some challenges with the kiddo, that's where I want to go today because there's
some behavioral things that we can do that makes a huge difference. Now, let's look at
a model that I've shared, in some of the other videos here in the positive parenting playlist.
You want to check that out okay? Get in to the positive parenting playlist here at Live
on Purpose TV and you'll find a host of videos there that will help you in your parenting
responsibilities. So let's start with a quick review of what of the most basic principles
that we need to understand as parents. We'll talk about how that ties into ADHD as well.It
goes back to this graph. You might remember we talked before about control and maturity
and how these two things interact and affect each other. Control means control over your
own life. It goes from 0 to 100% control so you can have all of it or none of it or somewhere
in between. And maturity has to do with how grown up you are. But it's not just about
age. it's about stage. As we talk about stage we divided this into three chunks and it's
just I label them stage 1, stage 2 and stage 3. Now remember the last mature you are, the
less control you have. The more mature you are, the more control you have. So this part
under the line is the part we get for yourself or your kids get for themselves. The part
over the line is the part that we as parents take and the control has to be shared. Kids
aren't mature enough to take full control of their life and that's why we get to share
that control. How mature they are, determines how much control they get to have. Now as
a quick review. Stage 1 over here on this side of the graph, stage 1 is the least mature.
And that's where we have fighting and opposition and defiance and tantrums and yelling and
screaming and demanding. it's a very immature stage. These things by the way are totally
appropriate for toddlers, two year olds, okay? But if you got a 16, 17 year olds doing the
same thing kind of stuff, that's a problem. And we call that immature. That's stage 1.Now
we move to stage 2, we stop fighting and start cooperating. In fact, I would put cooperation
right on that dividing line between stage 1 and stage 2. If your child is cooperating,
they're at least on stage 2. Stage 2 is much more pleasant for parent and for the child.
Because we're working together. There's a negotiation. AT stage 2, you don't want any
trouble, you want to keep peace. And so you go along with reasonable request. Now at stage
3, that's where we kick in to responsibility. That where there's empathy and that's an important
term to remember. Empathy means that you understand and care how someone else feels. Do you see
that change the maturity of your child. When they understand and care how someone else
feels and their behavior impacts that person. Empathy, service, morals, values, ethics.Those
are the things that drive our behavior on stage 3. So you can see when our kids get
to stage 3, they get to have more control. And we as a parent back of you see this top
gets small at stage 3.Because it's all about self discipline and self control at that point.
So, as we review that quick model of control and maturity, it's important to understand
where our child is in that continuum. Because that will determine what we as parents need
to do and how much control we need to take. What does this have to do with ADHD or quite
frankly any other diagnosis or condition or syndrome that our children may have. Any of
those things affect the child's maturity the way we define it here. A kid with ADHD for
example is not going to be regulating and monitoring their own behavior and that effect
like kids who don't have ADHD. That brings them down this way on the maturity scale which
means they don't have as much control over themselves. That means parents need to take
in and take more. Does that make sense to you? So, what if it's some other syndrome?
What if they've got some kind of a developmental or pervasive delay of some kind?Well, that
also bring their maturity level down. I'm not saying that in a judgmental way. I'm saying
that in acknowledgement. That those kinds of process is going on i a child or child's
mind, bring them to maturity scale to where they don't have as much as control over themselves.
That means somebody else needs to kick in with that control. Most of what I encourage
parents to do with their ADHD child or as a parent of an ADHD child is to get clear
about the control and maturity exchange so that you're taking the right level of control
as a parent. But what we want to do is encourage our children to come this way to train, teach
or educate them to have a higher level of control of maturity so that they can run their
own life more appropriately. I think our job as parents is to work our way out of the job.
So eventually they don't need us controlling their lives. You see where we're going with
that? So, here's what I really like as a practical approach and a big shout out to Foster Cline
and Jim Fay authors of "Parenting with Love and Logic". You might be familiar with love
and logic people and curriculum and the wonderful materials that made available. Great resource
for us parents and highly endorse what their doing. The steps that Foster Cline and Jim
Fay presented or suggested, mirror of these four that I wanted to share with you today.
And it has first to do with "giving them a task". You give a child a task that they can
handle. How can you tell if your kid can handle it? Well, this could be confusing when you're
working with ADHD or other diagnosis or syndrome because sometimes we're not sure if our kid
can handle it. And they haven't in the past very well. I want to get passed the whole
motivation thing or they're motivated to do it. And just ask the simple question, can
they handle it? Are they capable of it? Here's a little quick shortcut to get there. If you
as a parent are frustrated because they're not doing it, probably that means that you
believe they can do it. They just not. If you believe they can;t do it, you're not going
to be frustrated and be like, "oh yeah, my kids are not up to that." So your frustration
will tell you something. Pay attention to that. If you're feeling frustrated, its probably
because you've observed maturity or traits or skills or behaviors in your child, that
suggest maybe they can handle it and they just not. So you give them a task, that they
can handle. Now step 2 and I love this when I thought quite Cline and Fay were brilliant
when they came up with this. "You hope that they blow it." Hope that they'll blow it.
This goes contrary to what we are thinking as parents but here's how it ties in to ADHD
brain. The pre frontal part of our brain is the part that helps us to regulate our own
behavior and do logic and do problem solving and rational thought. That part might be getting
a little lazy in this ADHD brains. We want to stimulate it to wake up. One way that we
do that is to do problem ownership. What I mean by that is whoever feels the weight of
the problem is the person who has it. This is going to upset some of you as parents because
who's feeling way to the problem? You are. That means that's your problem still. We want
to shift it from your shoulders to over to the shoulders of your little one, okay? In
an appropriate way. In a way that they can still handle it. We want to take the problem
from our own shoulders and put it back on their shoulders because then if they own the
problem, their more likely to engage that prefrontal part of their brain to actually
solve it. And kids are basically brilliant when it comes to efficiency. Their child or
adolescent mind is thinking, "hmm...should I worry about this or should I let someone
else worry about this?Oh that's easy I'll let someone else worry about it because that's
easier for me. They'll do that all they long. When we hope that they blow it, we shift the
dynamics psychologically to where they start to take on the problem. Think about, if mom
is smiling, kids are thinking. That's a pretty good rule of thumb. And if you hope that they
blow it, you're not going to be all anxious about, now did you do it? You're not going
to be reminding. We call it reminding, they call it nagging. Righting me, be it on my
case, right? So you shift that dynamics. And when mom is smilinga nd she's like, "oh, I'm
kind of hope that my kids blow this one." That makes kids nervous. because if you're
smiling, they're thinking. We're not going to remind them. Now, remember we got two more
steps so stay with me. I'm not going to leave it hanging. Hope that they're blowing. Now
as we move to step 3, we're going to "allow consequences to do teaching". Consequences
and let me add a little piece here, empathy. We already talked about empathy briefly when
I got to stage 3. It has two important components that you understand and care how someone else
feels. Let's model that for our kids. And it's not just that we're going to clobber
them with consequences. No the consequences comes as the cause for their choice and for
their blowing it step 2. Which is good because we wanted them to learn something, right?
When we get to step 3, we let those consequences fall and then we kick in with empathy. Not
I told you so. Not if you do what I say this kind of thing wouldn't happen. No, we're not
going there. It is simply empathy. "Oh wow buddy, this is tough isn't it? Yeah join with
them and you can't be sarcastic about this, it won't work. So you be genuine and connect
with them in an emphatic way because they're liking the consequence. Okay, they don;t need
to like it. I used to tell that to my kids. Oh the good thing about living here? You don;t
have to like the consequences. And they're like, "oh dad." Right? But it's true. They
don't need to like it. In fact it's better when they don't because that's going to increase
the learning that use empathy. Because you wouldn't want that consequence either. Now,
the step 4 is the powerful learning step where we get to "give the same task again". This
sends a powerful message and think about how this might address the issue were dealing
with ADHD. And the message is, "hey you are smart enough. You've got the brain power.
You've got the problem solving ability to learn from your mistakes. "I trust you to
learn from this experience. Now let's give it another try.Let's see how this goes. I'm
watching with you. I got your back, right. You mean I have to think about this? Yeah.
We want you to do some thinking, Jr. Right? because if you're thinking, they're not going
to give in to so much trouble when they're not. ADHD interferes sometimes with that process
and pulls us down into maturity scale. But of you use those steps, I thin k we can make
a difference for this kids with ADHD. Sounds kind of challenging but you're up to the challenge,
you're a good parent and I know that because you're here and you're watching videos that
had it be even better.