hi my name is barb Steinberg I am a teen life coach for girls a parent coach of
girls that are tweens and teens and a speaker on teen girl issues I wanted to
share with you a tool that I gave one of my teen life coaching clients after she
was given several diagnoses one of which was ADHD and she had never received this
diagnosis up until this point and she is now 18 so it was many years of her
feeling like and getting feedback from those around her that she was lazy or
irresponsible and she just didn't care and she didn't have enough motivation
and she received a lot of that feedback consistently over years and so she began
to believe the feedback and she began to believe that she was lazy and she just
was very forgetful and very disorganized and it definitely impacted her
self-esteem and her outlook on who she is as a person and so those things were
told to her enough and she experienced some of them enough that she believed
that that's who she was and then she received this diagnosis so then we
started to talk about having that information and that knowledge about
what her brain was like and how her brain had developed and then she
received some medication to help her with that and she began to have a very
different experience in her world and it still was taking some time she still had
that old belief about being lazy and irresponsible and so one of the tools
that I gave her to use is to take a journal with her she preferred to write
it rather than have it on her phone and to track all of her wins so a win would
be anything no matter how minor how small that she did well that maybe she
wasn't able to do before and now she's able to do it so every single time she
remembered to bring her backpack or when she you know was told to clean up her
room and she did it then in a you know acceptable way or you know for her it
was it was lots and lots of things so it could be you know making a decision to
make a phone call to someone and she actually followed through on that or you
know just showing it for coaching on time that was a win so it didn't matter
how small it was but what she did is when she brought in her journal of wins
it was amazing how many wins were on every page for every day and so what it
did is it was this tangible evidence that she was changing and that she was
not who she thought she was those labels that were given to her that she believed
that really wasn't who she was her brain just needed a little bit of help she
needed some new tools and some new tactics in addition to some medication
for her in her particular instance so she began to write these winds down and
look at them and she began to really see I am not lazy I'm not irresponsible I'm
actually I can get things done I actually am organized now and I could
see every time we would go over her wins the smile that would creep on her face
and she would begin to believe that's not who I am anymore and I don't need to
believe that narrative anymore and for her the changing of the belief about who
she is that is the greatest and the biggest win and I was almost surprised
and shocked myself at how quickly that turnaround came to be so whether your
daughter has ADD or ADHD or any other diagnosis this tool of writing down your
wins no matter how small can be really life-changing and very impactful and so
I wanted to share it with you in case you wanted to offer it to your daughter
as an exercise or maybe you both can do it together and share your wins together
so hopefully this has been helpful and if you enjoyed this video I hope that
you'll subscribe to my youtube channel if you're watching
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page Barb Steinberg LMSW guiding girls and supporting parents thanks for
listening everybody see you soon!