Hi, I'm Nicholeen Peck and I teach all over the world about
parenting through the lens of the principles self government.
And in this video, I'm going to be talking about how to discipline and ADHD teenager.
In this video, I'm gonna share a little bit about my history with ADHD and working with teens with
ADHD. And then I'm going to talk to you about what you can do to create a great environment
for disciplining your ADHD teens. Two years ago, when I actually had two toddlers of my own. So
I had a three year old and a one year old, our family decided that we were going to do treatment
care for troubled teens. So we brought troubled youth into our home, they were all between the
ages of 12 and 18. And many of them had ADHD. In fact, they had multiple things that were
made them non neurotypical. So we had children with bipolar, children who had sensory issues,
children with autism spectrum ATD, ADHD, OCD, ODD, RAD FAS, we had all kinds of things,
plus there were certain levels of trauma that they had also had in their lives. And so
we needed to be prepared for how to handle these use. So we did a lot of training,
the treatment facility that we were part of actually gave us tons of training so that
we would be very good and certified to do this therapeutic treatment care. And so when we did
the therapeutic treatment care, we had a concrete plan for what we were going to do to help these
youth. Now, it was very interesting that the majority of the youth that came to my home
came on multiple medications. And they were always adjusting the medications, we would go and meet
with a psychiatrist, and they would change it yet once again. And we'd have to work through
that. And if you have someone on medication, you know how crazy that can be. Anyway, so this was
a burden, I felt like for them. In fact, so many of them felt like they were broken, they
didn't like being on the medication. Sometimes it's important, sometimes it's useful. And it's
helpful, especially to get an edge and be able to work through a behavior and create a new pattern
for themselves. And then sometimes they can go off of it. But by the end of treatment, most of the
youth who came to my home, were able to leave my home, not on any medications at all. their biggest
things that they were usually dealing with was ADHD. And that can be hard, that can create anger,
they can have disconnection, increased anxiety and frustration. Perfectionism, there's lots of things
that can come with ADHD, everybody has a different version of it. But there's also like the,
hyper focusing, that can happen, where they can't get their brain to break off one thing,
and so they can't see a solution. That can be very difficult. They can get stuck doing
things repetitively, even though they're mad about it. And they don't want to do it
just because they get stuck there sometimes. So ADHD can be hard, it can be hard on a person.
And you know, chemically and emotionally, it can be draining on everybody. So I had to help them
get to a place where they can feel like they were a little bit more normal, I had
a goal. And my goal was these people need to be joyful adults at the end of their adolescence,
they need to be joyful adults who know what their missions in life are, and have solid
relationships with God and family. Now, keeping in mind, most of them came from, you know, situations
where they couldn't even go back to their parents again, or if they did, it was kind of traumatic.
I wanted them to know what a real family was like. I wanted them to be able to self assess,
and have great purpose and plan for their life. And so we created an environment where we would
teach them the skills they needed for success. But a big part of that environment included
consistency, because you can't teach a person's self government without cause and effect, which
means you've got to consistently correct. So we had to do lots of discipline, lots of corrections,
but we needed to do it in a way that would make it so that they weren't as anxious so that they could
focus in on making a correction and feel like they were making progress. That's what I'd like to talk
about today. So we're going to talk about what I did to help all of these youth with ADHD that came
to my home, find success and empowerment, through discipline and even in times of correction,
but before I do that, click the subscribe button now. There's a lot of content on here that relates
to ADHD. In fact, the majority of the videos actually tell skills and principles that can
be utilized with someone with ADHD, even though they don't specifically say ADHD in the title, I
am talking about on this channel, everything I did as a foster parent and a parent, and I share a lot
that would be applicable to people with ADHD. So let's talk about what discipline really works.
Because I think people try a lot of different things. They try intimidation,
they try repetition, they try so many different things to try to break through to the child with
ADHD, they tried shaming and emotional stuff. But at the end of the day, none of those things work,
they just increased the anxiety for the ADHD child, but we can't baby the ADHD teen or the ADHD
child, that doesn't help them, either. We can't give them excuses for their behavior, or they get
stuck forever. So what we need to do is we need to empower them, we need to give them the skills
and principles they need and the proper connection with us so that they can make sure that they have
good solid relationship skills going forward. Because usually, the ADHD person is struggling
the most with their social and relational skills, because they get a little hyper focused on what's
going on the inside and on some of their anxieties, and the things that are distracting
to them. So what do we do? Number one, we start with who we are, and we determine who are you,
you are the son or you are the daughter? And what does that mean? What is your role at age 13 or 15,
so that they can make sure that they recognize they're a learner, they don't have to be perfect
yet, and that we're going to accept mistakes. Who are we? part of our roles we're teachers,
I actually have a whole book about this is called roles, the secret to family, business and social
success, where we talk about roles in the family and what we need to identify about each other
to be fully functional. If a family does not understand each other's roles, then they end
up having relationships where there's a lot more dysfunction. So we start with who we are, then we
go to where are we going, we create a vision, a plan for the future of where we're headed as
a group. Then we learn how to communicate. And we talk about the different skills of
communication that we are going to need, as well as communication, we discuss what the discipline
will be like. So part of our communication skills include four basic skills for success.
The four basic skills are following instructions, accepting "no" answers and criticism, accepting
consequences and disagreeing appropriately. When a person learns those four basic skills, that
takes care of 99% of their behavioral problems. So what do we teach them about the discipline?
We teach them that in order to properly be trained, and to help them find the most peace
in their communications, there does need to be cause and effect. So we need to consistently
correct when things go wrong, and consistently praise when things go right. Good equals good,
bad equals bad. This has great predictability and is less distracting for your ADHD child,
then what we do is we tell them the exact words that we will say, when we do a correction, the
exact and we give them the opportunity to accept that correction. Remember that skill I just talked
about, accepting a consequence, there are six steps to that skill. They are you look at the person,
you keep a calm face, voice and body, you say, okay, you're asked to disagree appropriately,
then you do the consequence, whatever it is that you earned, and you check back and drop the
subject. A person learned that they can accept a consequence. And they learn exactly how the parent
will give the consequence or how they will do the correction for the child. And then that
child is more prepared for the future. So when the correction comes, and it's the same words,
every time because there's a format that you go through, it's a seven step process that I use
is identical every time then that child is put out a little bit more ease. Sure, they may not
want to be corrected, they might have a little bit of opposition there, which can oftentimes
be part of the ADHD. But if you keep it the same every time, they will see if they start battling
that they are battling themselves and not you because you're doing the same every time. So
hopefully, they will accept that correction. But if they don't, then there's something that we use
for teens called the rule of three. The rule of three is a system where we do three things
three times, and they get the opportunity to earn three negative consequences, if they
choose to. Those three negative consequences are a major maintenance to SODAS exercises,
which are a problem solving exercise, and then a loss of privileges for 24 hours, which means
that they don't get to just hang around the house and do what they want. They don't get to be with
friends or do phone or have snacks, or go to extracurricular activities. Instead, they get
the recommended hours of sleep, three meals a day and they do extra chores for the rest of the time.
Because they have no privileges. Usually, they don't like to choose that once they've had to
do it a few times. Although a child with ADHD is going to have a larger learning curve. A parent
does need to learn how to do all of this with calmness. If it's intimidating at all. It will
increase anxiety and make it so that the child is less successful. So I teach how to do all of this
for teens. My whole life I've been dedicated to helping parents with troubling behaviors and
with just regular run of the mill behavior too. So I would like to help you learn more about how you
can teach your children these skills. There is a video that I think you will enjoy watching next,
and it is called the not so known secret to parenting success.
If you click on the link to that video now, it will go into more details about corrections. And
it will talk about the rule of three and some of the consequences that you want to utilize there.
So click on the link to that video now.