ADHD Kids Behavior 101 - Top 5 Things Parents Need To Know

top five things parents need to know about behavior and kids with ADHD hi I'm Ryan and I'm going to give you some real help right now number one emotional regulation skills are an aspect of executive functioning keep in mind that ADHD is an executive function developmental delay meaning kids with ADHD are approximately two to three years behind their same age peers in terms of their executive function skill development so if you have an eight-year-old they most likely have the emotional regulation skills of closer to a six or five year old if you have a 13 year old their emotional regulation skills may be closer to that of a 10 to 13 year old keep in mind this varies for every kid so there's really no way to measure this but I just want you to understand that if your child's emotional regulation skills are several years behind their same age peers what we have to do is we have to meet them where they're at and have our expectations based on their executive functioning age not their chronological age that does not mean that you need to treat them as they are younger we still need to have age-appropriate expectations modified for their executive function age the most helpful thing in terms of helping your child develop healthy emotional regulation skills is modeling affective calmness for them I do have a video on this topic affect of calmness is when we act calm and show or calm even when we don't feel calm inside the reason it's so important to use affect of calmness is because for kids with ADHD if they're emotionally dysregulated and you match their emotions because you're frustrated or upset or whatever it might be then their emotions are becoming your emotions and what that really is it's creating a parent-child codependency no child ADHD or not can learn healthy emotional regulation skills if they're emotionally codependent with their parent the other thing that's really helpful that I teach in scaffolding better Behavior by parent behavior training program are called resets and cleanups resets are essentially a do-over so if your child speaks to you in a way that's not okay what we can say to them is why don't you do a reset and come back and ask me that when you're ready what that's doing is it's instead of scolding them for their behavior or allowing them to collect themselves and give it another shot and having time to take some space if necessary to regulate their emotions think of resets as a way for kids to be able to have a do-over and always to save phase when they say or do something that maybe they shouldn't have cleanups is my term I use for teaching kids accountability so for instance if they did something hurtful to their younger sibling instead of making them say sorry which is not even sincere what we have them do is a cleanup meaning they do something nice for the person who they said or did something hurtful towards that's based on the idea that actions speak louder than words when we teach kids to clean it up what we're teaching them is saying sorry is not enough sometimes we need to take action to rectify things with the person who we hurt number two cognitive flexibility does your child tend to be inflexible do they tend to see the world as black and white do they have difficulty with compromise maybe working in groups at school cognitive flexibility is also an aspect of executive functioning the way you help your child become more flexible is through not accommodating their inflexibility I have a saying flexibility is cultivated inflexibility is accommodated so what accommodating inflexibility means is that you give into their inflexibility when parents accommodating flexibility it causes inflexibility to get worse it's okay if your child is temporarily upset with you because you're not accommodating their inflexibility they'll get over it Kids Are Not Fragile Kids are anti-fragile and a lot of times parents have kids with ADHD treat their children like they're very fragile and that's never helpful I can tell you I've seen many adults with ADHD who are highly inflexible and I can tell you that's a problem particularly when they get into the workforce so remember don't accommodate your child's inflexibility and that will help them to develop greater flexibility number three negative attention is easier to get and also sustain than positive attention many kids with ADHD figure out when they're really young that they can get their parents undivided attention as well as emotional reactivity through negative behavior keep in mind the ADHD brain is novelty seeking so if your child realizes they can get your attention and keep your attention through negative behaviors they're going to do that because it's working and because you're reinforcing it with attention often I hear parents of younger kids tell me things like he can't come down on his own he needs me to help him calm down and it can take up to an hour and I tell them that's not accurate at all he can come down on his own he can regulate his emotions he's doing this because it gives him your undivided attention I can tell you I've seen this pattern in families last years and years so here's what I teach in scaffolding better Behavior we give purposeful recognition and praise to the behaviors we want we do not give any attention to the behaviors we don't want when you reinforce negative or unwanted behaviors with your attention and emotional reactivity you cause them to continue I promise you if you're like many parents including myself we often don't give our kids enough recognition and purposeful praise for the behaviors we do want so think about that you really have to be mindful of telling them that you appreciate their behavior or that you appreciate their resiliency their flexibility whatever it might be because that's going to help them understand what behaviors will get them positive attention so give purposeful recognition and praise for the behaviors you do want and do not give attention to the behaviors you you do not want punishments and natural consequences kids with ADHD including my own son often become what we call punishment adverse meaning punishments don't work for them why because they're so used to getting punished that it starts to not mean anything to them anymore and they can live just fine without the Xbox or whatever it might be for another day I want to be really clear I am not anti-punishment but I don't believe in useless punishments what I teach parents is there should be consequences for things where there are consequences in the real world for example if you yell at your sibling I hate you there's not a consequence for that in the real world but if you hit somebody or if you break something there's consequences for that in the real world most importantly when there is a consequence for something it always needs to be accompanied by a cleanup which I spoke about earlier because that's teaching kids accountability and it's teaching them to make amends to the person who they hurt let them experience natural consequences I see so many families where they do not let their child with ADHD experience natural consequences and that does a real disservice to it child let me give you this quick example from my own life I once bought my son a gaming chair and he was putting it together downstairs I said to him you should really let me help you bring it upstairs because my concern is it's going to get wedged in the stairway and then it's going to be stuck there and he said no because my son has a propensity to be inflexible well guess what happened the chair got wedged in the staircase and he was sitting there screaming and cursing and sweating and I had to let him experience that natural consequence before he would be receptive to help the other reason why I see parents protect their kids from experiencing natural consequences is because they're worried it'll hurt their self-esteem here's what's really going to hurt your child's self-esteem when you treat them as if they're fragile rather than capable and resilient you send them the message I don't have confidence in your ability because I think you're fragile so I have to protect you from experiencing temporary discomfort we all have to learn from our experiences and the way kids actually develop self-confidence is through recognizing their abilities within themselves I saved this one for last because it's in my most important one parental accommodation makes things worse over time parental accommodation is when parents change their behavior to help avoid or alleviate their child's distress some examples of Parental accommodation could be you don't go to the restaurant that the rest of the family wants to go to because you don't want to listen to your child with ADHD complain or you allow them to sleep in your bed because they're scared of sleeping in their bed alone or accommodating their inflexibility or not disciplining them when appropriate because you feel sorry for them there's a lot of research to back this up when you alter your behavior to protect your child from experiencing temporary discomfort you are doing them a disservice and whatever the behavior or the issue is that you're trying to protect them from is going to become worse over time unfortunately I have parents reach out to me in desperation because they've engaged in Parental accommodation for so long that their child is basically running their home and everyone tiptoes around their child with ADHD to keep them placated and to avoid them having outbursts or arguing or whatever it might be I want to be really clear here this is not about blame it's not about what you've done wrong I believe all parents do the best they can at any given moment with the information they have if you've been engaging in Parental accommodation for a long time it's time to ask yourself is what we're doing in our home not going to be helpful to our child in the long term and I can tell you it won't be if you're ready to implement practical strategies to make life at home less stressful for everyone and to help your child with ADHD improve their self-confidence their resiliency and flexibility please check out scaffolding better Behavior which is part of the ADHD dude membership site and you can also check out the behavior playlist at the adhdude YouTube channel I'll talk to you soon

Channel: ADHD Dude

Views: 95,634

Keywords: Adhd, adhd social skills, ADHD Dude, Ryan Wexelblatt, adhd dude membership site, adhd dude executive function, ryan adhd coach, adhd dude social skills, adhd coach ryan, add dude, adhd guy, ADD dude, ADD guy, ADHD and ODD, adhd dude membership, adhd in boys, adhd dude brain coach, adhd dude brochachos, adhd social skills lessons, brochachos, oppositional defiant disorder, executive functioning for kids, adhd social problems, explaining adhd to kids, social skills

Id: 7ZBwKj_CJRM

Length: 8min 51sec (531 seconds)

Published: Mon Jan 09 2023