No One Knows Your Child Better Than You Do
“Understanding the nature of the situation makes it much easier to transform it.” —THICH NHAT HANH
No matter how well-meaning they are, many loved ones and caring friends will never fully grasp the reality of your life. It’s so much more complicated than it appears on the surface!
Complex issues, such as ADHD, anxiety, autism, LD, and related challenges, look different for every person facing them. They’re not tangible (like blood sugar numbers) or visible (like broken bones). They creep into every crack and crevice of daily life.
Parents spend years trying to get a basic understanding so we can guide our kids through the labyrinth of their complex brains. But we secretly battle an internal conflict: Sometimes we ourselves struggle to accept that our kids’ issues are real.
• It’s scary that our kids are not on par, developmentally, with their peers.
• It’s infuriating that we feel like broken records, constantly directing and redirecting.
• It’s maddening that our otherwise sweet kid speaks to their siblings, or to us, in ways that would make a sailor blush.
When we get frustrated or annoyed, exhausted or overwhelmed, we don’t consider that there’s a legitimate reason why our kids aren’t doing what’s expected of them. We just want them to be “typical” for long enough to give us a break.
We just want them to be “typical” for long enough to give us a break.
So, when well-meaning people say “If you would just … ” and suggest using discipline, holding them accountable, setting a clear limit, or “not letting them talk to you like that,” we internalize these comments and feel ineffective.
And we unwittingly do the same to our kids. As a client of mine writes, “what I really wanted was for [my son] to ‘just’ hand in his homework, ‘just’ not get so emotional, ‘just’ follow simple directions, ‘just,’ well, you can fill in the blanks.”
How often do you wonder how on Earth something happened, only to have a glimmer of recognition? “Oh yeah, that was impulsive!” or “Yup, that kid got distracted!” or “Wow, she doesn’t even remember that conversation.”
On one level, you know why your kid can’t just remember to put clothes in the laundry or stop overreacting or picking fights with a teasing sibling. Various aspects of executive function are lagging behind, and they aren’t performing appropriately for their chronological age (see Chapter 7).
And yet, sometimes it takes a while to grasp the depth of it. Even when they know their kids are developmentally delayed in theory, parents often say things such as:
• “I know he has anxiety, but it’s unacceptable that he doesn’t do what I ask when I give him a direction.”
• “Why do they jump on the couch right after I tell them not to?”
• “Why is he so sensitive?”
• “Why doesn’t she tell me what’s going on?”
• “I just realized that his ADHD is really at the cause of all of this. You’ve been telling me for two years, but I think it’s just sinking in.”
• “Why do I have to repeat myself?”
• “Why doesn’t he turn in his homework if he’s actually done it?”
“Why,” we ask. “Why didn’t you … ?” “Why don’t you … ?” “Why can’t they just … ?” These questions express powerlessness, wreaking havoc for us and for them. We believe they’ll guide us to answers. Instead, the word why is a trigger that fuels our frustration, escalates a situation, and puts others on the defensive. “Why can’t you just … ” locks our kids into a perpetual cycle of failure, and it locks us into a victim state where things are being done to us.
Adults who also have complex brains struggle with this too. We know we forget things or struggle with time management. But we don’t want our kids to suffer the way we have, so sometimes we’re even harder on them, holding them to impossible standards. Instead of saying, “Why can’t they just,” we shift to “If they would just.” The result is the same.
You walk in at 5:30 pm after a long day at work and 30 minutes of unexpected traffic. Now you have to get dinner going and homework done. Your youngest needs a bath before dinner, or you’ll never get everyone ready for bedtime. You ask your 14-year-old (who has ADHD and anxiety) to boil a pot of water while you get your 6-year-old into a bath. More than anything, you want your child to say, “Sure, Mom. Anything else I can do?” Instead, your son screams, “I can’t do that! I’ve got so much homework it’s not even funny. You have no idea how much math I’ve got—our teacher hates us! And my Lit paper turns out to be due tomorrow. They never told us! There’s no way!”
You’re closer to boiling than that pot of water. You want to scream: “You rotten kid, do you know what kind of day I’ve had? I’m not asking you to make dinner, which you should be able to do by your age, anyway. It’s just a pot of water!”
Instead of blowing your fuse, you take a deep breath, let it out, and ask yourself: “Is It Naughty or Neurological?” What’s really going on? Your son struggles with intense emotions, which escalated when he realized he didn’t plan ahead, and writing is so difficult for him. He’s stuck in overwhelm, impulsively lashing out because he’s been holding it in all day. Your child is struggling, and you’re a safe place for him to let it out.
I learned to ask this question from Dr. Kathleen Platzman circa 2002, and I’ve been using it ever since. Any time you’re tempted to ask yourself “why can’t they just … ?”, replace it with “Is it naughty or neurological?”
A simple request to boil a pot of water involves a whole host of executive functions. If you understand the neurological connection, you may still get frustrated, but you’ll be more supportive than if you think they’re being rude. For example, you might:
Acknowledge what’s going on so your child can recognize it. (“Wow, you sound really upset. I guess you’re feeling stressed by all that work.”)
Show compassion. (“I hate it when I’m feeling like there’s not enough time. I’m feeling like that, too, so I can relate.”)
Modify or negotiate, giving your child some control. (“I didn’t realize you have so much on your plate too—if you get the water started, I’ll have more time to help with your paper tonight. Will that work? We’ll get through it together!”)
The brain is ultimately responsible for all behaviors, and executive function governs every aspect of life—thoughts, feelings, and actions. Understanding the simple fact that there’s often a neurological explanation for any behavior can be liberating. It releases you from a tendency to blame and judge and connects you to compassion and understanding.
Sure, sometimes kids are mischievous or naughty. If it’s naughty and you put systems in place to correct the behavior, it’s likely to shift. But if it’s neurological, chances are that all the deterrents in the world will not change the behavior.
If it’s neurological, chances are that all the deterrents in the world will not change the behavior.
In the next few chapters, I’ll introduce strategies and tactics to help you respond effectively as you identify underlying neurological causes of difficult behaviors. Once you acknowledge that your child is struggling with something, the next step is to take what a client of mine calls “the curiosity approach.”
I know they say that curiosity kills the cat, but what if a parent’s lack of curiosity actually creates a danger zone for kids?
Even with reasonable explanations, our kids’ behaviors can make it unbelievably hard to cope. We get frustrated, scared, angry, overwhelmed, and hopeless. Parents with robust executive function skills want nothing more than a good plan, while those of us with our own executive function challenges may see plan as a four-letter-word. Either way, we all want a clear path forward, and curiosity is your path—it paves the way to more effective planning and problem solving.
Whenever you start to judge anyone’s behavior (not just your kids), just notice that. Take a breath and remind yourself to get curious. Ask yourself questions such as “what’s going on here?” or “what’s motivating them?” or “what might be happening to lead to that behavior?” Curiosity can shift your focus from “why are they doing that?” to “I wonder what they’re going through.” It shifts your mindset from “why can’t they just … ” to “is it naughty or neurological?”
Curiosity is the chief tool to use in step 2 of the Impact Model. After taking aim on a change you want to see (see Chapter 5), use curiosity to start collecting information or getting educated about what’s going on. A little detective work can help you look at things from a range of perspectives and uncover underlying motivations and obstacles. What’s your perspective? How is your child experiencing it? What about the school or other members of the family? Use the acronym WIGO to ask yourself What Is Going On?
In each of the next four chapters, I’ll introduce four contexts to consider when putting together a plan to tackle any dilemma. Whenever you get confused, don’t know what to say, or cannot believe how someone is acting, get curious using these lenses and see what becomes possible:
Activating the Brain: Most behaviors are influenced by what’s happening in the body and the brain, chemically, and this is true for both complex kids and overwhelmed, stressed parents. Whether you activate the brain through exercise, nutrition, sleep, medication, meditation, coaching, or something else, enhancing its ability to work as effectively as possible is essential to any plan.
Positivity: Complex kids are consistently dropping, losing, breaking or forgetting things, and getting corrected from morning to night—which parents often do without even realizing it. Maintaining your relationship and their self-esteem, despite frequent mistakes and redirections, is key. Look for your kids’ potential and empower them to buy into their own success by focusing on what’s possible.
Shifting Expectations: You have every reason to set high expectations for your kids. The trick is to do it in a developmentally appropriate way. Because complex kids are about 3 to 5 years (roughly 30%) behind their same-age peers in some aspects of their development, setting expectations realistically allows them to feel successful regardless of their age. Shifting expectations is not settling for “less” or “lowering” expectations.
Creating Systems and Structures Effectively: The routines and processes we use to make improvements and manage our lives are most effective when developed in the context of Activating the Brain, Positivity, and Shifted Expectations. Systems and structures are not an end goal—they are a means to help us with self-management, self-regulation, and achieving personal success.
Curiosity offers an opportunity to support your kids, ultimately increasing their success and responsibility by creating plans that work in real life.
We don’t want our kids to feel bad about themselves, but we’re desperate for them to take responsibility for their actions, or to feel grateful for all that we’re doing for them. So, we begin to point fingers, even though we don’t mean to shame or blame them.
We want to help our kids see that they’re not bad, they’re struggling—and we can help them with that.
Meanwhile, our kids don’t want to lie or disappoint us, but as they begin to feel “naughty” for behaviors that are actually neurological, they develop feelings of shame and embarrassment. It’s a vicious cycle.
Defensiveness and offensiveness abound in equal measure in the homes of complex kids. Kids of all ages want to be seen as “good,” but when they struggle with that, they often end up seeing themselves as “bad.” So, either they get aggressive (sometimes even abusive), or they become defensive and avoid taking responsibility. Then their reactions reinforce your deepest concerns, and you’re caught in an endless loop of the Shame and Blame Game.
This is one of the most common scenarios I encounter in my practice (regardless of a kids’ age or diagnoses). For example it can be hard to accept that kids don’t avoid work just to be rude, difficult, or disrespectful. In fact these behaviors have nothing to do with whether they respect or appreciate us. If they don’t have a mechanism to get themselves activated, that can be embarrassing for them. They certainly don’t need us reminding them, much less making them feel bad about it.
Even the best parents have some unhealthy patterns that could be improved and ways of communicating that could be more supportive. To change oppositional communication patterns, even with older kids:
1. Notice when shame and blame crop up in your words, tone of voice, or assumptions, and try to stop them in their tracks. More than likely, they’re interfering with your ability to build and maintain a trusting relationship and with your child’s ability to take responsibility.
2. If you find yourself feeling embarrassed or worried about what others might think about you or your child, those are feelings of shame, too. Get some support (from a coach, a therapist, or a friend) to set appropriate expectations based on what your child needs, not what others think, so you can empower your kid to reach their full potential.
3. If reading this is triggering guilt or shame for you, please reread Chapter 2, especially “Up Until Now” and “Put the Stick Down.” Seek support and put effort into managing your own triggers so you can be fully present for your kids.
4. If you have a child who tends to be extremely defensive or lies a lot (a kind of defensive dishonesty), chances are they have a lot of feelings of shame that they are not yet navigating well; or they’re feeling blamed, even if you aren’t communicating that consciously. Use nonjudgmental, matter-of-fact language to remove the unintentional shame they’re absorbing.
Bottom line: We want to hold our kids accountable for their behaviors, without feeling that they’re somehow morally bankrupt. We want to distinguish between a bad behavior and a bad kid. And we want to help our kids see that they’re not bad, they’re struggling—and we can help them with that.
“The important thing is to see and encourage potential.” —The Upside
If your child were in a wheelchair, you wouldn’t put them at the bottom of a flight of stairs and tell them to run up to the top. To reach the top, you’d expect it to take time and effort—perhaps using their arms or maybe setting up a pulley system. Their achievement in reaching the top would be sweet for their struggle, and you’d likely celebrate heartily. Similarly when a child has anxiety, speaking to a teacher or spending the night at a friend’s might be an enormous step for them. Instead of telling them that they have nothing to worry about, you might acknowledge their concerns and help them devise a plan to achieve their goal with your support.
Some kids have medical reasons that impair them from using parts of their bodies. Our kids have medical reasons that delay the development of essential executive function skills in their brains. I want to encourage you to apply a disability perspective to your child’s emotional, social, and organizational development.
Many parents resist the idea that their kids have a disability, as I did for many years. I didn’t want it to be true. I wanted them to be “normal” or “typical.” I wanted them to fit in. I wanted things to be easy for them—and for me.
Parents tell me that they don’t want to “label” their child’s challenges because they don’t want the label itself to become a crutch. They want their child to learn to navigate life, so they don’t want to give them excuses. But when a kid needs crutches, they need crutches. We expect something different from them in specific ways for a time, and we support them in ways that they need—usually not for long. But if they don’t take the weight off of that broken leg, it might not heal well, and then they might need the crutches forever.
A disability perspective acknowledges that there’s a reason our kids can’t do what’s asked of them—yet. If we don’t lighten the load while our kids’ brains are catching up, they may never acquire the skills they need to learn.
Kids’ challenges show up in all aspects of life and learning: managing emotions, organization, procrastination, following instructions, going to a restaurant, and the like. They may need reminders to get started on their homework, or help organizing their backpack. Rather than asking them to clean their room, you might start by focusing on one shelf or drawer. With support, they’ll get there over time. But when kids are less mature than their same-aged peers, or not as skilled at self-management, we must make sure we’re not telling them to hop out of the wheelchair and run up the stairs.
As a parent, this perspective allows you to advocate and educate your child based on your child’s current capacity.
It helps to:
• Let go of how others see you as a parent and focus on your child.
• Stop constantly comparing kids to their same-aged peers and set realistic expectations based on their developmental age.
• Take aim consciously, deliberately deciding what’s appropriate to let go (for now).
• Advocate in school for reasonable, developmentally appropriate accommodations and modifications.
• Improve communication by clarifying what’s expected of kids so they can respond successfully.
We help complex kids most when we recognize, embrace, and accept them for who they are—for their very humanness—and teach them to do the same. They are children, teens, and young adults, struggling to fulfill the world’s expectations in life and learning. When we shed outdated notions of perfectionism that unwittingly leave kids feeling broken and worthless, we empower them to embrace and understand themselves.
Whatever the challenge, a disability perspective offers an opportunity to shift our expectations with an emphasis on what kids can do, so we can help children learn to be successful based on where they are developmentally, one skill at a time.
Remember the family dinner scene in the 2015 movie Inside Out? As the conversation gets more uncomfortable and emotions get stirred up, the daughter, who is trying to hold it together, finally slams her hands on the table in frustration, yelling “Just shut up!” Though she’s not asking calmly, she is trying to get a break to reclaim her brain. Instead of giving her space and slowing things down, the dad yells, “That’s it, go to your room!”
It’s considered one of the best scenes from that inspiring movie, probably because it captures a family dynamic that most of us recognize. We all—parents and kids—have reacted when triggered, escalating the situation (with tears, fuming, empty threats, harsh punishments, or even holes in walls). But helping kids manage their reactivity starts with learning to manage our own.
You can’t control what happens; you can only control how you respond to what happens.
When people recognize the need to calm themselves down, that’s a healthy response, whatever their age. The dad in Inside Out failed to recognize that his daughter was trying to get a handle on her difficult emotions. As a result, his reactivity prevented anyone from calming things down so they could respond differently.
You can’t control what happens; you can only control how you respond to what happens. When you enter into conversation with yourself, you can start to get a handle on your own reactivity.
What are your key triggers? Identify what pushes your buttons despite your best intentions. What’s really causing your aggravation? Are you triggered by rushing, being late, kids talking back or speaking crudely, disrespect, or looking at grades online?
What are the thoughts/feelings behind the triggers? A parent might feel guilt, frustration, and overwhelm before opening the online grading portal, thinking, “He’s probably missing 17 assignments, it’ll be terrible, and I’ll have screwed up because I’m not more on top of it.” A parent who hates to be late might think, “The teacher is going to think I don’t care and she’s not going to want to help.” Or a parent who wants their child to learn from them might think, “My son has absolutely no respect for me and doesn’t care what I think.”
What is a more supportive thought? These stories we tell ourselves may have a shred of truth—maybe you screwed up, or the teacher will judge you, or your child doesn’t respect you. But they’re taken out of proportion and distorted by our gremlins (see Chapter 5). So, choose a helpful and supportive message that you can believe that helps you calm down. It could be true that you’re doing the best you can, that the teacher will understand you’re trying, or that your child has immense respect for you but can’t show it when he’s upset.
Once you start to manage your reactivity, you’ll help your kids do the same. Although it’s not realistic to stop them from ever getting triggered, reducing the intensity and frequency is possible. When you hear a teenager scream something like, “I’m sorry I’m yelling right now, I’m just really frustrated and I don’t know why,” you have done your job well.
Working on triggers together as a family is actually quite powerful too. If it’s expected that everyone could lose it occasionally, and you support each other to get a handle on things when that happens, it becomes a partnership. Imagine your kid saying, “I’m triggered, give me 5 minutes and I’ll come back.”
Understanding triggers helps people know when they need a break and how to respond without so much reactivity. According to Dr. Russell Barkley, adults with ADHD are more likely to lose jobs for losing their temper than not turning in a project. So, responding instead of reacting is an essential life skill—one of the greatest gifts you can give yourself, your kids, and your precious relationships.
• When do you fall into the “why can’t they just … ” trap?
• What’s different when you ask, “is it naughty or neurological?”
• What makes you curious?
• What blame or shame are you ready to let go?
• What behavior(s) could benefit from a disability perspective?
• Which reaction can you shift to become more responsive?