136. How I'm making big behavior changes with my ADHD son

in alignment to your emotions, needs and goals versus your programming,

“that advice, and let's face it, outdated strategies that just don't work.”

You'll get in the trenches support on nervous system and emotional regulation,

critical mindset shifts, stronger communication strategies, and more.

In this podcast, you'll gain transformational tools that take you from reacting to every frustration, to responding with clarity, regulation, and finally setting the example you desire for your kids. I'm Becky Jennings, your new parenting coach, and this is the Response Abel Parenting podcast. Let's get into it. Hello my beautiful friends. I am Exhaillene today. Yes, I am after the hacking incident. It rattled me because I have just built this for a very

long time, and it's my baby. I care about this so much, and so the thought of somebody just being able to come in and erase and control everything that I had done was very, very scary, and eye-opening, and then do-do-do. What do you know? I brought it back to parenting,

because I always try to do that. I always try to take my lived experience

or something frustrating or a challenge that I've been experiencing personally, and relate it back into how we can be a more embodied parent, how we can take stress, anxiety, fear, depression, all of those things that can attack us overwhelm, be let down, all of these things,

“how can we experience it without absorbing it? Honestly, if that is not the truest definition of”

parenting, then I'm not sure what is. So I wanted to talk a little bit about that kind of a general over perspective of how we can kind of view parenting and behavior change from this lens, and also give you some actionable tools to walk away from today, because I always want to leave you with something to be able to work on, ruminate on, kind of think about, noodle around, marinated on, you know, all those fun little catchphrases that we use these days,

and see if it lands with you as something that would be beneficial in your ADHD or neurodivergent household. Maybe you're not even sure yet if your child is neurodivergent. Maybe they're still quite young, some five, maybe some six, and you see a lot of spice. The things check out, but of course, the diagnosis isn't there, and maybe you don't want to get the diagnosis, but what I did for a very, very long time is I parented my son as if he had ADHD,

and I did that for years before we got the diagnosis. I just called him my very strong wheelchair.

SWK is what I, my code word, my keyword for. First strong wild kids are,

I wanted to talk about something, especially when it comes to the chaos and the overwhelm of everything that a parent, to a neurodivergent child experiences. Being a parent in general is complex, you know, that there's so many things that are on our shoulders, food, sleep, hygiene, emotional intelligence, friendships, activating their body, screen time, you know, just like the list goes on and on and on and on and that's just like the basics of keeping somebody alive,

keeping them mentally healthy, keeping them engaged, keeping them on a track on a path to a happy future. Okay, then add on the multi-layer, not just one single layer, but the multi-layer overlay of ADHD neurocomplexity. That is a lot to add to the mix. Let's say you have one, ADHD child. Maybe you have an ADHD or neurodivergent spouse. Maybe you have multiple children in the home who are neurodivergent. Adding on the complexity of neurodivergence is a lot

for one parent to hold. And the reason I say one parent, it's a lot for every parent to hold,

“but you who are listening, I know you're the default parent. I just know this because that's what I”

am. Like I am the default parent. I do all the research. I give the click notes. I create the systems. I implement the systems. I, you know, I know who you are. I get you girl. I know it. Adding it to your plate is being the responsible one to quote unquote figure it out and fix it. It's a lot to manage. And it becomes very overwhelming and we can take a lot of these things incredibly personally. And on top of that, we can feel like every single time, a system or a tool

or a skill that we tried and it failed. We take that as like it was our fault that it failed.

but it's our fault that we threatened at the end of the day. It's our fault that we yelled and lost

“our cool. It's our fault that we can't stay regulated. And yes, that we get to control what we can”

control and you are up against a lot more than the average bear. I'm just going to let that sit

there for a second. You are up against a lot more than the average typical parent period. It's just

more as my sister allowed to say it's much period. It's much all the time. As I'm trying to implement systems, that the whole family can adapt to and start to work with and work within, there's a lot of testing. And the reason I'm talking about this today is because everybody who comes to me is like give me the thing that fixes it. Give me the solution. Like give me the case of the kingdom and please just stop the madness. And while there are very duplicatable and repeatable

systems that exist that I share within my coaching community, that work and that are extremely effective back in science and cutting edge of neurodiversity systems and structures, when you've met one

“ADHD person, you've met one ADHD person and so these things have to be tweaked, modified, adapted”

to the child that is in front of you, to the life that you live inside your own home, to the partnership that you are in. Everything is so nuanced that to say this is the umbrella strategy that works for all neurodiversity would just be absolutely ridiculous. So many levels. That being said, my job inside my coaching program is to figure out your family and connect your specific dots so that you can get really dialed in on a system in strategy and from there we make micro tweaks

so that things sort of feel like a breath of fresh air. For example, I was working with one of my clients and I shared a code word scenario that we have when things are escalating inside of my house.

And she took that and ran with it. Like I never know what people are going to run with and I never

know what exactly what tool they are going to be like. That's the tool for me. So I share endless strategies and tools inside my program because like I said, it has to fit your family. This code word scenario might not fit another person's family, but her family is crushing this code word and the scenarios that used to just can politely spiral out of control that led to massive ruptures, massive challenges and forced repair at the end and all of this

stuff separating and it was just a mess and I happened all the time. Now they used this code word and everybody is following the code word and she has said, this code word has changed our family's life. She's been in my program for two weeks and she's already just like, this has changed my life and I love that because we can get so stuck in the weeds of like research and trying to figure out if that tip that you just saw in Instagram is going to be the

one for your family and so my job is to filter all the noise, give you the actual stuff that works

inside of my program and then basically what I do is when I get to know you on your personal

family level, I start to help you connect the dots and create your own systems and structures

“that work with your child because ultimately that's what we're craving. Something that works with”

our child. So I'm going to walk you through a test that I did with my child and I'm going to walk you through how we originally framed it and then how we're tweaking it because again, we have to test these things and tweak these things to make sure they work for our child. So if you're watching this on YouTube, which I highly recommend you follow on YouTube because I share a lot of extra stuff there. So this is, as you can see, our behavior chart. Yeah, it is long and it has been

touched a lot and it has been ripped a little bit. But on one section it says the actions in the choice and then the other section it says on the other column it says outcomes or consequences and then on the other section there's so there's three little columns. So actions and choices, outcomes and consequences and then the third is the number of beans that he can accumulate towards a greater good. So I hate, first of all, just caveat quickly, hated reward systems that

they were rubbish and just really did not like them at all. Then with all the research and the studies and advanced training that I've been doing with ADHD, rewards are very helpful for ADHD kids, not necessarily something that is completely the default way of doing things but adding them into the mix gives that little surge, that little motivational push towards an outcome that they desire. So my son has really latched on to earning beans. As you can see on the YouTube video,

going to lean into the opportunity for him to learn. We have a list. There's probably 30 things

“on here that are challenging behaviors. Yep, we sat down. He and I sat down on my computer and we”

went down from the tipi tipi top of the morning all the way to bedtime and he and I both listed out the challenging moments we experienced together and it's much okay as my sister will say it's much. There's a lot on here. There's like 30 things that are challenging behaviors and we decided to list all 30 things out and then we decided to list an outcome or just a consequence that would happen as a result of each hose to continue this behavior. So essentially the framework was hey,

this behavior not machine with the fam. A green not a green. He's like yep, it's not working. So the

next step would be I commit to giving you a redo because I always believe that we can give that

ADHD brain a second chance because we know impulse control is almost non-existent. We also know they have a real big challenge with working memory. That means holding what they need to hold in their memory at the right time. We also know that they struggle with sequences and putting things in the right order. We also just the executive function need is challenging. I'm not going to use shame as my teacher by saying up. You failed again. Let's go straight to the consequence list.

Instead, I was like I'm going to remind you of hey this is that one thing on the list that we both identified as a problem. Okay, you're doing that right now and going to give you the opportunity

“to try again and do it in the way that we've practiced because that's a key part of ADHD”

coaching your child is practicing the outcomes you want to see. That's a must. That's a must. And they're going to hate it. But the way that I talk to my son about it is I'm like, listen, we're putting in the heavy work now when you're a little kid so that it's not as big of a struggle when you're older. So he's like, okay, we do this little thing called rewind where he physically mimics himself going backwards and he goes back to the original spot where he said the original

thing that is not the outcome or the behavior that we want to see. He goes back and he tries it again. We've gotten so dialed in on this that all I need to say at this point is redo or rewind and he can go back and we make it fun. Can I be super real with you until you have personal story? A few years back, my son. The whole reason why I do the job I do today was having one of those fiery moments. He was talking back demanding it be his way. He was refusing to listen to any of our solutions

and the moment was getting really intense. I hasn't looked at me and said, well, you know all the parenting stuff fixed this. I completely froze. All the scripts from the books I read, all the strategy from the podcast I listen to completely disappeared from my brain in that moment. But based on the volume of challenges that we were having with our strong look ADHD son, I knew I had to figure out a different way because panicking in the moment and grasping at anything only to not follow through

at all and end up yelling just wasn't working. From this experience, I developed a repeatable,

“easy to remember and easy to follow system that literally works with every single triggering moment.”

I can attest to it because there are many in my life. Now I can show up the way I want. I can communicate in a way that actually resonates with my strong real child. If this sounds like a solution for what's happening in your home, take these next two steps. Number one, watch the free training about my re-wiring process in the show notes and then number two, book your free call. On that call, we will talk about what's happening in your home and you will get a customized

solution that works best for you. I assure you this doesn't have to feel as hard day in and day out

as it does. Here is the solution and I'm so excited to talk to you about it. One key thing before

I move on to the system and how I tweak that. When we are in the teaching seat for our children, especially our ADHD children, unless it is fun and engaging in some way they are going to resist it. When I'm asking my child to go back and practice a behavior in the right way, oh my god, could that be so boring and could he resist that like crazy? Yes, so we have to make it fun and shame-free. Fun could be as simple as putting an accent to it. And now that's happened again.

Let's go back a little bit and try again. Just that is funny enough for them to go, oh ha ha,

I just saw you do it again. It sounds so silly and so ridiculous, but it works because it

activates their brain in a way that is stimulating enough for them to engage in the behavior that you want them to engage in, which is practice, practice for the original outcome. And I want to say,

“we haven't done this so many times that my son did something. I can't even remember what he did.”

Oh, last night he wanted to grab the remote and he said it in a way that was like really aggressive. He wanted to find a show. And I said, Hunter, what just use your words and tell me the show that you want to find. And he said, I don't know what the show is. I have to see it. And I said, whoa, rewind. And he goes, oh, yep, yep, sorry. And he went literally back to where he was

standing. He said, hey, mom, can I please grab the remote so that I can show you on the screen

what TV show I wanted to pick. I'm like, sure, absolutely, because I want to give him the wind at the end of that too, so that it solidifies this is the right way to do it, like telling the truth, is the right thing to do, you know, being kind, the right thing to do. As I give the redo, I make it fun. He does the action or makes the choice that is unwanted, the behavior that we don't want to see. I step on, offer the redo in a fun, engaged, playful way. The follow-through here,

and this is where parents to 80 HD kids either like full-fledged, poor on the gas, and we had to threats. We had to taking things away. We had really quickly down the reactive pathway, or we had really far into the passive pathway, where we're just like, I can't do this anymore,

just make it end. This is where it becomes very, very critical to follow through with what you

have decided to do. If they choose to not do the redo and not do the behavior that you have practiced, the behavior that you want to see, then the outcome or the consequence needs to be enforced.

“Key thing here. Every single consequence that was listed on here, he bought into. He agreed,”

he signed off. He was the co-signer to his consequence list, and that is critical. Because then, we are not just these awful parents who are so easy to blame, and we are not just these like completely strict and just gosh, man, I hate you. We're not that you co-signed, bro. You wrote on the dotted line, I agreed to this. In fact, he came up with almost every single one of them. I would say, okay, so if you're making fun of anyone, what would be the consequence? He's like, oh, yeah, I do that.

Okay, what should I do? He's literally sitting there. He's like, hmm, should probably be like a manual labor thing. I'm like, okay, it's like letting him think about it. And he's like, I should clean out all the leaves underneath the trees. Great. Type type type added that right in. If he's not listening to the dog or we have two dogs. If he's not listening to them when they signal that they need space, that could include growling, gurgling literally listed all of these,

snarling, pinned ears, moving away, excess of licking, sad eyes, every single one of those is listed. What does he choose to do? He'd have to clean up every piece of poop in the backyard. Okay, these are his choices. He co-signed them. Another thing with ADHD got to be super specific.

“There's no wiggle room. There's no gray area. You got to be very specific. So that's why he's listed.”

When they signal, they need space. Signals include growling, gurgling, snarling, pinned ears, moving away, excess of licking, sad eyes. We included every single bit of what the dog's behavior could look like. Okay, they've done the action that we don't want to see. We've given them the redo or the rewind option and they continued to press forward and they didn't do what we wanted to do. They didn't do what we all agreed upon. So this is where we go, okay, you just decided to do

that same choice again. Let's move to the consequence list. And now you are going to clean up every piece of poop in the backyard. Here, let me go get the bag and a glove for you. Matter of fact, no tone, no aggression, no threats, no anything. If they push back, I'm so sorry that you're feeling frustrated. I get it. I get frustrated too. This is what's going to happen. Let me know how I can help you out to get started. That's it. Let me know how I can help you to get started. I know it can be hard

to get started sometimes. I can help. I can grab the bag and the glove. I can walk you out there. I can stand out there with you. Maybe I can put music on for you outside. And be I can stand here and you can tell me about your day or I can go on a monologue outside and tell you about a story. It doesn't matter. The thing is you're still doing it. And our job is to remove the personal attack

maintain systems and structures in our house so that there's not full chaos all the time. And we're

“not just all every single one of us operating in our reactive patterns and loops on repeat.”

Because that's when everybody is just like the chaos is too much to live inside of. If we're just all of us are tapped 100% of the time. Here's where I pivoted. The actions and choices. Oh, and I should say at the very end, should they choose to rewind and do the appropriate behavior. They get a reward. The reward. Yes. Give them the reward pile on the rewards. Yes. You did it. Congratulations. That's awesome. I love it. Go grab yourself 10 beans. Put them in the jar.

Great. Okay. So that's that section. Here is what I did and I pivoted. We found that we were having specifically one challenge. The taking it too far challenge. The one that just seemed to be the overall pervasive behavior that was really impacting the household. We have one of the actions choices

is not stopping when anyone anywhere asks you to stop the first time. Continuing to do what

you want to do without consent. That's all in there. So we have that and this became crystal clear for me and I want to quickly share this example. I'll do another full podcast on this specific example. But my son got into an issue with a friend at school and I had to do the parent teacher conference and I was really upset because this was something that we are working on. Not stopping when anyone anywhere asks you to stop the first time. This is something that we're actively engaged in.

It's like very high on the list. I was really bummed to go into the parent teacher conference and here that this whole thing had played out. It wasn't a great scenario. I was very disappointed really upset about the whole situation and did coached myself through it. It did not take it personally and I made sure that we addressed it at home in a neutral way as best as I could. If I needed to, I walked away. This conversation was spread out over the course of probably a week and a half

trying to get down to the nitty gritty because my son was so closed off to learning about it because he had so much shame about it too. And we have to remember ADHD kids like our seat and shame. It's quite sad. We were playing probably two weeks later. We were playing and we have this really big pillow that is probably five pillows side by side in length and it's just huge pillow. He made like a little slide and he was sliding down and he kept kind of falling into

me as if he was like a bowling ball and I was the bowling pins. We were playing and we was kind of rough housing. He was laughing to the point of stitches. He was like crying, he was having such a fun time.

“And on the last one, our shins bumped and I was like okay, I think I'm done, you know, like untapped.”

And he was like again again and I was like, no, buddy, my body is done. I'm no longer playing and he was like, oh come on, please, please, it's really funny. He's like, come on, let's try to say something funny. Come on, let's try to tell jokes. Let's tell jokes and he did it one more time and he hit my shin again and it really hurt and I was like, oh, this is what happens when you take it too far with friends. It's not malicious. It's not, you're not trying to hurt them and it was

one of the very first times that I saw in action what it must have played out like at the school scene

when he was having so much fun with his friend and that surge that fire hose opened a dopamine just letting his system and he's just on cloud nine and he's laughing and he's enjoying himself and his friends are laughing and he's like, yes, I'm finally connected. Yes, I finally have a group of friends and then their bodies have that natural stopping point because the moment's kind of over and his body is desperate to keep it going and he's craving more and more and then it gets kind of

frenetic and frantic and then they're like, stop and he's like, but please, but please, but please, and then somebody gets hurt and I was like, buddy, I think I understand now what happened at school is this what went down and he was like, yeah, and so I said, you know what, instead of having this whole entire list, what we're going to do is we're just going to focus on this particular one. The not stopping when anyone anywhere asks you to stop, we're going to focus on that for at least

“two weeks and that's the only thing we're going to practice and let's see, only thing we're”

going to focus on because this is super important and what we get to do during this practice time is figure out what those sensations are in your body that are flooding your body when we're in this like really happy joyful moment, but somebody else's body stops and they're no longer in that moment with you, our job now is to be scientists to figure out what it is right before you take it

dialing in next, but now it relieves, first of all, so much pressure for me as the parent to be the

person who is constantly looking at the list, constantly following through, constantly managing a micromanaging and making sure that the child is doing everything that they're supposed to be doing by the second time I've mentioned it, that they're following this action choices list. This is fantastic resource and I'm going to be utilizing it for the rest of my life, essentially, however, it's going to be kind of like the overall guide to the next thing that we're going to be

focusing on, the next thing that we're going to be putting all of our attention and we're going to be resourcing our child around that next thing. So right now everybody's taking like a little

bit of an expansive breath where we're just like, okay, it's not going to be every little

micro thing that we're focusing on, we're simply focusing on learning and tracking and starting to figure out what that sensation is in his body before he takes it too far. So if he's starting to get

“frantic, I will say, okay, I can tell we're heading here, what do you feel in your body right now?”

That's my job as his coach. That's my job as his guide to figure this out. He doesn't love being stopped in the moment because he's getting flooded with dopamine during that really fun minute, but the moment my body stops, that's the moment that he needs to become aware of that moment that he needs to start to register in his own body before it becomes too much. So that is the pivot from a system that we were working on in the household, the system needed to be tweaked and we

will continue to tweak and refine until it becomes really foolproof in the house. And I say foolproof with an asterisk because with the ADHD brain, nothing is foolproof because it continues to need a different stimulus. So this is going to morph again when his threshold of engagement has diminished. We have to make it a little bit more novel again. We have to bring in some excitement back into it

“to respark the engagement. That's what I do every single day. Inside of my coaching program is I help”

you create these systems and structures inside of your household so that you have endless tools and resources at your fingertips so that when you are stuck in a situation that is crushing you wall. That is repetitive and annoying and so frustrating and you're at your witsend, you have just a treasure trove of tools and on top of it you have me that you can be like, hey, what just happened here? Every Tuesday and every Thursday inside of my coaching program you have access to a group

call where you can literally come with any single scenario that you are experiencing and I will give you laser coaching on that. So you will walk away from that with a deeper understanding of what's going on your body, deeper understanding of what's going on in your child's body and a tool to practice and start to refine. That is a guarantee inside of the program and that is why my client walked away two weeks in saying this is revolutionary and has changed the total energy and

tone of our house because we are all happy. We are happy. There's neurodiversity all through the house and they're happy and she's like, we, that wasn't an option. They're in school now. She's hoping

to turn them into a private, not private at a homeschooling situation. She was like, that will never

happen if the house is like this currently. Two weeks in, she's like, oh, this is going to be great. Can't wait to start homeschooling. How awesome is that? If you are kind of a sitting there,

“wondering if this is an option for you, honestly, let's join the regulated parent movement.”

The call is totally free and you have the ability to sit down with me, get my eyes on your current situation and see if what I do as a coach would provide the knowledge, the experience, the fine tuning and tweaking and refinement and lived experience so that you could start to see massive changes within your family, within the structure and how you're handling situations and how you're handling conversations, the whole thing. It can be much. That is my little simulation

that I run inside of my household. And honestly, what we are doing also isn't just trying to catch the moments where he gets too hyped up. We are also trying to simulate the moments that would get him to the point of getting to be too much with that. We get to practice a lot. And when we can focus exclusively on one thing for that amount of time, whew, what a win for the team. And

He is tools. He has resources. He has things he can do to help him in the moment, which is going

to better his emotional intelligence in hard moments, which is going to increase the safety within his friendships, which are going to solidify his friendships. So those aren't going to feel as hard.

“Honestly, the ripple effect is really wonderful. I cannot wait to jump on a call with you.”

Please don't think that I am any different from you. I am on your team and I am in your seat.

I just may be a couple steps down the line of practice experience. And so please, if we get on the

“call, I am just like you. And I want you to know that there's no judgment. You can literally tell”

me anything I have heard a lot if not all. And there's no judgment coming from me. So I welcome you

to a call. I would love to be able to see how I can support you. And yeah, that's my whole thing.

“I love it so much. And I just want to be able to share that with you. I will see you all next week.”

Have a great rest of your day. Thank you for listening to the Response Abel Parenting Podcast. If you like what you heard, please take a moment to read, review, and subscribe. If you know someone who had benefit from this podcast, I'd be honored if you'd share this episode with them. Until next time, know that you are enough. You are capable. You've made it through all of your hardest days. And we will keep growing

on this parenting journey together. This podcast was produced by Kim Kelty and myself, Rocky Jennings, and edited by the Kelty Method, Branding, and Podcasting.