Showing posts with label Dr. Perlmutter. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Dr. Perlmutter. Show all posts
Thursday, November 10, 2016
Wednesday, November 9, 2016
Authoritative Parenting Has the Edge by Tracey Powell, MS
In my coaching practice, when I begin to see family routine tides turning from frustrating and negative to more optimistic and healthy, two shifts are typically happening: 1) parents begin taking responsibility for their actions and get curious on how they can better influence their children’s behavior, 2) parents make less frequent use of practices falling into either the Authoritarian or Permissive parenting category, and instead begin opting for a more Authoritative approach.
If you can get past the confusing Authoritarian/Authoritative terminology, consider that Authoritative styles are consistently associated with positive outcomes for kids, like self-reliance, compliance, positive attitudes, etc. In Authoritative parenting the parent determines the structure, the child makes the choice to follow the structure or not (and experience consequences). This style teaches the child they can make good decisions and experience the payoffs.
It's especially important for children with ADHD and related conditions to experience a consistent structure where they can learn and experience some success. I also find in my family coaching work that parents come in frustrated, and may have forgotten their power to teach their child new habits and reward their efforts step by step. So, if you feel you've been stuck in your efforts to bring about a more peaceful, effective routine with your kids, it might be time to check in on your parenting style.
An Authoritarian style is typically a bit demanding, holding sometimes unrealistically high expectations (especially if the child has ADHD or other learning disability), and downplaying the need for the child to have input into decisionmaking. Authoritarian parents sometimes have a hard time rewarding progress, and might wonder, “Why should I thank my kid for making his bed, when that’s what he’s supposed to be doing?!”
If you find yourself using or thinking phrases like, “You might not like me but you will respect me,” or “do it now or else you won’t see your phone all weekend,” you might have Authoritarian parenting tendencies. The big problem with Authoritarian parenting techniques is they tend not to work for children with ADHD and related conditions. They can escalate conflict; leave little room for relationship building between the parent and child; and don't nurture the child's budding decisionmaking skills.
Parents with a Permissive style typically prefer to avoid conflict, provide inconsistent or no structure regarding rules and boundaries, and sometimes fall into relating to their kids more as friends than parents. Sometimes Permissive parents have trouble regulating their own emotions and behaviors. They can sometimes be overly helpful (enabling) toward their children and fail to support their kids in learning self-reliance. Sometimes the kid’s failure to take responsibility catches the Permissive parent on a bad day, leading the parent to do something drastic like throw out all the toys when a child won’t clean them up. The parent might later feel bad for overreacting and replace all the toys, leading to a lesson-not-learned.
Permissive parenting is ineffective for a child with ADHD because these children (and children in general) do best with consistency and clearly-set limits. The children end up feeling less safe and don’t take the parent seriously because of the lack of consistency, and the parent can feel drained by allowing so much flexibility.
Authoritative parents have high standards, but have reasonable expectations and take their children’s uniqueness into account when setting those expectations. It can be hard to shift toward being more Authoritative because sometimes parents feel they’re giving kids too much control, or it seems like extra work to always be calm and think of choices for the kids to make. I would argue that making the shift is worth some discomfort at first. You won’t be there to make all your child’s decisions, so it's important to make sure they have this skill. If you’re still not convinced, give some of the techniques a try and see if you find they’re more effective with your child. Kids can certainly surprise us when we put a goal out there, take a step back, and let them take charge of whether they're going to meet it.
If you've been leaning on an Authoritarian style, try thinking less about controlling the situation and more about building the trusting relationship and skills you want to develop with your kids.
Permissive parents, try thinking less about helping and doing things quickly, and more about building good self-care habits for yourself and your kids.
Remember it's about balance between being loving and providing structure, and supporting the growing tide of independence in our kids. Where do you fall on the Authoritarian—Permissive spectrum? Do you think Authoritative practices work best?
Tracey Powell, MS, has over five years of experience as an individual coach/therapist and family coach and is affiliated with Psych Ed Coaches in Northern Virginia. She specializes in working with people with ADHD and related conditions including anxiety, depression, social challenges, and academic/career/personal transitions. Tracey works with children through adults and takes a supportive, action-oriented approach to helping clients meet clearly defined goals. She really enjoys helping parents develop positive parenting practices. Tracey is also a certified volunteer parenting educator with CHADD.
http://creativeadhdparenting.blogspot.com/search?updated-max=2013-05-13T13:25:00-07:00&max-results=1&reverse-paginate=true
Saturday, November 5, 2016
Kids with ADHD are Hungry for Praise: Let’s Feed Their Need
If you’ve visited the Easy to Love but Hard to Raise blog or Facebook page lately, you may have seen the announcement that books 2 and 3 in the “Easy to Love” series are in the works. Book 2 will be titled: Easy to Love but Hard to Teach, and will focus on the many challenges involved in getting our kids with ADHD and other “alphabet soup” diagnoses educated, from the perspective of adults involved in their educations—parents, teachers, school administrators, advocates, and so on. Adrienne Ehlert Bashista (my co-editor and the series’ publisher) and I arrived at the decision to focus on education because in our many interactions with parents, both online and in person, problems with our neurodiverse kids and school seem to be incredibly prevalent, possibly the most prevalent of all special needs parenting issues. We hope that Easy to Love but Hard to Teach will illuminate the depth of the problems our kids face regarding school; offer potential solutions, big and small; and encourage alliances between parents, educators, and others for the sake of our kids.
I have my share of worries about how my daughter, Natalie, gets along at school, but I’ve also learned, through many of you, how wonderful our local school system and individual teachers are in comparison to some others around the country. You’ve helped me see how lucky we are to live in Ames, Iowa; to truly appreciate Natalie’s teachers and school. So, in the spirit of sharing solutions, big and small, I thought I’d brag about Mrs. McCasland, the special education teacher Natalie has worked with in fourth, and now fifth, grades.
For background, read this post (Don’t All of Our Kids Deserve Teachers Like This?) about Natalie’s recent surge in anxiety, and the resulting urge to avoid going to school. One of Mrs. McCasland’s ideas for helping Natalie (and me!) through this rough patch was to schedule a 10-15 minute meeting on Wednesdays, just before the start of school, with Natalie, me, Mrs. McCasland, and Nat’s general ed classroom teacher, Ms. Trautmann, in attendance. The only item on this meeting’s agenda is heaping praise on Natalie for everything she’s doing right at school. We’ve met three times so far. I think this plan is brilliant, in so many ways:
• Our kids tend to be told “no,” corrected, and criticized way too often. Why not schedule a regular time to “catch them being good?”
• As parents, too often we hear only what our children are doing wrong in school. We need to hear what our kids are doing right, just as much as they do.
• In my search for solutions to Natalie’s school avoidance, the best advice I found was to 1) make her go to school, and 2) reinforce that she was successful, that things were okay once she got there. This is a structured way to do just that, and to keep doing so on a regular basis.
• A before-school meeting gets the day off to a positive start. A mid-week meeting allows this to be a check-in about how the week is going, in addition to a cheerleading session to keep a child on a positive track.
Can you imagine suggesting this strategy to a super-negative teacher, and then role-modeling how to do it? Just think what an impact that could have, not just on your child, but on that teacher’s future students.
What do you think the reaction would be if you asked your child’s teachers/school administrators to commit to this kind of meetings? I dare you to try it!
Oh, and in case you’re wondering, despite all of Natalie’s struggles, it’s easy as pie to fill 15 minutes with nothing but good!
For more information about books 2 (Easy to Love but Hard to Teach) & 3 (Easy to Love but Hard to Treat) in the “Easy to Love” series and to see the complete call for submissions, visit drtpress.com.
Kay Marner is the co-editor of the book “Easy to Love but Hard to Raise: Real Parents, Challenging Kids, True Stories.” Marner is a frequent contributor to ADDitude magazine, and writes an ADHD parenting blog, “My Picture-Perfect Family,” for www.ADDitudeMag.com.
Thursday, November 3, 2016
Tips for Better Sleep
Published on Aug 12, 2016
Getting a good night's rest is fundamentally important. Poor sleep hygiene, and sleep interruption, has been found to correlate with risk for coronary artery disease, and even Alzheimer's. What to do to protect your sleep? Try no coffee after noon, and putting your devices, like laptops, tablets and mobile phones, away earlier. For more tips, watch this latest video from Dr. Perlmutter.
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