Effective Behavioral Strategies

Praise

Some experts, like William Dodson, M.D., estimate that children with ADHD receive a full 20,000 more ‘negative messages’ in their lifetimes, on average.  Now, research indicates that children with ADHD may not just receive a disproportionate amount of criticism-=they might also be more sensitive to it, thereby avoiding situations where they may be criticized or punished.”    

Researchers find that children with ADHD avoid failure and punishment more than do their peers. 

Frye, D., Additude Online Magazine. http://www.additudemag.com/adhdblogs/19/12163.html  ADHD News Feed posted September 29, 2016 

Play

We recommend that you take time to play or connect positively with your child everyday.

This could be through playing a game, watching a show together, reading together, talking to your child about his or her interests, etc.  A variation of this for teens might be playing a video game together, letting your child teach you a game, how an app works, or showing you something that they are enjoying on Youtube, or just making positive comments while your child plays, draws, creates something, etc.

Parents sometimes have to be mindful to pick activities that are likely to be positive versus negative.  For example:  for the scheduled play/connection time pick reading instead of a board game if game time is often a time of contention in the household.  Otherwise, pick a collaboration based game so everyone is on the same team.

Playing board games at home can also be a great way to help children build needed skills to be successful in their interactions with others in the home and other settings.  

Many families avoid game play because it can be so stressful when children struggle with things such as controlling impulses, tolerating frustration, showing good sportsmanship, or following game rules.

There are many strategies that can help children to be successful in game playing situations.  Some tips include:

1. Play games where everybody wins such as collaboration games
2. Give bonuses for practicing coping/life skills (taking deep breaths, saying “Unlucky. Better luck next time.” etc.)
3. Reward for process versus outcome such as giving bonuses for playing nicely with others instead of focusing on achievements in the game or who won.
4. Change the rules to games when needed.
5. Play games that focus on teamwork.
6. Not even keeping score can be helpful (sometimes switching teams in the middle of a game or multiple team switches also make it difficult for children to track the scores in games). Tip: if you are going to mix up the rules or expectations of a game be thoughtful of what to switch up.  We also prepare kids ahead of time a lot to say there will be unexpected surprises and bonuses throughout a game so kids are less surprised by it.

Play Sportscasting

Another great strategy for play time can be to “sportscast” for your child while playing.  This strategy involves watching your child play and making positive comments just as an announcer would for a sporting event, which creates engagement as your child plays. (Idea from Carolyn Webster-Stratton, The Incredible Years).

Legos example:  you might say something like, “Johnny has now grabbed a red brick. Let’s see where he puts it.  Oh, he has placed it on top of the blue bricks. Let’s see what he grabs next.”  

Building games or activities can also be great ways to connect with children.  Sometimes this might mean sportscasting a child’s play, while other times it might mean building with your child or in parallel play with them in which you play the same thing next to each other, but with less engagement such as you each building your own towers next to each other.

Expectations

Deep down kids are not going to reach expectations when they do not know what is expected of them. This is incredibly true for all kids, but is critical when working with children with special needs including having attention, social and learning difficulties.  

Kids often do best with clear visuals that show their progress and are focused on how they are progressing forward on their goals.  This is especially true for kids with special needs who need more visuals and more positives to see the progress that they are making in certain areas.

In addition, providing clear expectations with rewards for positive choices can also be a great way to improve the climate in a home and build in more positives.  

Don’t assume a child knows all the components of a task or skill. For example: if you want a child to complete a task of brushing their teeth, it is important to clearly show all the steps of brushing teeth such as get out toothbrush and toothpaste, spread the right amount of toothpaste on the brush, brush each section for specified time, rinse mouth, put away toothpaste and toothbrush, etc.

Children also in no way should be rewarded for every choice that they make. It is perfectly reasonable to have multiple behaviors in the home that are just expected and will not be positively reinforced with a bonus or reward. For example, in the home setting it is helpful and healthy to talk about how contributing to the family is a positive family value and how every family member does some chores to help out. The types of chores might vary based on age and ability level, but everybody helps out. The first chore or two might be something that everybody does without bonuses, but then you can also add in that if kids want to earn extra money or extra privileges that they can complete additional tasks around the house that are not the typical chores as an incentive. 

List out behaviors in positive language for children and set children up for success in your reward plans.  Listing behaviors positively means stating an expectation as being “kind in words” versus saying “no disrespectful language“.

There are multiple reasons that listing behaviors in positive terms is important.  

• First off, this is one more way to place our focus on positivity and what we would like to see versus what we want to avoid.
• Also, there is research that for children with some types of learning and processing difficulties that make it harder for children to process what you are saying when speaking in negative terms.  To us, a classic example is how lifeguards say “walk” instead of “don’t run.”  The reason for this is a child can instantly start to process to slow their body down to walking with the direction to “walk,” while it takes longer to process that a child should walk when they are told what not to do instead of what to do.

Tips! 

• We recommend setting a certain time of day where tracking and feedback is naturally built into the schedule.  This could be at a set daily time such as during or after dinner or before bedtime.  For certain types of reward programs it might be right before your child would earn a potential daily bonus.
• For tracking behaviors such as follow directions, being kind in words to a sibling, speaking in a calm tone, etc. it often is best to pick a time in the day to track this specific behavior for 30 minutes during the morning routine or during chore time.  Otherwise it can be too hard to give feedback, especially when a child shows the behavior intermittently.

Non-Preferred Activities:

In our work with families we often find that an area where dishonesty occurs regularly is having children lie about a non-preferred activity.  We believe this is so common for children with attention and learning difficulties since lying in this case is a means to try and avoid a non-preferred task such as completing homework or a chore since this is often such a painful and stressful time for children.  Avoidance can often be a key function of behavior for many non-preferred activities.  

Strategies to Combat Non-Preferred Activities: 

We find what typically works best for children is to get out of the trap of asking children if they have homework or not or if they have done their chore yet since this type of questioning creates an opportunity for children to say they don’t have homework or that they have already completed a chore when they haven’t.  Instead, we recommend for parents to set a clear structure for how homework assignments or chores are handled everyday. 

This structure starts with statements such as

• “Show me what you have for homework today”
• “Show me your progress on your chore.”

versus questions such as

• “Do you have homework today?”
• “Did you complete your chore yet?” 

Making it a requirement that each assignment or task is shown directly to the parent each day as a step of the homework time or responsibilities structure also helps versus just letting children say their work is complete.  

Children will show through their behavior by their consistent successes in these areas that they are ready for more autonomy and less checking up from parents. 

Continue to teach your child important family values regarding honesty.

To be clear, we are not recommending that you don’t teach your children family values regarding honesty and give your child practice in this area, but we have found that often honesty improves for children over time (often in conjunction with more developmental brain growth).  In addition, we feel that the negativity associated with creating negative daily interchanges with kids around non-preferred activities due to an extra component regarding honesty often upsets the 5 positives to 1 negative ratio that we are always trying to hit.  The more that a parent can stack the deck in their favor the better.