As a psychologist, parents often ask me what they can do to help their child who has been recently diagnosed with a learning disorder or behavioral diagnosis. My reports make recommendations that can help secure services or can identify accommodations that can be helpful in the school system. But what can parents do to help their children at home?
Often, the parent-child relationship is a bit frayed by the time parents come to me looking for an assessment. That’s because traditional parenting doesn’t work very well for kids with ADHD, anxiety, or another behavioral/emotional disorder. Their brains are wired differently, and rewards and consequences just aren’t working. Parents often come to me mystified that the techniques they used with their other children or that they see their friends using with their children just aren’t working. Often they have already tried to double down on reward charts and consequences, to no avail. What to do?
One recommendation I like to make has to do with building the relationship with your child, and it involves a parenting approach that is sometimes known as “connected parenting.” This is a philosophy that recognizes that the parent-child relationship is worth its price in rubies. It is often somewhat counterintuitive, so here is a basic explanation of this relationship-based, developmentally-attuned, trauma-informed parenting approach.
Connected parents…
Look at behavior as communication of a need. When our kids are acting
out, it’s our job to figure out why. We need to put our detective hats on, figure
out what the child needs, and address it. Even challenging behaviors like
lying, stealing and aggression—these are all ways that a child communicates
that they are deeply vulnerable, and it’s our job to help them, not punish
them.
Look to build the relationship with the child. Our goal is not to coerce
behavior, but instead to build trust, felt-safety, and mutual understanding.
Spending time with our kids and giving them attention and nurturing puts
gas in the relationship tank, and we do that regularly and intentionally. We
don’t believe in ignoring “attention-seeking,” but instead reframe it as
“connection-seeking.” We recognize the need for nurturance and pile on the
connection for a child who needs it.
Use empathy to understand our child’s point of view and listen to their
perspective. We are responsible for our child’s safety, and we set those limits
when we need to. But we seek collaboration and joint problem solving
whenever we can. We say yes often and teach our children how to reach
compromise. We stay on our child’s team rather than becoming an adversary
or engaging in power struggles.
Believe that kids want to do well and our kids are doing the best they can.
Problematic behavior is a sign that a child is struggling, not that they’re being
purposefully willful or manipulative. By thus changing our lens, we can see
that when kids don’t meet our expectations, it’s because they can’t, not
because they won’t. We seek to teach skills, meet needs, offer empathy, and
adjust our own expectations rather than blaming the child for their struggles.
Use a problem-solving approach rather than imposing punitive
consequences. When a child needs more structure, we try to put scaffolding
in place so they can get the supervision, support, help, and learning they
need to be successful. If a child is struggling to use technology responsibly, for
example, we might engage them in a conversation that might result in
limiting their use of technology until they can learn the skills they need to use
it in a way that’s safe and healthy. We avoid taking away screen time as a
punishment, though, just as we avoid the use of time-outs, ignoring behavior,
sticker charts, imposed consequences, and other authoritarian means of
behavioral control.
Work on ourselves. A lot of parents ask for help because they want to learn
how to get their kids to do what they want them to do. That’s an
understandable impulse, for sure! But it’s not what connection is all about. A
lot of parents were raised by authoritarian parents using traditional parenting
methods, and some have found that they’ve done damage to the relationship
with their child by trying to impose their will the same way. Many have found
that it just isn’t working for the particular child we have in front of us.
Connected parents work on adjusting our expectations, learning to better
regulate our own emotions, becoming more patient, meeting our kids where
they’re at, becoming less judgmental, and tending to our wounds from
childhood so that we can give our kids a different experience of childhood
than we had.
There is no magic formula for parenting with connection. There are no
scripts that work every time because parenting is not a mathematical
equation. It’s all about attunement to the unique needs of the child in any
given moment and situation. It takes time to learn to read our child’s cues,
work on ourselves, and develop a unique blend of tools to support each child.
As we do so, parenting with connection maximizes trust, growth, and family
intimacy.
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