Raising Resilient Kids with ADHD: 4 Parenting Shifts That Break the Fragility Cycle

Today, we're diving into something that might just flip your perspective upside down. We've worked with thousands of families. And one thing that we see over and over, kids with ADHD being treated like they are fragile. Like every challenge must be avoided. Every struggle soothed instantly. Every negative emotion erased. And while that comes from love, what we've seen in the long run are anxious, overwhelmed, dependent kids who don't believe they can do hard things. Today, we are changing that. Mike and I believe in raising anti-fragile kids, not fragile ones. What's anti-fragile? It means becoming stronger through stress and challenge. And that's a secret sauce. Our kids can handle more than you think if we coach them the right way. So today, we're giving you the top four shifts to move from fragile parenting to anti-fragile parenting. And each one comes with clear, actionable tools you can use today. So let's jump in. Welcome to the ADHD Parenting Podcast with Mike McLeod of Grow Now ADHD and Ryan Wexelblatt of ADHD Dude. Learn about parenting kids with ADHD from a licensed clinical social worker and speech language pathologist who specializes in ADHD. No fluffy parenting advice, only practical information that will equip you to help your child with ADHD effectively. So step one is going from over accommodation to frustration tolerance. So when people hear the term accommodation, what they're usually associated with is 504 accommodations, IEP accommodations. And often people are under the misunderstanding that all accommodations are good. However, there's a different type of accommodation that is not helpful. And that's called family accommodation or parental accommodation. And what that is is when parents change their behavior to alleviate or avoid their child's temporary distress. So an example of family accommodation would be, you know, if your child says, you know, I'm not eating what you made for dinner, and then you just make them something different or you go out of your way to drop them, you know, off to school first, even though that's not convenient for you, because they'll complain and argue with you if you don't. Or giving them excessive, giving them excessive screen time because you don't want an argument when you tell them to get off. So those are all examples of family accommodation. And what the research clearly shows us is that accommodation makes things worse in the long run, not better. When parents see their child melting down or struggling, the instinct is to jump in and fix it as soon as possible. So whether you're seeing a tantrum, screaming, crying, cursing, sometimes property destruction, sometimes a child's trying to pull you in to the argument or negotiation vortex, they're trying to gain control over the emotional stability over the home. They really often want to feel like they have their parents in the palm of their hands and they're really using their emotions to maintain some sense of control. So there's a tantrum happening, big behaviors, and all the focus is on them. And so much of what parents are learning is that these tantrums, these big behaviors are an issue with parenting. So big behaviors means you're not doing your job as a parent. So parents are being taught to try to end these tantrums as soon as possible. End them quickly because they are negative, they're uncomfortable, they're loud, they're annoying, so you cannot persevere through them. You have to end them quickly. So basically what parents do is they jump in and fix it as fast as possible. But they end up making things easier, removing the struggle, trying to calm everything fast, quickly, rapidly. We get it. We want our kids to be regulated and successful. Ryan, totally understand this. Ryan and I. We've worked with so many families over the years. We get it. That's the frustration, the tantrums, the crying, the screaming. No parent wants that. Every parent, every parent has the same goal of helping their kids to be independent, positive, successful, and enjoying each and every day. Every parent wants that. But we end up unintentionally removing these struggles from them. And what happens over time? The child never builds their frustration muscles. And basically what is your frustration muscles? It's your executive functioning. Executive functioning is self-regulation skills. It's not time management and organization. It's the ability to self-regulate in the face of frustration. The ability to regulate your emotions, your language, your body, your behavior in the face of non-preferred and challenging tasks. The ADHD is not attention deficit disorder. It's self-regulation deficit disorder. So that's what this is all about, is the ability to regulate oneself in the face of stress. So the shift here is instead of constantly accommodating your child, start helping your child with child-sized frustrations, child-sized bits of pieces of stress and challenge. So help your child to tolerate small, manageable frustrations. So the real action tip here is create planned struggle moments. And one of the best ways to do this is with homework or chores. I know school, the school year is coming to an end. So whether it's homework or chores, reading, any non-preferred task you want your child to do over the next couple of weeks of school or over the summer. So if your child asks you for help with a homework assignment or a homework problem, or by doing a chore or any sort of task they don't want to do that's non-instantly gratifying, instead of giving them the answer or doing it for them or getting instantly physically involved, say to them, hey, let's pause for a second. Tell me what part you do know what to do. Tell me what part you can be successful. Show me. Do a little bit more research. Do a little bit more trying before you ask me to jump in for you. So this is building the habit of pausing, which is crucial in executive functions. Because what's that word you hear so often about ADHD? These kids are so impulsive. They're so impulsive. That's because they're lacking the ability to pause and stop and think and aim their behavior towards themselves by using their self-regulation skills. So with the more that we can build in these intentional pauses before jumping in and saving them and helping them, we are building those frustration muscles, which is their executive functioning. And Mike, I think it's important to mention here that many kids with ADHD become highly skilled at learned helplessness and emotional manipulation of their parents when faced with non-preferred or challenging tasks. So when we talk about learned helplessness, what we mean is that the child pretends that they're helpless or can't do something. So in the example Mike just gave of you asking, you know, what part do you understand? A common answer for many kids with ADHD would be, I don't understand any of it. And the reason they do that is because they don't want to put forth the effort into it because putting forth effort into something that is uninteresting to you is challenging for the ADHD brain. And they still need to learn to do that because that is called building resiliency. So often what they will resort to is learned helplessness, pretending that they are less capable than they are. And the other part is emotional manipulation. So saying things like, you think I'm stupid or I can't do it, I'm an idiot or start hitting themselves. And that is incredibly effective, particularly on mothers when they hear their kids starting to make self-defeating comments. So what we want you to understand is that if you rescue your child from learned helplessness, that will not serve them well in the long term because it's denying them the ability to recognize how capable they are. Because the way self-confidence develops naturally for everybody is through recognizing our abilities within ourselves. So if a child isn't taught to persevere through challenges, they're not able to learn how capable they are. So with the best intentions, many parents when they treat their child as fragile, they jump in when the child is exhibiting learned helplessness or when they start making self-defeating comments because they want the parent to feel guilty for them and rescue them. And people have a hard time hearing this because they associate emotional manipulation with something that adults do. This is not adult emotional manipulation. This is developmentally appropriate, particularly for children with ADHD who are trying to avoid things that are not interesting. So what you have to do is create an emotional boundary between yourself and your child when they resort to this learned helplessness or emotional manipulation because if you can't do that, then all the important things Mike just mentioned are not going to happen naturally. Exactly. And I'm so glad that Ryan pinpointed on that because this is a common thing that Ryan and I get from comments on social media that we are basically saying that your kids are bad kids, which could not be more false. All children in the history of the world use emotional manipulation techniques against their parents. It is developmentally appropriate, but what happens with ADHD parenting? It's all of the normal frustrating things that make parenting hard times 100. So you're going to see it magnified and much more often. But it is 100% normal and it is not a character flaw for the child to pull at mom and dad's heartstrings or make them feel bad for them a little bit or kind of use your emotions to get your way. That's what emotional manipulation is. You're manipulating the situation with your emotions and kids do that because they're kids. But with ADHD, you're just dealing with it much more magnified. All right. So Mike, for number two in shifting from fragile parenting to anti-fragile parenting, we have to talk about shifting from high giving low expectations to high empathy, high expectations. One of the things that we have both seen for many years now is that many kids with ADHD and Mike, I might even go as far to say that this is maybe the norm, not the exception of how many kids have no expectations at home whatsoever, except for maybe academic performance. So they are given everything, access to the internet, phones, screens, whatever it is, and nothing is asked of them in return. And then when parents ask them to do something, even a small thing and they say, no, the parent just says, well, I can't get him to do anything or she won't help out. So what do they do? Well, then they just continue to treat them as fragile and do it for them and still give the child all these, you know, expensive privileges that they provide for the child. So what does that teach kids? It teaches them number one, if you don't want to do something that's not interesting to you, you don't have to do it. Number two, it teaches them you can just take, take and take and never have to give or think about the needs of anybody else in our family. And third, what it teaches them most importantly, maybe, is that you are so fragile that I've will not allow you to experience any discomfort, you know, by having expectations of you because I want to protect your feelings. Well, again, when you treat children as fragile or teenagers as fragile, what you are teaching them is that I don't believe in your ability to be successful or to persevere through something that's difficult and I don't believe in your ability to think about the needs of others. That's not a great message for kids with ADHD to learn. And Mike, one of the things, you know, I want to mention is, and I'm sure you get this as well. The amount of comments sometimes I'll get on a post or a video where somebody, and you know, obviously all my content is about, you know, parenting and kids, where somebody will say, well, how do you deal with this with a 42 year old, right? Or you're describing my 36 year old husband. And really what these parents are, what these people are describing is their relationship with an adult who grew up in a home of high giving low expectations and is not great about thinking about the needs of others, you know. So my point is that this is not something that just goes away. It's something that we have to teach kids from a young age. So the shift is you need to start having expectations of your kids. What I teach is there should be two types of expectations. One for behavior at home that could also include cooperation. And the other one is for helping around the house. And I vary expectations based on the child's age. But what did the bigger picture of this is that in order for them to earn the privileges you provide for them, they have to meet these daily expectations on a daily basis. So it's not, you know, do something for five days and then you can have, you know, PlayStation on the weekend. It's that, you know, whatever their currency is, so to speak, whatever motivates them that they can earn that day has to be met with daily expectations. And for younger kids, we can break that up throughout the day. You know, there could be morning expectations after school expectations, evening expectations. But if you do not have expectations for your child, they are not going to learn how capable they are. And more importantly, you are teaching them that they are fragile and that you don't have, you know, much hope in their ability to be successful. Now obviously no parent wants to teach their child that intentionally, but really that is the message they said. And Mike and I had an episode, I think Mike, it was a few months ago now where we read an email from a woman who talked about her husband who grew up in a home with high giving low expectations. And just to summarize it real quick, what she explained was that her husband felt completely incompetent and incapable when they met when he was like 34 or something like that. And he didn't know how to do very basic things because, you know, his parents treated him as that as he was fragile. So I think that's a really important episode, Mike, for everybody to listen to, because I think they need to hear this from, you know, what this looks like in adulthood. So the actionable step here is put daily expectations in place, break them up in between, you know, behavior and cooperation at home, and you have to adhere to them and stick to them. Now expectations should change over time. They are flexible, but it's really important that you have them no matter how much your child complains or makes noise or tries to argue about them. So that's the actionable step there is put daily expectations in place to help them realize how capable they are and stop treating them as anti fragile. I'm sorry, stop treating them as fragile and start treating them as anti fragile. Really and what I have really noticed over all my years of doing this is many parents are often, you know, not even fully aware of the level of expectations placed on their child in the home. I'll never forget one of my coaches and I were doing a parent train phone call with a mom and a dad for a student that we saw at school that struggled a lot at school with not getting tasks done, struggled socially behaviors at school. And we only worked with this child, you know, on the school campus during the school day and it was right around late August before the school year started. So we hadn't seen the student over this over the summer months, over the past couple of months and we were talking to the parents and we basically said, okay, how's the summer been how's everything how's everything gone over the summer? Oh, he was fantastic over the summer didn't hear a peep, you know, no problems at all, no behaviors, no issues, everything's great. And that kind of took me back a little bit. And I was like, wow, like, how did he make so much incredible progress? Then I thought to myself, wait a second, were any demands placed on him at all this summer or was he just did he just have his run of the show? And it turned out basically he had no demands placed on him the entire summer. He was able to stay up as late as he want on video games on his phone on YouTube, sleep as late as he wants, spend the entire summer in his room, no expectations to do chores, be a part of the family, go outside, get a job, you know, interact with peers face to face. He was just able to do whatever he wanted every second of the day. And that's why they saw no behaviors. But once again, long term parenting, having a summer like that is setting you up for having a real mess of a school year when demands are inevitably placed on him again. So anytime you have a demand free summer, you're setting yourself up for one heck of a stressful school year. All right, Mike, do you want to introduce number three? So number three is from protecting from stress to coaching through challenge. So here's the hard truth. Stress is not the enemy. Overwhelm is. If your child can learn how to face stress in a supported way, they grow. That's how we build emotional regulation, focus and grit. So this is the biggest thing. Because we all know as adults, stress never goes away. It's not just this magical thing that we can pull from our child's life from birth to 18 years old, and then all of a sudden they can deal with it when they go off to college or their first entry level job. We cannot save them from stress. Stress and obstacles is an inevitable part of life. They're going to have to work. They're going to have to make an income. They're going to have to pay the bills. They're going to have to make friends and keep friends and complete assignments and complete tasks and start doing things themselves because you can't do things for them when they become a young adult. So the more we save them from stress, the more we are keeping them from developing these skills. So if your child can't learn how to face stress, then that's going to be a problem. We need the emotional regulation, focus and grit. So the shift here is don't shield them from stress. Coach them through it. We need them to develop a positive, motivating, internal voice. That's the foundational skill of executive functioning is being able to have an internal dialogue, the ability to talk to yourself when you are persevering through stress, persevering through something that is boring, frustrating, challenging, hard, something that is new, something that is different. We all do it every second of every day. We are in constant communication with our brains, constantly coaching ourselves through every little moment. Kids with ADHD are often missing the skill or not using it as a positive motivator. This is verbal working memory and the self-directed talk system. We need them to develop a positive, motivating, internal voice that coaches them through things they don't want to do. You can do this by externalizing your internal voice and helping them to be more aware that it even exists, that it's a tool that they can use all throughout their days and to help them persevere through things, delay gratification, work hard now, play later. So the real action tip here is to break big tasks into steps and narrate the process. A lot of parents like to take this role of almost like a sportscaster of sort of like sports casting their kids process. It's like sort of like, okay, you're on step two. I can see it's tricky. Let's figure out the next step together. You don't have to finish the whole thing all at once. So allow them to kind of take the steps, take a break when they need to. Don't give them screens during that break, obviously. Always control the environment, not your child, but you know, help them to break things down in steps and do things as they're able to do it. At the end of the day, kids are always going to do most tasks when they're ready to do it, not when you want them to do it. And oftentimes we create this false timeframe for them to complete tasks. Some things obviously need to be done in a timeframe, like getting out the door on time so you can get to work on time, but some things can wait until the end of the day or before they fall asleep. So the less we nag them about it, the more chances they have of doing it. And it's okay for them to take breaks in between as long as they go back and get it done. At the end of the day, what we have to do is celebrate effort, not perfection. And Mike, one of the things that I want to mention about this is that there are some kids who do much better learning or being coached by somebody other than you. That is not a negative reflection on you at all. Just some kids find it frustrating to be coached by their parent. I can tell you, my son was much more receptive to learning anything from somebody else besides me and he will be the first one to tell you that. So I think one of the things we have to acknowledge is sometimes other people have to step in to help your child because they're just not going to be receptive to learning from you. And again, not a negative reflection on you in any way, shape, or form. It just is how it is. And one of the things, Mike, as you were describing all this that came to mind was how many kids, at least I've seen, who were in traditional school and then the parent for whatever reason decided to pull them out and homeschool them. And they quickly found that the kid was not receptive to learning from them and became very oppositional. And homeschooling, despite the parent's best of intentions, did not turn out to be a good situation from them. That's an example. Sometimes kids have to be coached and learn things from somebody else besides you. Exactly. You are always going to be mom. You are always going to be dad. Your child's never going to see you as a coach, a teacher, a homework secretary, or any of those things. You're always going to be that unconditional love person where they know they can test those boundaries and it's not going to overall negatively impact the relationship like it does with literally everybody else. All right. So for our final one, number four is shifting from my child can't to my child is capable of learning. One of the things that we have seen particularly, I think this has been exacerbated by parenting social media is the saying kids do well if they can. And while there is absolute truth to that saying at the same time, it's been misinterpreted to mean, well, my kid just can't do it. So therefore I have to have low expectations of them. And while that is done with the intention of being compassionate, many people are getting compassion, confused with having expectations or a growth mindset. So saying, you know, well, kids do well if they can and my child just can't do it. That does not serve kids well in any way, shape, or form. So the important thing to understand here is that the stories we tell ourselves about our kids become their identity. So if you just say, you know, and Mike just happened to me this morning, a parent said, my daughter can't self-regulate. And I said, no, she can self-regulate. Maybe she doesn't do it to the extent that she can around you. But of course she has the capacity to self-regulate. Okay. Obviously she wouldn't be in school, you know, or be able to do other things if she didn't have the capacity to self-regulate. So it's really important that we stop, you know, telling ourselves things like, you know, my son's terrible at math or she can't focus or, you know, he just, you know, can't make friends or can't keep friends. Because those stories stick. And when we tell ourselves those things, we get stuck in a fixed mindset. And again, that doesn't serve our kids well. So the shift here is to reframe your language and do it in front of your child. So instead of, you know, kids do well if they can. So my child just can't to, you know, my child is capable of learning this and I'm going to help them learn this or I'm going to enlist people to help them, you know, learn this or develop this skill. So the way we want to do that, a few actionable steps here, you know, replace these limiting labels like can't, won't with, you know, with growth mindset language, such as, you know, they are capable of learning or in the process of learning are developing this skill. And we can say to our kids, you know, that, that, yeah, maybe making friends is difficult for you right now. And you are completely capable of developing and keeping friendships, but there's just some things you need to learn, you know, or you're working on staying calm when things don't go your way. And everybody gets upset and gets mad sometimes, but this is something that, you know, you're going to get better at with time. And that's why we're going to continue to work on this. So those kinds of, those kinds of shifts, they build resilience and self belief and help your child, you know, have a growth mindset instead of a fixed mindset. Exactly. And this whole idea of your kid does well if they can, why that's creating such a false mindset in parents' minds is number one, it eliminates all of the great research on the growth mindset and how it can be strengthened and developed. Cause who gets to determine if a child can do something? One thing I continually see with the families that we work with is that the child is actually far more capable at doing things than the parent even knows the kid. The parent has no idea how many things this child can do. The only problem is he's never been given a chance because he's constantly been saved. And another thing that this whole idea of kids do well if they can, it doesn't take into the mind this whole idea of the path of least resistance. Sure, your child can. Sure, it seems like they can't do something, but is it because that screens are available to them instead or arguing and fighting and conflict is also available to them instead? Oh, oh, he can't do his homework. He can't sit and read a book. He can't go outside and play with friends. He can't do a basic chore. Sure, because the environment has a tons of video game consoles around and his phone is constantly in his pocket and everyone is always responding to his negative behaviors and complaining. So conflict is available to him. So it doesn't take into account all of the various steps that kids are looking for to escape, to avoid, to manipulate the situation before having to actually do. And again, just to wrap this up. You know, people have a hard time when we talk about kids manipulating situations. But if you don't, you know, respect where your child's at developmentally and understand that manipulating a situation, again, developmentally appropriate for their age, if you don't acknowledge that, then essentially what you're saying is my child is a helpless infant who is capable of nothing and completely dependent on me. And that is really an incredible, the most limiting belief you can have about your child. So just keep that in mind. All right. So Mike, to wrap up shifting from fragile parenting to anti-fragile parenting, let's just, you know, summarize these four things we came up with. So why don't you start with number one? Sure. So number one is stop jumping in to fix every struggle. Coach them to build frustration tolerance. Okay. And number two is shift from high giving low expectations to high empathy, high expectations. Number three is to guide your child through stress. Don't shield them from all of it. And our final one is shifting from fixed mindset language, such as kids do well if they can, and my child just can't, to growth mindset language, such as my child is learning or they're capable of learning or doing this. Remember, you are not raising a fragile child. You are raising someone who can adapt, grow and thrive. And this is especially true for our ADHD kids. Yes, they are going to go for that path of least resistance. Yes, they are going to emotionally manipulate, escape, avoid, get dysregulated, far more easier than their neurotypical peers. But they are capable and they can adapt, grow and thrive when we set the bar high, set the expectations high and give them the opportunity to attain these crucial life skills known as executive function. So again, if you feel that you have been treating your child as fragile rather than anti fragile, what we challenge you to do is this week, choose one of these shifts and try it and just see how it goes. And, you know, feel free to let us know, you know, in the comments or you can email us, whatever. And for those of you who would like a question answered in a future episode, you are welcome to submit a question to us at the ADHD parenting podcast at gmail.com. Make sure to include your child's age and medication regimen or if they're not on medication. And what we ask in exchange for answering your question is if you could please leave us, you know, a brief positive review on Spotify or Apple podcast, just take a screenshot of it, send it along with your question and we will answer your question in an upcoming episode. So thank you so much for listening. And let's remember, let's raise anti fragile kids together, not fragile kids. Thanks so much for listening. Thanks for listening. To learn more about Mike's practice, grow now ADHD, please visit his website, grow now ADHD.com. To learn about the services Ryan provides, please visit ADHDdude.com. You can find Mike on Instagram at grow now ADHD and Ryan on the ADHD dude YouTube channel. We'd love to hear your feedback or questions. So feel free to contact us at the ADHD parenting podcast at gmail.com. The ADHD parenting podcast and content posted by grow now ADHD or ADHD dude are presented solely for general information and educational purposes. Our goal is to provide valuable insights and knowledge, not to replace professional services. Mike and Ryan cannot provide clinical consultation or free advice through social media or other forms of communication. The information on this podcast is not a substitute for professional advice. If you or your child have any medical or mental health concerns, please consult your healthcare professionals.