Kevin & Scott Part 2 of 3: When Homework is Frustrating for Everyone

Homework is a time of frustration in many families.  And there are so many root causes that contribute to the defiance that often comes with homework.   In today’s episode, which is the second session with Kevin and Scott, Leslie discusses and assesses what’s going on and what to do with those homework issues.  Kevin and Scott are parents to 7 year old Gavin and 4 year old Arthur -  two neurodivergent boys, who are trying incredibly hard to be the best parents they can be.  Leslie points out that perhaps everyone can try different, not harder.

Time Stamps

3:40 Varying your skills is often very effective - mix it up a little

4:13 The opposite of self-compassion is self-deprecating and self-judgements 

6:00 Using your skills intentionally makes the skill for effective

6:50 Family value of doing things together as a family

Children avoid parts of their homework that’s hard for them.  

• The child may have difficulty admitting that they made a mistake

9:40 Review of the should’s from the homework for Kevin and Scott

10:39 How to believe your own compassionate statement

11:35 Looking at yourself before you became a parent

14:24 Should-ing yourself or your child often turns into shaming

15:20 The pressure of parenting

16:38 Validate your thoughts but don’t attach to those thoughts

17:40 We don’t have to try harder, we have to try different

18:40 The many uses of mindfulness 

23:03  What to do when your child refuses to do school work

• Give your child information about what happens to them
• Put it on paper so it is tangible and visual

26:08 Many kids don’t want to talk about a past situation that didn’t go well

27:00 Homework is an opportunity to “see” who your child is and to help them understand themselves

28:15 Assess why is your child struggling with homework

31:30 Transitions may be challenging for kids with ADHD

32:40 Being seen and understood creates connection between parent and child

• Connection is the opposite of feeling shame

34:03 Helping your child when they make a mistake and get upset

• “Can you give yourself permission to make a mistake”
• “That really threw you into emotion mind”
• Ahead of time, “are you prepared to make some mistakes” or “can you handle making a mistake today”

37:44 Going to school for the neurodivergent child is extra exhausting. Some accommodations may be needed to create an environment that is supportive

39:20 New ideas and strategies may be refreshing in a the family dynamic

40:42 Keys to parenting when homework is problematic

42:30 Defiance is not the measure of being a bad parent.  Remember defiance is helping you understand your child

Leslie-ism: Don’t try harder, try different! 

For a full transcript of this episode and more information about the host visit https://lesliecohenrubury.com/podcasts/ . You can also follow Leslie’s work on Facebook,  Instagram, TikTok and YouTube. Join the conversation with your own questions and parenting experiences.

Credits: Is My Child a Monster? is produced by Alletta Cooper, Camila Salazar, and Leslie Cohen-Rubury. Theme music is by L-Ray Music. Transcriptions by Eric Rubury.  A special thanks to everyone who contributes their wisdom and

Transcript

Kevin  0:02  

With his spelling words. It sometimes goes okay for the first word or two, and then if he encounters a mistake, that's where things kind of become more challenging,

Scott  0:11  

like he'll misspell a word and realize it, and then he'll grab the paper and rip it and throw it. And I don't want to do this.

Leslie Cohen-Rubury  0:22  

It's not just kids who get upset about homework. Sometimes, the parents are equally frustrated, and they don't always understand the Defiance around homework, defiance that's often rooted in the feelings of I'm not good enough, and understanding the defiant behavior can help everyone get their homework done. I'm Leslie Cohen-Rubury, and this is is my child a monster, a parenting skills podcast where you get to listen in as real parents and caregivers share their trials and tribulations in coaching sessions recorded live, and know your child is not a monster, and neither are you. Today is my second session with Kevin and Scott, parents of neurodivergent boys, seven year old Gavin and four year old Arthur. Gavin's having an especially hard time with homework, and it's stressing out the whole family. We spent a lot of time trying to understand what's going on, both for Gavin and for Kevin and Scott as they manage their own emotions around this family stress, we also revisit the pressures of expectations and their feelings of insecurity and uncertainty. A big part of what I teach is how to use mindfulness strategies to help your child understand themselves. So today, we focus a lot on how to help Gavin better understand his own behavior, which in turn, will help him regulate his big emotions. So now, as a reminder, all of the names and identifying information have been changed, and though I'm a licensed clinical social worker, this show is for informational purposes only and is not a substitute for therapeutic intervention. So let's get started. Hi Kevin, hi Leslie. Hi Scott. Hi Leslie. All right, it's nice to have you back because it's been a few weeks, so I'm curious. From our first session, you know what? What you feel like you've been working on, I gave you a little actual homework, but I'm curious what you're working on. You might have worked on what I asked you to or you might have gone off in your own direction.

Kevin  2:34  

There were a couple things. So one thing we were working on is kind of changing up our morning routine a little bit, and I think that has gone okay. We kind of like made a bag of different activities to keep the kids busy in the morning, and have been drawing out something from that every day. And that's helped a little bit. I think one thing I think we learned pretty quickly is that for Gavin, the external motivation is a big helper for keeping him focused. So we tried relaxing that a little bit, and I'm glad we tried it, but it did lead to some rougher mornings, so we went back to doing that, and things have been going a little bit more smoothly again since we've gone back to that, and I think that's still helping.

Leslie Cohen-Rubury  3:20  

Wow. Okay, I got lots to say, but Scott, I'm sort of curious if you want to add to that or add additional comments.

Scott  3:30  

Yeah. I mean, I think Kevin covered most of it. It has been going a little bit better since we started. You know, throwing in the variety, in hindsight, it seems sort of silly, because that we didn't think of that sooner. We tried so many different things, and it would work for a while and then stop working. So now it's sort of like, well, of course, if we just mix it up a little, it depends on the activity that gets drawn that day. You know, sometimes one of them is happy with it and the other one isn't. But I think we've been flexible with it, and it's been okay most days.

Leslie Cohen-Rubury  4:05  

Okay, so if you recall, we talked a little bit about compassion for yourselves. Well, what's the opposite of compassion? Self Compassion,

Scott  4:16  

self deprecation, yeah,

Leslie Cohen-Rubury  4:18  

yeah. Self criticism, that negative self talk, the self judgments, and one of the things that it's really actually a basic skill in dialectic behavior therapy that I really love is practicing taking a non judgmental stance. When we get really critical of ourselves, it makes it harder to do the job you're doing. So we do want to practice having it taking a non judgmental stance towards ourselves and towards our children, and I want to come back to that later when it comes to your kids, because, believe it or not, even if you which is impossible, you're never judgmental towards your children, right? That's. Impossible. So even if you were never judgmental towards your children, but really harsh on yourself, you know you're hard on yourself, they're gonna get that, and they're gonna pick up more on how you speak to yourself, even if it's internal, they still get that you didn't do it well enough. You should have done it better. And so we really want to watch our internal judgments as well as our external judgments. Okay, so variety is spice of life. You tried it and you this is where the judgment came in. We should have known earlier parenting. Sometimes I think, what am I doing? Because I really just teach people the obvious, but the obvious. If it was obvious, we would see it, but we don't see it. So don't ask me why. Some scientists can to understand why we miss the most obvious things. So we miss the obvious all the time. So what you want to do is variety, even though it makes sense to you, it's like, wow, why didn't we think of that sooner? It's It was obvious and you were doing it, but now we're making it intentional, beautiful. Making something intentional makes it work a little better, brings a little bit of more understanding to the situation. So you did that. So now you have your bag of tricks. You're trying to be flexible with it. Is it possible because you said, sometimes the kids argue over which one. Sometimes I think it's fantastic that they have to share one strategy. Have you ever tried using two strategies? Sometimes, I don't think it should be done all the time, but have you ever tried letting them pick their own strategy?

Kevin  6:36  

There were one or two days where we tried to have one of them eat in a different room, and that kind of helped a little bit. Most of the things we have in there are things that we do together, like like an I Spy game or something like that. So

Leslie Cohen-Rubury  6:47  

okay, all right, so it's bringing them together. It's bringing all of you together, and that's a major value of yours. You're both nodding your head. That's lovely, because it's upsetting. What you said last time is it's really upsetting that they start out playing and it ends up with teasing and hurting and getting upset. So we definitely like the idea that you're working towards your value of being together, enjoying together time. I love that. Okay, anything else from our last session? Well, one thing you

Kevin  7:21  

had asked us to do is think about our shoulds, and I think we have put some thought into that. I know I have some both for myself and for the boys that I've been kind of thinking about for me, and I think maybe for both of us, Scott, you can maybe jump in too. Is sometimes I think we feel like we should maybe be doing more of the school or learning activities, and we have a really hard time doing that. Gavin, especially, he's at an age where he is getting a little bit more of like teacher sending home lists of words and suggesting, let's practice this for the spelling test next week and that kind of thing. And it's a real struggle to even initiate any of those activities with him.

Leslie Cohen-Rubury  8:07  

Okay, Scott, did you want to add something there,

Scott  8:13  

the thing that comes to mind when we're talking about that subject? Well, so a I would add that anytime we even sort of bring it up with Gavin, like, hey, maybe we should work on something immediately, almost University immediately becomes very resistant to it. And that's like, actually one of the things we were going to ask about this week. That's like, really a pattern we've noticed with him. It's just avoiding anything that society has been uncomfortable, whether that's having to practice and learn to do something, or, you know, admit you've made a mistake, or, you know, deal with the feelings that come with that. We see that a lot, and the more we've talked about it and thought about it, I see that as being a big part of the issues. Okay, having with him.

Leslie Cohen-Rubury  8:59  

Okay. So I want to come back to we said we're going to come back to the judgments and what I'm going to call shame for kids. I'm just making a list for myself. I want to come back to the schooling issue and the idea that you know that, that he's saying no, that you're getting what might be called defiance, and I want to take a deeper dive into understanding that. But here's what I wanted to point out. My ADHD just now took us down the track away from the question we were talking about, the shoulds. Shoulds absolutely Kevin, you are on me, and you're like Leslie, you're not maintaining focus. Okay, so one of the things I practice with my ADHD is really how helpful mindfulness is. We're gonna come back to that as well anytime we're talking about schooling or just other functioning, especially for Gavin, but probably both kids. But now let's return with my mindfulness to the homework that you. Were reviewing about the shoulds. You have some shoulds about I should be doing more. We should be doing more in this area. Great. Anything else you want to say on your shoulds? Kevin,

Kevin  10:11  

that's the one that I struggle with most. I mean, for me, I think it's I can repeat to myself, you're doing what you can and you're doing the best you can for me, the more struggle is, how do I get that other gut, emotional part of myself to believe that a little more if there's, I mean, I know repeating it over and over and sticking with that will help, but that's my struggle. I think, okay,

Leslie Cohen-Rubury  10:36  

beautiful. So the quick answer to that is yes. There's dialectic thinking that says you don't have to get rid of it. We all have self judgment, you know, it's to acknowledge it. Maybe turn the volume down a little bit on that voice in your head. Just turn the volume down. Say, Yes, you know, I wish I should, I should, and I'm doing the best I can. So you hold both you hold, I want to do more and I wish it. You know, well, you were saying, holding the compassion, which is, I'm doing the best I can, and sometimes that's really hard, and sometimes I want to do better. So holding that dialectic is really the way I hold, you know, trying to finally believe it. And as you said, saying it over and over again. You know, stepping into it to believe it, a little bit more each time will actually happen. The more you say it. You have to fake it till you feel it, which is that saying that makes sense, but you gotta do it Okay. Before children, did you have any shoulds?

Kevin  11:41  

I'm sure we did, but it feels like a different lifetime. Wait a

Leslie Cohen-Rubury  11:46  

minute, we don't want to forget that lifetime. There were many, many years you're not five years old, so there were many years that you spent as an individual before you became a father. So I want you to remember that part of yourself. Did you still have a lot of shoulds?

Scott  12:02  

I'm sure I did. I feel like it was a little easier to sort of focus on those or work on those shoulds, so it was more internal and more No, just me or me and Kevin, versus having to convince the kids to go along with it, if that makes sense.

Leslie Cohen-Rubury  12:24  

Absolutely. And Kevin, what do you think about that part of your life before children came into your life?

Kevin  12:31  

Yeah, I'm sure I did. I'm struggling to name the specific examples of what they were. I'm sure thing I had those ideas, probably work related kinds of things. Okay,

Scott  12:47  

I as you're talking about as I'm thinking about it too, I feel like some of my shoulds, having kids has made it easier for me to sort of put my foot down. So like, I think one of my shoulds is, you know, work to live, don't live to work. And so, like, now, you know, I think I probably worked more than I really wanted to before having kids. And now having kids, I've had to cut back a little bit, really out of necessity, but I'm more willing to, wow, sort of put my foot down and say no to work related things,

Leslie Cohen-Rubury  13:22  

that's a big deal. Again. That's that's living according to your values a wonderful way. We tend to have happier lives, more gratitude in our lives when we work towards our values, live towards our values, live in our values. That's beautiful. Okay, so, yeah, there are some shoulds. They're not. I was just curious if there were a lot like I said, it's a very common thing, but children, when we when we're shooting ourselves and when we're shooting our children's you should do this, you should do that. It really is very natural to say that right to our kids, like, you should be doing this. You should be doing that. It just sounds so normal to be a parent like that. Can you imagine if they counted? How many shoulds we each did every year? Okay, 5 billion. We want to reduce it from 5 billion to 4 billion this year. Okay, so the idea is that the shoulding turns into often shaming, and that's why I wanted to bring some attention to you, because you were shooting yourself, you're not even telling the kids you should do this, or maybe you were, and at the same time, it gets conveyed to them. So was there anything else before we jump into some of these other things?

Kevin  14:39  

One should that I find myself applying to Arthur sometimes, and I'm trying to let go of it, and maybe I should give myself some more compassion for having a harder time of letting go of it. But a lot of things like, you should be able to do this at your age, and he's got some delays and motor skills and that kind of thing. And for me, I. Seeing him struggle with things that, again, quote, unquote, should be able to do at this particular age is something, again, that I catch myself thinking, and I'm again trying to let go of it a little bit more

Leslie Cohen-Rubury  15:15  

okay. And where does that pressure come from? For you? Does it come from? My child should be like other children. We talked about comparison last time. Does it come from? What will people think if my child's not doing it? Will people think my child's not good enough, or we're not good enough, or whatever? Does it come from? Fear? What if my child doesn't develop that like He's four years old, you know, will he be seven and still not being running the way he should, or riding a bicycle or whatever? So, does it come from fear? Does it come from, you know, those, any of those choices for you?

Kevin  15:55  

I think so. I think it's partially, you know, the anxiety. Is he ever going to develop these kinds of skills? Where is he going to be in the future? And maybe also a bit of, you know, I want to be able to do things that I, as we talked about, imagined us doing together someday, and we're not there yet, at least. So I'm sure it's a combination of a lot of those things,

Leslie Cohen-Rubury  16:17  

okay, and that, you know, again, there's nothing wrong with whatever thought pops up in your head like we're a thinking machine. Our brains are working all the time, and they throw thoughts out all the time, and we have feelings that come up and I want to validate, yeah, I have that thought, but I don't have to believe every thought I have, and I don't have to attach to every thought I have, some thoughts, if they are fear related, can be sticky thoughts, like, what if he doesn't develop this or what if we can't do this together? So learning, and this brings us back to mindfulness practices, learning that a thought is just a thought, and that I can watch a thought pass. It comes in and it goes out, is similar to like watching clouds or throwing a go to a stream and throw a stick and watch the stick go. So we want to understand that thoughts are like passing clouds, that it may get a little messy if I try to attach to it, and so giving yourself permission to say, Oh, I just had a thought, notice it and let it go. So that's really good work, because all of these thoughts are popping in your head, and they will cause pressure, and they will cause angst as parents, and they will burn you out as a parent, worrying and trying hard, too hard. Not I want you to try hard, but oftentimes, as parents, we don't need to try harder. We just need to try different, which is what I taught you last time, right? Let's do something different. You're trying so hard, I'm not going to make you try harder, right? That is the last thing I want to do. You guys are trying so hard, and I don't even know you that long, and I can see that Sure, I think we are trying pretty hard. Yeah, I knew I was right. Okay, so you're trying really hard. I don't need you to try harder, but different is fine. And this idea of noticing the thought and letting them pass, giving yourself permission to just, yeah, I wish you know, I'm a little worried about that for the future. It's just a thought, because we don't know what's going to happen the future, and most of the time the statistics show our worries don't pan out right. We tend to go to the extreme in our worries. Okay? So we're coming back to mindfulness a few times, and I like that, because I want to teach mindfulness as a practice for yourselves as parents, but really the gift of mindfulness for ADHD and autism, so really important skill for all of US, and especially to start teaching them really, really early.

Scott  19:03  

Oh, no, we already tried work on that with them.

Leslie Cohen-Rubury  19:07  

How do you do it? That sounds great.

Scott  19:09  

Lately, we probably haven't been practicing as much as we should.

Leslie Cohen-Rubury  19:13  

Oh, there's a should keep going.

Scott  19:18  

Don't worry, lately we haven't been doing, we'll do some, like, family yoga sessions and, like, just, you know, breathing sessions, trying to focus on our breath and that sort of thing. Just kind of basic mindful practices.

Leslie Cohen-Rubury  19:31  

Excellent. Any ideas, Kevin, about what you do mindfully with the kids?

Kevin  19:37  

Yeah, those same, similar kinds of things, just, but like, Arthur gets pretty hyped up, especially around bedtime. So last like last night, for instance, we did a few minutes of breathing, and that seems to help chill out so we can focus on books.

Leslie Cohen-Rubury  19:49  

Okay, so actually, one myth about mindfulness is that mindfulness, the goal of mindfulness, is to calm someone down, or calm ourselves down. Yeah. That's actually a myth. That's not true. That's not the ultimate goal. It is often a lovely byproduct of mindfulness, but it is not all the goal. The only goal of mindfulness is mindfulness itself, right? We practice it for the sake of practicing it. So here's a few new ideas, maybe new, maybe not, but a few other ideas to add to your bag of tricks for mindfulness. So if one of the kids, let's say Gavin, is putting on his shoes, you can say just in passing, hey, Gavin, here are your shoes. Put your shoes on mindfully. Hey, Gavin. Let's go to the car. Let's walk mindfully to the car. Now you can add a little bit more by saying, let's count our steps as we walk to the car. Because if I, and I use this with adults, if I have a very anxious person who doesn't want to go to a party or doesn't want to go to school, right, I might say, because what's happening with anxiety is it's the I can't do that big thing, but we want to break it down into small steps that they can do. So I'm going to say, let's mindfully walk to the car. And I'm not going to say to get to the party to go, you know, let's mindfully walk to the car by counting our steps. And they can do that because they count their steps, right? So are those new ideas. You know, Here's your water. Can you mindfully pour water in everybody's glass? Makes sense? Yeah, I like those ideas, yeah. So really, you're just adding the word to living life. Because why not? That's how I developed. Part of my mindfulness practice is I just said, Okay, Leslie, mindfully come in the house and put your keys away. You know, we want to do that where we can just mindfully do things a little bit like that. Does that make sense? Yeah, definitely. That brings mindfulness into everyday living. 

[Music: Acoustic Motivation by Coma-Media]

Leslie Cohen-Rubury  22:00  

Okay, let's go with, no, I don't want to do the homework. No, I don't want to practice. Okay, what's that like? Give me an example. Well,

Kevin  22:16  

like with his spelling words that he gets, they get sent home with a list of words. And I feel like we do get a little bit of a mixed message from the teachers. On one hand, there's a bit of this is supposed to be home fun. Don't feel too much pressure. And then another message saying, Here's a list of spelling words. Make sure you practice this with your with your kids. So a I think we're getting a little bit of a mixed message there, which is a little bit frustrating. But when we do try to bring it up with him, it's very difficult to start. It sometimes goes okay for the first word or two, and then if he encounters a mistake, that's where things kind of

Scott  22:59  

become more challenging, sometimes very quickly, like, he'll he'll misspell a word and realize it, and then grab the paper and rip it and throw it. And I don't want to do

Kevin  23:09  

this. Yeah, there's not a there's not a lot of middle ground. And one thing that I struggle with is I don't want to push him when things are like, sometimes we all just need to take a break and it's too much, and that's totally fine. It's hard to find a balance, though, because I I also want to show him and help him learn that he can do difficult things. And so if we, if we always just say, Okay, this is too much right now, I don't want to send the message that I'm not capable of handling handling it when things get challenging. But it seems like there's a very narrow zone where it flips from this is easy. We're working on something that I already know really well and don't need to practice. That's the kind of thing that usually he's more willing to do, and then very quickly slips to the other side of this is impossible. I can't do it. Destructive behavior and that kind

Leslie Cohen-Rubury  24:00  

of thing. And you described it in such a way that I would love you to describe it to him in the exact same way. Does he know that he goes from extreme A and then jumps over to extreme B? Does he know that? And I would actually draw that out for him. Does he know that? He

Kevin  24:19  

probably does. We haven't explicitly tried to have that conversation. Okay with him? Part of it is maybe because having that conversation also is a trigger.

Leslie Cohen-Rubury  24:29  

Okay? So that's where I say talk to him when you have a captive audience, when you're in the car, when you're you know right before his friend is coming over, if he has a friend that might come over so he's looking forward to something, so you want to do it when you think he's more likely to be able to handle that conversation. The other thing that'll make it more palatable for him, if that's the word so he can accept the conversation, is on paper and pencil. It's the indirect communication of here's a. Picture is so much easier for a lot of people, and so I don't know that'll work, but here we go again. Experiment, experiment, experiment, right? So I would try to put it on a piece of paper and I draw, you know, cute little drawing where, on one side, it's a really fun little heart, which is, I feel great. This is easy, those two thoughts, and on the other side, maybe lightning bolts or something really dramatic over that. And on that side it says, I can't do this. I refuse to do this. Or something like whatever his thoughts are that you guessed, and you did a great job, Kevin guessing what might be his thoughts. So I'd put that down, and then I'd hand it to him, and I'd say, is this how it feels when you try to do some homework. You're either in over here, in the heart zone, or whatever you want to call it the rainbow zone, or over here you want it, you're in the, you know, the thunderstorm zone. You know the sunny weather versus the thunderstorm. Does that the way it feels. And so now he has some words to describe it, and if you make it again, you make it more pleasant for him. It's I understand that going back and talking about something he can't do well is like nails on a scratch board. He doesn't want you to talk about things that don't go well, because then he has to re experience that, and that feels awful. And there's many children that feel that way. Okay. So the first thing is, let's see if we can give the information in a way that he can hear it.

Kevin  26:30  

Yeah, that's definitely

Scott  26:32  

him. Okay. I like the drawing idea too great, because he he will sit down and draw with us sometimes, and so I feel like that would be a good way to try

Leslie Cohen-Rubury  26:42  

and then you can say, this was my attempt to draw. What happens if this drawing isn't if I didn't get it right, would you show me what it looks like when you sit down and do your homework? What's important here is not whether he knows his spelling words or not, but that he understands what it's like for him to do homework. We want to as parents, the most important thing parents think it is to fix their child and make sure they do the homework, and you stay on the surface. And I'm like, your child's gonna have homework from now till I gave you homework last week. So I don't know what age you are, but you're still doing homework, right? So yeah, one of the things your goal is to help him understand how he relates to it, understands who he is in relation to it. These are all important things that that's your goal. And I think the teacher is sending you both messages because both are true. We want to make sure we keep it fun at this age, and we want to help him understand that it'll help him. And homework is important. So I would not get stressed out by that. My recommendation is get rid of both those ideas, or really just try to let both of those exist and live out there. And now let's focus on guiding your child into understanding his relationship to homework and more about what happens when he does do it. Okay, so now let's assess the piece. Why is it hard when he makes some mistakes? Because we know when he makes a mistake, it's over. Why is that hard for him, I don't know.

Scott  28:23  

I understand it feels like it's, I mean, it feels like he's been very reactive like that from the very beginning. So I I'm not sure why. Where the root of it

Kevin  28:35  

is okay, I think it may bring up feelings of shame for him, because I think we also see similar reactions, even when we if we'll say something like, Hey, I noticed, you know, I asked you a few minutes ago to get your shoes on. I noticed you haven't done that yet. We get similar reactions in that kind of situation. And I think, again, I think it just brings up feelings of shame for him about, oh, I forgot, and that's a mistake. And whether the mistake is about homework and spelling a word wrong, or reading a word wrong or forgetting that he was asked to do something earlier, whatever it is, I think it, like I said, makes him feel bad about himself, and it's uncomfortable to feel that way.

Leslie Cohen-Rubury  29:16  

Yeah, it's a very, very difficult emotion, and it's very highly associated with ADHD when, you know, for kids, I mean, I'm a perfect example. I absolutely believed that I was bad, that I was stupid, that I couldn't, you know, couldn't get along with people, because my ADHD had big emotions, and I was a loud person, and I was on the go all the time, and I had learning on. I also had learning disabilities. So all of that just let me with the UN, you know, totally the belief system about myself, which is a myth, not a fact, that I'm a bad person, right? And so it can come. From our environment, where our environment is telling us there's something wrong with you, or it could be much subtler, where it's like, Okay, everybody, let's go. We're going ice skating, or whatever it is. And everyone gets out the door, but Gavin's still trying to find his shoes, and Gavin goes, well, why did you know, even if he's not aware of it consciously, he's like, everybody else is out the door. What's wrong with me? What's wrong with me? So there's the shaming, overt shaming that parents can do right, which we all do. We should our children. We say, you know, even you said it so beautifully, Kevin, you said I noticed that you still haven't gotten your shoes on. That is just, that is just beautiful way of putting it. It's not shaming it all, and your child can think, what's wrong with me? So we can overtly shame our children. We can overtly shame our children. Unintentionally, we can inadvertently shame our children. I mean, there's so many different ways of doing it, and the bottom line is, some children just can start to feel badly about themselves when they can't do what they what their parents want them to do, right? They just want to make their parents happy, and they're not doing it, and they don't even know why. So one of the things you can do is you can actually help him. Hey, I'm going to ask you to put your shoes on. But you know what? That's not easy. That is not you may think it's easy because Arthur puts his shoes on really fast, or I put my shoes on really fast. But I want to let you know that I know it's not easy. When I say to you, can you put your shoes on? One of the things we know about children with ADHD is focus. So they may be hyper focused on what they are doing, or they just may have difficulty transition. It's really hard to pull all of my energy away from finishing my, you know, granola bar and moving into putting on my shoes right? Like that's not easy for him. And so I don't know what it is. I don't know if it's transitions. I don't know if it's the shame getting in the way you might feel badly about yourself and think that you don't do it right. And you can guess these things with him, but I would first acknowledge I bet it's really hard when I ask you to put your shoes on. That's not an easy task for you. What do you think he might feel if he heard you say that to him?

Scott  32:17  

I'd hope he'd feel some like relief, or like, have some space. Yeah, I'm seeing him roll his eyes at me,

Kevin  32:26  

and that's exactly what I was gonna say. But I think he would roll his eyes externally, but I think internally it might,

Leslie Cohen-Rubury  32:33  

Oh, I'm so glad you recognize that difference, and I just talked over you. You said it might help him feel seen. So even though he might have you rolling it, you know you're he'll roll his eyes at you, right? Because that's a reaction, but the feeling that he may be left with is they get me helping your child to feel understood is what causes connection for your child, and is one of the greatest parenting values that I have is that to raise your child with that sense of connection that will wipe away whatever shame they may carry around, because you can't be bad and be connected, right? It actually is evidence against that you are a bad person. So that's a strategy, and there are many other strategies for helping him understand. Now let's go back to this school. Why does he tear up his paper? What could you say? In the similar vein to putting on your shoes may be difficult for you, what could you say when he rips up his paper and he gets the word wrong?

Kevin  33:35  

In the past, we've tried to just remind him that mistakes are part of the learning process. We even tried, like, when he gets things right, hey, you're not making enough mistakes. Go back and make more. But I love the humor. Yeah,

Leslie Cohen-Rubury  33:48  

so giving letting him know that everyone makes mistakes. What I will say about that is, I don't want to have to prescribe what you say, but I'm going to prescribe a sentence that I think works incredibly well over time for them to hear. Can you give yourself permission to make a mistake? He will probably not give himself permission to make a mistake until he's 25, maybe 18, if we're lucky, right? But if you start now, if you don't start now, it won't be till he's 50. But if you start now, he will hear that over and over and over again, and he will finally click one day where he goes, You know, I just made a mistake, and that's what we're looking for. So I would use that line over and over and over again when he tears up his paper. Can you give yourself permission to make a mistake, right? I might also say, Wow, that really threw you into a motion mind. Leave it at that. I love when I say that to a you know, say to a client, I say, Hey, I think you're in emotion mind. And they relax. Oh, yeah, I am in emotion mind. How about that? I. Yeah, you know. And I've talked about the three states of mind with dialectic behavior therapy, just thinking about that, yes, it's it's okay. Someone, sometimes we get really angry. Don't tell me, I'm an emotion mind, but that's the surface. That's the eye rolling, but underneath, it's educating him. Yeah, I am an emotion mind, and I can do something about that. So we want to do simpler offering him simpler strategies so that there's more learning that can come Wow. That might be difficult for you. That's your emotion, mind talking. Or can you give yourself permission to make a mistake, like, I'm going to leave it simple at the same time, there was one other thing I want to say about him making a mistake. We might want to think about prior to doing homework. You might say, Hey, are you in the mood to get some right and make some mistakes? I want to know. I used to play games with I had children therapy groups. You know, I'd have a little group of kids, and before we played a game, because a lot of it was play, but so much wonderful stuff comes out of play. We play a game. And before I say, Hold on everybody, I want to know if you can check in with yourself and find out if you're okay if you'll lose today. And it was the cutest thing in the world. Some kids said, Yeah, I'm okay if I lose today. And they probably were. They probably felt good enough about themselves. And I remember one kid, you know, would often say, I don't think I'm okay if I lose today. So I said at that point, okay, you have a choice. Do you want to play anyway and see how you handle losing, and think about what you can do if you do lose, to help yourself, or would you like to observe the game, or be the scorekeeper, or hand out the money, or whatever game we were playing? And they said, I'd really like to be the banker. I think we were playing Monopoly. I'd really like to be the banker. I said, Okay, so you get to be the banker, and we'll play the game, and he gets to see people having fun at winning and losing, so that he will one day be able to say, You know what I'm gonna I'm gonna play, and if I lose, I am okay. So we can teach children how to lose. That's one way. And setting a child up to say, here's what's gonna this is what's gonna happen. Do you need some strategies in case this happens? How do you want to handle it? If this happens, if you make a mistake, what if you give yourself permission to make three mistakes, and after that, we stop the homework. After three mistakes, we're gonna say, You know what? You've practiced making mistakes. Now we're gonna that's enough. Already got a few ideas here.

Kevin  37:33  

I like that. Okay? I think all of those will help. Yeah, yeah.

Leslie Cohen-Rubury  37:37  

Okay. Again, we're giving him some awareness of how he handles things. The one thing I also want to say is that going to school for both your children as a ADHD child as an autistic child, it's probably exhausting, because even for your neurotypical child, going to school for eight hours a day, they come home, they're tired. We're tired after our day of work. They're tired from their day of school, and when you go to school and it's challenging for you, because you can have that meltdown, well, you can have that meltdown in school, if a teacher, if you make a mistake, but some kids don't, it's by the time they get home, they're done,

Scott  38:14  

absolutely. That's him, right? He holds it in at school,

Leslie Cohen-Rubury  38:17  

yeah. So you may have to be doing some accommodations I know for ADHD children, they do every like if there's a math sheet with 50 questions, they do every other one, they do the first 25 or something like that. We've got to respect the fact that ADHD is set letting us know that he only has a certain capacity, and we want to respect it. So we don't want to make it an excuse, we want to set up the environment so that he can accept, he can excel, he can, you know, understand himself, and he will eventually be able to advocate for himself absolutely okay. Before we wrap up. Any questions for today, any did I overwhelm you to sometimes I can be overwhelming. Did I overwhelm you? Or do you have some ideas for what you want to work on? No, I

Scott  39:06  

think we have a lot of good ideas. Okay?

Kevin  39:09  

I think so too, for sure. Yeah, yeah, I'm excited to try some of these strategies.

Leslie Cohen-Rubury  39:13  

Okay? And that being excited to try something new is the way they feel. Too your kids, right? If you come to them with, hey, what we're doing is, I think, frustrating everyone, and I don't know that what we're doing is, I think we're all burnt out. We need, you know, we need a new some new ideas. So maybe take that bag, and after a month, say, You know what, I think we need some new ideas. Because we all like that feeling of what it feels like when we have new ideas. It feels like we've opened a window, we've given ourselves some fresh air, some new light, and that's important.

Kevin  39:48  

Absolutely. Great. Thank you.

Leslie Cohen-Rubury  39:57  

I have a lot of compassion for. Kevin and Scott, and also for what Gavin's going through, learning to do homework when you don't feel like you're good enough, or you don't like seeing mistakes, or you don't like that frustration of I can't do it. So for parents and for children, homework is a very challenging time, especially for the ADHD child, possibly the autistic child. You know, there are some kids that just do their homework and it's easy, but parenting when there's a challenge requires skills understanding and a lot of compassion. So we took a compassionate route where we validated their feelings. Of this is painful. This is frustrating. But besides frustration and validating that frustration for everyone, I also want to talk about the patience that is needed for parenting and especially for getting through those homework hours. Patience in the sense that there's a long term, this is going to be a long process. You're gonna have many, many, many hours of homework. Patience is needed with yourself and with your child, and patient brings me to another topic, which is the growth mindset. The growth mindset says we need to be flexible. We want to be flexible. We want to practice thinking flexibly. And just because it's hard right now doesn't mean it's always going to be hard. That kind of thinking is the fixed mindset. So the growth mindset is it's hard right now and it can get better. And do you know that's what compassion is? Compassion is acknowledging the hard part, acknowledging the pain and then knowing it's going to get better, what your child needs is the awareness of what's going on, the connection that you can give them and support that they're going to get through this, that it's going to get better. So that's what's really important and is a significant contribution to their well being. Don't underestimate the importance of those things. They may not make the afternoon homework hour go smoother, but it does mean your child's mental health, in the long run, will be intact. I feel really strongly about that. So remember this missing ingredient might be patience, that you don't have to be the perfect parent, that parenting can be messy and that your child is learning as they go. That's the growth mindset. Remember to be flexible, and don't measure your success on whether or not your child gives you those smiles and is compliant and does what they are told to do, because that defiant child has reason. They're struggling with themselves. They're trying to communicate with you, and it's not a measure of how well you're doing. And remember this week, don't try harder, try different. And join us next week for my final session with Kevin and Scott, when we focus on helping regulate those meltdowns and manage transitions for kids with big emotions, subscribe to is my child a monster. Wherever you get your podcasts and please rate and review to help spread the word. You can also find a full transcript of this episode, or sign up for my newsletter at is my child a monster.com the is my child a monster. Team is Alita Cooper, Camila Salazar and me special. Thanks to Eric Rubery. Our theme music is by Elle Ray music. I'm Leslie Cohen-Rubury. Thanks so much for joining me. You.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

Midbreak [Music: Acoustic Motivation by Coma-Media]

outro [Music: Flowerpot by Olexy]