Do you feel like you are failing as a parent? Take heart BECAUSE you aren't alone. Having SPECIAL NEEDS children stresses the best relationship. Why? SPECIAL NEEDS children have a very difficult time following multi-step directions, listening, and finishing tasks. Their moodiness is hard to handle. As the parent, you are frequently in the role of correcting or reminding your children, or are dealing with guilt because of your lack of patience, or short temper. Or you may feel ashamed because you are frequently disappointed with their behavior. Many SPECIAL NEEDS children are "high maintenance," with much of the family interaction time (and energy) centered around their needs. It's no wonder that many parents feel as if they are doing a poor job. The treatment for SPECIAL NEEDS is complex. As the parent, you need to make many choices. You need to become an informed consumer and beware of people who try and sell you a "quick fix." 1. KNOW THE SCOPE OF THE PROBLEM Parents and children need to understand the scope of the problem. SPECIAL NEEDS problems can affect your children's social, emotional, and behavioral world. The parents' job is complex and requires that you: Know what the problem is and understand how it affects your children and your family. Know what your children's special gifts are. 2. HAVE REALISTIC EXPECTATIONS. Parents need to know both what their children's strengths and weaknesses are. They also need to know what behaviors are under their conscious control and which behaviors are not. Defining the difference between inability and non-compliance is difficult. Once you see what your children can or cannot do, then you are ready to form a discipline strategy. To define non-compliance, answer this question: can your children control the identified behavior? If the answer is yes, are they choosing to disobey? If the answer is yes, you have defined non-compliance. However, for many SPECIAL NEEDS children, a behavior can be inability even if it there are times when they can control the behavior. Let's take movement as an example. Sometimes, when children are highly interested, or scared, they can control their need to move. Since you see that they can control moving some of the time, you assume they can control their need to move all of the time. This is incorrect. Many ADHD children use movement to wake up their brain, because moving helps them pay attention. However, many parents view their squirming as an act of defiance instead of a behavior which they have trouble controlling. If you think your child is defying you, you might get angry. However, if you view movement as an inability, you might choose to ignore it or to teach your child to move in ways which don't bother people. In most cases, movement in ADHD children is an inability and not an act of defiance. As you can see, this distinction is important because to manage inability effectively, you ignore it. To manage non-compliance, you use discipline. If you are having trouble with this concept, you aren't alone. This topic is one of the key concepts in Dr. Giler's parenting class. If you'd like to know more about this, you can order her parenting cd set. 3. HAVE A DISCIPLINE STRATEGY. One of the most important things you can do for children is to be consistent. Children with SPECIAL NEEDS learn more slowly than others. Having predictable consequences helps them learn. There are many behavioral methods which you can use to form a discipline strategy, and most parenting classes teach how to discipline your child. Two basic principles are to be consistent and to use less emotion. In my parenting class, we use Dr. Phelan's video 1,2,3 Magic. Dr. Phelan's method is really effective for eliminating problem behaviors. You can order this video by clicking here. There are many methods one can use to reinforce "start" behaviors. Behavioral charting and the use of rewards are two ways to let your children know what you expect of them and what will occur if they do the behaviors you want them to do. Disciplining teenagers is more complicated. Teenagers need to be part of the process or they tend to rebel. You need to include your teenager in the planning of consequences for misbehaviors. We discuss ways to manage teenagers in the third class, Disciplining your SPECIAL NEEDS Child. To find out how to order tapes, click here. << back to top |