Do you struggle with your teenager’s lack of impulse control? These parents do and we’ll take a deep dive into how to help these parents help their son to improve. We’ll follow this podcast up with at least one more because this is an area so vital to youth development.

We talk about that and a whole lot more on this week’s podcast, Teach Your Teen Impulse Control - Part 1. 

This question is excepted from a recent conversation with parents.

Dear Neil,

We know that kids with ADHD are slower developing their executive functioning, but we’re really concerned about where our 13-year-old is going. His therapist explains to us that impulse control is tough for him. Is there anything we can do to improve his ability in this area.  He snaps and reacts to any instruction from us and erupts if we deny any request. He’s gotten into trouble at school doing stupid disruptive behaviors and he’s been caught with other kids vaping. We know that isn’t a regular thing, but when we ask about the decision, he says he didn’t think about it, it was offered so he took a hit. He took another kid’s bike and rode it around and claims it wasn’t stealing because he was riding it in plain sight and was going to put it back. All this is creating an angry climate in the home. Is there anything we can do to accelerate him learning impulse control?

Signed

Out of patience

Thanks for your question Out of Patience and yes there’s plenty to do that will be effective, and you will need to find some more patience to get going on this, but I’m sure you’ll be able to find more patience once you have a strategy or two.

Let’s build a strategy. First of all, it’s hard to stop doing something negative. It’s always better to focus on doing a positive thing than focusing on not doing a negative thing. Why, let’s think about it. Focusing on the negative is a negative message to ourselves, we’re doing something wrong, or bad. Since we’ll never become perfect people, it’s better to think of ourselves as always a work in process and if there is an area we can work on to get better, great let’s be positive about it and find a positive behavior to get better at. Make sense?  And what’s the positive alternative to controlling impulses? How about, thoughtful, intentional behavior? In other words, we want your son to develop thoughtful, intentional decision making, right? Okay so where do we start?

1. Let’s start with being clear about your family values. If we just focus on your son’s behavior, point out what’s wrong with it, with no context, he’ll just feel put down and won’t be open to learning.  Now if you’re going to promote thoughtful, intentional decision making as a family value, you have to demonstrate it, live it and since we want to accelerate your son applying this value, we want to exaggerate it.
2. Next is to actively discuss the difference between impulsive behavior and thoughtful intentional behavior; why it’s important and how to do it. I’ll show you rather than talk endlessly about it, but briefly, Impulsive behavior is responding to a primitive part of our brain and thoughtful intentional behavior is generated from the neocortex the more rational intelligent and mature part of our brain. We need to learn to manage signals from the primitive part of our brain the amygdala, and decide how to deal with those signals in the neocortex, in the front of our brain. The more we do it, the better we get at it because we’re building the neural pathway to the rational part of our brains. If the pathway is a cow path today, with enough work, it can become a super highway tomorrow.

Let me show you how this might work in a mini role play and you can rewrite it for many other circumstances.

I’ll call your son Bo. Dad and Mom will be having a conversation with him. 

Dad:  Ms. Hollis called and said you were given detention for vaping at school. Could you tell us what that was about please?

Bo:  It was no big deal. We were just hanging out and one kid had a vape pen and we all took a hit. It wasn’t mine and I’m not even into it.

Dad: Okay, thanks for explaining that. But I’m curious. If you aren’t even into it, why did you decide to take a hit?

Bo: I didn’t really decide, he just gave it to me and I took a hit, it was no big deal.

Dad:  I’m hearing that you think it’s no big deal, but I think doing things without thinking about if it’s a good idea or a bad idea, is a big deal. Dear what do you think?

Mom: I agree that while one hit might not seem like a big deal, but not thinking about what you’re doing Bo is a big deal. If you had stopped to think about whether or not you should have participated in this, what would have been the reasons to and the reasons not to.

Bo:  I don’t know, it’s against the rules so you could get in trouble.

Mom:  Good, what else?

Bo: I know it’s not good for you, but if I don’t do it much, it shouldn’t be a big deal. I hate you guys, why do we have to keep talking about this.

Dad:  That’s a great question Bo. Right now you feel like you want to be done right this second and having this conversation is uncomfortable. Right?

Bo: Yes exactly

Dad: Well we’re having this conversation because slowing down and thinking about what we’re doing is really important. That’s the key to success; being able to make good decisions.

Mom: And just like kindness, and helping each other out, thoughtful intentional decision making is an important value in our family. Bo, knowing you have the ability to stop and think and make good decisions, is how we can trust you. If we know you’ll just go along with things that other kids are doing, then going out and doing things unsupervised is a set up for trouble. And we can’t allow it.

Dad: And if we know that you can slow yourself down and think about what’s going on and if going along with it is a good idea or a bad one, and you use good judgement, then we will be able to trust you. I know you don’t like having to go over this so much, but really Bo, you’re not in trouble. This is just about growing, in this case, growing your brain. Our feelings, like feeling mad or frustrated come from the lower part of our brain and it’s where information goes first. As we get older, our neocortex, the front of our brain by our forehead, that’s where thinking things through and planning takes place. The trick is when we feel things in our lower brain, we take a few seconds and reason what’s going on with the front of our brains. The better we get at taking those few seconds and using the front of our brains to think things through, the better our decisions will be. And you are smart, no doubt about it. The trick is to use and grow the connections from the base of your brain to the front of your brain.

Mom: A great way to do that is to take a few deep breaths. That way you calm your feelings down and give yourself a chance to think. Let’s all do that right now, let’s take a slow deep breath. Ahhhhh.

Bo: I think I’m done. I’m going to go lay down. Just tell me, am I grounded?

Mom:  We’ll think about it. But in the meantime, if you can think about what we talked about today, and tell us how you are going to use it, that will influence our decision. 

So listener, what do you think? Did you see how parents set the pace and demonstrated thoughtfulness in their discussion. They didn’t allow Bo’s impatience and shallow responses to trigger them, and turn the engagement into an argument. They owned the tone, the pace, explained and demonstrated the family value and even defined the family culture.

In reality even if we’re inclined to utilize this kind of thoughtful response to a problem, most of us don’t do it all the time or even often or often enough. But if we want to help our kids grow their impulse control and develop thoughtful intentional behavior, we will need to embrace it as a family value and model it. Then as problems come up, we can address them in a truly healthy manner.

 Thanks for tuning in listener and thanks to our out of patience parents for their question and please, remember to take care of yourself, you need it, you deserve it, you’re worth it.  Bye for now.

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