Have things ever gotten to place with your teenager where you are not only worried but worn-out? We’ll talk about what to do about that and a whole lot more on this week’s podcast, Try Going on Strike!

And here’s our question.

Dear Neil,

Our now 15-yr-old ADHD son has us very worried.  Knowing he has ADHD we’ve been careful to adjust our expectations and work with him on organization and managing his school responsibilities. That’s been a lot of work for us, but we know that if he’s going to be successful, he needs to stay on track and apply himself. He doesn’t like to sit still and wants to be out with friends skateboarding or just hanging out.  We made allowances for his ADHD, but my husband and I have hung in there and at least we’ve kept him doing his work and passing his classes. At this point, he’s become too hard to manage. He fights us on everything, and we’re frustrated and exhausted.  We know he’s vaping and may be using cannabis. His psychiatrist says there’s nothing more she can do, and he won’t go to counseling. We don’t know where to go from here so any advice will be appreciated.

Worried and worn-out

Dear worried and worn-out parents,

Yes, what you are describing is most worrisome and managing a 15-year-old who doesn’t want to be managed will definitely wear a person out. So, let’s see if we can shift the paradigm.

What’s wrong here is pretty simple. The motivation for your son managing his responsibilities should belong to your son, not to his parents. So even though you’ve been excellent parents by providing structure and support for him, the onus of responsibility for his schoolwork has not shifted over to your son. Instead, what developed is a Control Battle with you and your husband trying to manage him and get him to do his work, and your son fighting your efforts. That’s a battle that kids will always win, but in the end of course, they lose. And of course, control battles will always wear a parent out.

Here is something all parents of teenagers and professionals who work with teens need to know. One of the major shifts that must take place during adolescence is the youth taking ownership of their responsibilities and hence their future.

For some kids, it seems to be built into their system, and they virtually always embrace responsibilities. For others, it’s slower but at least they’re cooperative and compliant with adult requirements until they are ready to take ownership.

It may not happen in an instant although in some cases the shift is somewhat dramatic. For instance, It’s a new school year and your teenager starts making time and putting in effort to do their work. Maybe not perfectly, but if they fall behind, they make it their business to get caught up. In other cases, it’s more of a discussion and it happens more gradually.  Often age 16 or junior year in high school is when we’ll see even reluctant kids taking care of things much more for themselves.  Often parents get yelled at or balled out by their kids when they innocently inquire about homework or grades. “I’ve got this, quit bugging me, leave me alone!” And of course, we can forgive the delivery if in fact it’s true.   

ADHD kids who have some combination of hyper-activity, distractibility, and challenges with focus, predictably have a harder time taking over and managing their responsibilities. We’ll see them having a hard time getting started on things, organizing complex tasks, staying with tasks that they don’t particularly enjoy, and estimating and managing time. All these characteristics make doing schoolwork challenging, so they will need more support to get through it all.

Still, in the situation we’re talking about today, we can’t just keep doing what we’re doing and wait because right now things are going in the wrong direction. Fighting against parents and responsibilities, performance dropping dramatically, vaping and cannabis, this requires a dramatic change in approach.

So what can Worried and Worn-out do?

We’re not so naïve as to think their son can step up and manage things on his own. He can’t. What he can do, is cooperate and appreciate that his parents are supporting him by providing structure.  And only he can require himself to cooperate. He has to be motivated to succeed.

How can we help him get there?

Here’s an idea. Can you say, HUELGA! That’s Spanish for strike. Go on strike. Tell your son exactly that, you’re on strike. You are no longer going to help him manage his responsibilities unless he wants you to and agrees to respectful communication and cooperation.

Then immediately, take away all privileges. What does that include? Take away or disable his phone, no gaming computer in fact if he isn’t doing his schoolwork, he doesn’t need a computer at all so that can go. Skateboards go, any money or credit cards he has access to go, permission to go out goes, although he might go out anyway, but without permission.

So you see, going on strike means two things, not helping him, and also, not resourcing him with privileges that he hasn’t earned.  

When he wants to know what he needs to do to get his privileges back, the answer is, “We don’t know. You’ll have to figure out how to motivate yourself to be the positive capable young man we know you can be. You’ll have to figure out how to change from fighting us to thanking us. We don’t know how to do that for you. If you want the privileges, if you want us to go back to work, and end the strike, you’ll have to make it a much more pleasant experience for us.”

How does that sound?

I want to point something out that’s very important about my “strike” suggestion. If you tell him exactly what to do to get his privileges back, he’ll half-heartedly do some of them and then scream bloody murder that you have to reinstate his privileges. You’re the mean parents who are unfairly controlling him. That’s just another round in the old paradigm of you trying to get him to behave.

By going on strike and putting the ball in his court to motivate himself, you’ve shifted the paradigm. Now you’re the victims of not a mean kid, but mean kid behavior, and the only way for him to get his privileges back, is by making a real maturational shift. That critical shift is so important to the developmental tasks of adolescence.

So folks, this is important. When we find ourselves frustrated trying to get our kids to change a behavior, the answer may very well be, we’re working too hard. An easy way to shift things is to simply engage your youth in a discussion and present the problem to them. It could go as simply as this: “What I’ve been doing to get you to (for instance) come home on time, hasn’t been working. What ideas do you have to get yourself home on time?”

They have the solution to their behavior, they have the solution to their attitude, we don’t.

Thanks for tuning in today listener and thanks to our worried and worn-out parents for sending in their question. And remember, you’ve got to take care of yourself, you need, you deserve it, you’re worth it. Bye for now.

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