A little about me...
I am stay-at-home-mom...which roughly translates to the busiest person in the house! I married my high school sweetheart when we were 20. Our first child unintentionally came just over a year later. Since then we have had two more to create what I affectionately call our very own "petting zoo." Some days that is exactly what it feels like around here. Our life is loud, messy, crazy, and... you guessed it... CHAOTIC! This blog is me sharing my ideas, trials, errors, and successes with those who need a friend in the same boat.
My children are 7, 4, and 3 right now. My 7 year old was diagnosed with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) at 2 years old. We knew it was going to happen as my husband is also ADHD. We figured with 3 children it was bound to come up in one of them. Thankfully it was our first. His need for "creative parenting" has set the standard for the younger two.
Our parenting "style" has required some "out of the box" thinking and a whole lot of evolution. The acceptable and unacceptable standards we had when K (my now 7 year old) came are not the same now. That would be my first round of advice to a mother of a strong-willed, stubborn child - ADHD or not-- is be open to evolution in your parenting. Consistency is key, but can also be limiting to the relationship with your child if the ideas is not "speaking your child's language."
In my house I joke around that I am multi-lingual. While English is my primary (and only) real language, I also speak K (my 7 year old), T (my 4 year old), N (my 3 year old), and J (my husband -- which really is a different language than K with the same diagnosis). Learning to speak all of these languages has been challenging. This is probably where I gained all of my errors mentioned above. I used to think that all of my children came from the same two parents so, therefore, they must all speak the same language. Boy was I WRONG. No person in my house operates on the same wave-length.
J is very black and white thinking. Things only work or succeed one way -- his way (this has made parenting a "journey"). K is logical. He has the mind of an engineer. He wants to think and bisect, and then think and bisect some more. He can ask one question 10 different ways. On high energy days he can make my head spin with the questions. T is a lover...not a fighter. He has a very gentle spirit. Don't misunderstand me here... lately he has found his middle child manipulation skills. But all in all he just wants to be with people and love them. N is best described as sugar and spice. She will be sweet enough to give you a tooth-ache and then in the blink of an eye (or a push from a brother) she is screaming, fighting, and "raising Hell" around the house. She has got a temper on her (I will admit this is a trait she got from her mama).
What I thought was going to be just a little about me turned into a 5 paragraph essay on my family...oops! Ironically, as I am typing about the chaos that I call home, it has taken me nearly an hour to write this much. It seems every other sentence someone had a need that had to be tended to immediately. Well... this is what I call home life!
I will end this post with just a couple of tools we use in our house.
1. Counting - when I was a kid my dad always counted. "1...2...3...4...5" I don't actually know what would happen at 5 because I never pushed it that far. I tried this on K. I gave him an instruction and started counting...1....2... and he looks me in the eye and says, "3 4 5!" We stood there for a moment just starting at each other. My 2 year old pretty much called me out. What was going to happen when I got to 5? To tell the truth I didn't know. So that moment counting changed for us. We now state at the beginning what will happen and count backwards. I found that the count DOWN creates urgency to comply. "You will go to time out in 3...2...1...time out!" If I say time out at the end it is followed out no matter what.
2. Tantrums - I see kids (including my own) throw a tantrum wherever they happen to be standing. And in some cases it is a "throw-yourself-on-the-floor-kicking-and-screaming-until-you-get-what-you-want" kind of event. It creates a miserable environment for everyone in the house. So we reset the standard for us. Tantrums are not allowed in my house. They can go into their room and close the door for some alone time (spent however they choose) or they can get out. There is a step leading out of the back door to my fenced back yard. They can sit there until they get themselves under control. When they are ready to be done they are required to come talk to me before they "re-enter" the house. This was a hard change at first, but we have stuck it out and now tantrums only last just a minute or two. Removing them from the stressor to get some space and clear their heads makes a huge difference. Then we address the issue (an instruction that was not being followed, a sibling conflict, a need that requires some attention, etc.). This has nearly eliminated the raising frustrations that were suffocating my household. Now one person's bad mood doesn't bring the rest of us down.
3. Finally, with K, as his energy "force" escalates we have had to find his "reset button." He gets wound up real tight. These are the "explosive"days when it seems that everything has him going into a melt down tantrum. I have learned to watch him and step in with the reset button before he hits "maximum force." For K, the reset button in 3 big, blood oxygenating deep breaths. Sometimes encouraged by having him blow the hair out of my face. Then have him count slowly (a second count or slower) to 10 to slow things down a bit. This has worked well for him both at home and at school. It redirects his tempo and his focus.
Embrace your chaos and eliminate its power,
Jen
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