Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Everybody, welcome back to another fabulous conversation on the Parenting with Impact podcast. We are thrilled to have you join us again and are really excited. For those of you watching, we’re holding our Parenting with Impact mug right now!

I’m really looking forward to this conversation because it addresses something we hear from parents all the time: “I’ve tried everything, and nothing works.”

Diane Dempster: Right? Exactly. I just had a conversation this morning with a client and her husband. Every time we discussed a strategy, he would say, “I tried that. We’ve tried that. It didn’t work.”

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: There are really two layers to this. One is the strategies and solutions—the tips and tricks. Parents say, “We’ve tried that, and it didn’t work.” The other layer is, “We’ve tried school accommodations. We’ve tried 504s and IEPs. We’ve tried...”

Diane Dempster: Therapists.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Therapists. I've tried therapy there.

Diane Dempster: Yeah.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: So, there's this other thing—I've tried all these modalities, and nothing's worked. So, what would make what we do different?

Diane Dempster: Well, let’s start by talking about that, because I think it's an important foundation: understanding what to do and why some approaches don't work. Actually, another mom I spoke to today shared something relevant.

What we uncovered was that a big reason the things she tried so far hadn’t worked was because they were all focused on her kid—things like a tutor, an executive function coach, and a therapist.

The problem? Her kid wasn’t interested in getting help at this stage or wasn’t ready for it. A lot of what's available out there assumes the child is ready or willing to engage. And if they’re not, all those efforts fall flat.

Elaine, this ties into why we created Impact Parents, right? There’s so much help aimed at the kids, but if the kids aren’t in a place where they’re ready or interested in engaging, parents end up spending so much money with little to no results.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Yeah, exactly.

Diane Dempster: And it’s hard. That doesn’t mean the stuff isn’t helpful—it absolutely is when your kid is ready.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: When the kid’s ready, yeah.

Diane Dempster: When the kid’s ready, yeah.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Yeah, I was talking to someone today about a similar issue. The secret truth is that we actually do offer student coaching.

Diane Dempster: Yeah.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: But we only do it for many kids or members of our community when their kids are ready. We don’t want parents throwing away thousands of dollars and then saying, “Well, this didn’t work.” It’s not going to work until there’s readiness.

So, this bigger picture of “I’ve tried everything and nothing worked” is often tied to timing. Sometimes we try things before the kids are ready, or we try approaches that might not be the “right” treatment. For example, with kids who have ADHD, the recommended treatment is behavior therapy training.

But a lot of people hear “therapy” and think it means putting the kid in talk therapy. In reality, behavior therapy training often means putting the parent in a parent training program.

Diane Dempster: So they can help their kids.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: So they can help their kids.

Diane Dempster: Yeah.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: At the time when there’s a need. So, one issue here is making sure we’ve got the right solution, or the right series of solutions, or modalities, or whatever.

Diane Dempster: Can I take that a step further for a second? Therapy is a great example. I’ve got another couple whose kid is going to a therapist, and they’re hoping the therapist is going to fix the kid’s executive function challenges.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: (laughs) I’m not laughing at anything.

Diane Dempster: And the kid really enjoys it.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: I know.

Diane Dempster: But yeah.

Diane Dempster: The child is really enjoying the therapy and benefiting from it. They’re getting a lot out of it because they’re connecting with another adult and are able to talk about some of the challenges they’re facing.

It allows them to vent and decompress. When we talk about the overlap between anxiety, ADHD, depression, and everything else, this child is really benefiting from the therapeutic relationship. However, the parents want the therapist to focus on teaching them skills.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Executive function skills.

Diane Dempster: Executive function skills, and the child is enjoying it.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Which is not...

Diane Dempster: Typically, that's exactly what therapists do. Some therapists do focus on those sorts of things, but generally, that's not their main focus.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: And what comes up for me is to really think about understanding what you’re trying to achieve with the modality you choose. So, I would say the same thing for medication. If you're going to put a kid on medication, that's great, but what are you trying to achieve?

Is it medication to manage anxiety? Is it ADD medication? And if so, what specific ADD behavior are you trying to improve?

Diane Dempster: Do you have a realistic expectation? Another parent I spoke with had all kinds of things to deal with.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Today?

Diane Dempster: Yes, today. Right? It’s sort of like, yes, this child is taking ADHD medication, which is helping them focus, but it’s not fixing the problem completely.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Right. So, let’s look at another example. Sometimes a kid needs a tutor because they’re trying really hard and just need the support to understand the material and demonstrate what they’ve learned. Other times, we give them a tutor because we want them to keep up and not fall behind, but they’re not really invested or owning their education.

So, sometimes it’s the right modality, sometimes it’s not. It’s the same with an executive function coach or an ADHD coach. If the kid isn’t invested and doesn’t want to see improvement, you’re likely to end up spinning your wheels. Now, it could be that you just want someone else to take the lead so it’s not you. That may be a good enough reason to do it.

Diane Dempster: And it doesn’t mean they’ll be any more successful than you would. Because if your kids aren’t interested in getting help from you, they may not be interested in getting help from somebody else either. Right?

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Exactly.

Diane Dempster: So, I don’t know if this is helpful, Elaine, but I do have a few timeframes when I’ve seen different modalities work really well.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Okay.

Diane Dempster: So, you talked about occupational therapy for younger kids to address vestibular issues and dysgraphia. Speech and language pathologists—I'll even say it—when your kid has a special need, they may need an SLP for visual processing, auditory processing, and things like that. Those are really good modalities.

Play therapy and social skills interventions can also be helpful for younger kids who are struggling with those things.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: But sometimes those modalities can be effective with teens, if it’s the right group and the right method. Therapy can be really helpful.

But let me just point out that when you put a kid in therapy, are you trying to fix the problem, or are you trying to help them manage it? For therapy, the goal is really to manage emotions—to feel the feelings.

Diane Dempster: Right. Now, let's be really clear about what we're talking about. So, for a kid who’s learning how to manage big emotions and needs coping skills, and needs help practicing those coping skills, you’re going to need to play a role. The therapist isn’t with them when they’re having those big emotions.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: At that point.

Diane Dempster: Yeah. At that point. Right. So, in that instance, working with a therapist to help your kids identify and process big emotions through talk therapy could be really helpful.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: And yet, it's probably not going to help them organize their backpack. Maybe, but that's probably not what you're hiring a therapist for.

Diane Dempster: No. So, let’s talk about organizing the backpack. That’s the other thing I sometimes notice around seventh or eighth grade, middle school age. Our kids' executive function skills—when we talked about catching up, in third and fourth grade, they were learning how to organize their backpacks and use a planner, or some of those other skills.

But a lot of times, by middle school, things get more complex, and they’re ready to learn those things. So, hiring a tutor or an executive function coach at that point to help them learn how to get organized—because they weren’t ready to learn it in third or fourth grade—could be a really useful thing. Again, assuming your kid is interested in being more organized, and some of them really are.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: And they are. Some of them really are. When parents call and say, "My kid needs a coach," I always ask, "Is your kid asking for help?" Sometimes the answer is yes. And when it is, then you really want to figure out what’s the right kind of help to match with them.

Diane Dempster: Right.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: At the end answer is no, then the place to focus is on you as the parent, right? Because really your job then is to how do I help them get to a point where they're willing to ask for and accept help.

And that's a huge life skill if we can really help our kids, ask for and accept help in life and not feel shamed or wrong or blamed for, quote, needing help. That's probably the biggest gift that we can give them.

Diane Dempster: Well, and I say this, you're saying that I'm like, Elaine, how many parents like know that part of their job is to help their kids develop the skill of asking for help. Teach that in parents school. Do they don't know? Not at all. 

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: We teach them in parents schooll giant. 

Diane Dempster: We do teach. We really learned that in parents, but we learned

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: That I have learned that really early, we learned that from the school of knocks of hard knocks.

Diane Dempster: So, let us teach you. Part of your job as a parent is to help your kids learn the life skill of asking for help. And how many of us can do that without shame? How many of us are able to do that, right? Most of us are those people who think, "I'll just do it myself. It’s so much easier," or "I should be able to do this myself," or "I shouldn’t need help."

This is just parenting, right? How many times do we hear this, Elaine? "I shouldn’t need somebody to help me with my parenting."

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: I shouldn’t even have to do this.

Diane Dempster: I should know how to do this. And those of you listening to this podcast probably already know better, or you wouldn’t be here. And we know that listening to this podcast, for most of us, isn’t enough.

You need more help than just getting ideas on what to do and how to support your kids. I’m going to plug parent training again because, a couple of times, getting help is exactly what’s needed.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Okay. So, one reason we feel like we’ve tried everything and nothing works is that we throw solutions at the problem, or we think we’re trying to fix it. The truth is, what we really need to do is focus on improving certain areas more precisely and being really conscious of what we want the help to accomplish.

What change do we want to see? Instead of just saying, "Well, it’s not better," because usually, any of these methods will help in some way. But if I want my kid to have an organized backpack, and what they’re talking about in therapy is how hard it is to be the youngest child with ADHD, I’m still going to feel like it’s not working, even if it’s helpful for the kid.

Diane Dempster: Well, and I'm goonna take that a step further. Because I think you were going a slightly different direction, I've got a parent whose kid is working with an executive function coach, and an in school tutor. And one of the things we talked about is like this sort of if you're focused on, but he's not completely organized, but he's not.

Yes, like if you're focused on that endpoint, where it's like this sort of, all I can see is that moment when they're ready to graduate from the executive function coach, well, your kid has executive function delays.

And we know that and they're three to five years behind their peers, which means that if most people's executive function is completely developed by what age 25 or age 27, these kids are not going sh line, whatever their finish line happens to be, until they're.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Somewhere 30.

Diane Dempster: Until they're around 30 years old. And so if you're sitting there looking at it, 16 expecting an executive function coach to get them to the end point. I mean, to be at the fini...

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Well.

Diane Dempster: This is versus.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Goes back to what we always say is progress, not perfection, right?

Diane Dempster: Right.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: You want to look for so the other thing is when people say I've tried everything, and nothing works, if you really break it down, it's just it hasn't worked enough, right?

Diane Dempster: Yeah.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: So, I want to say that if you're looking for a magic bullet, it probably hasn’t worked. But if you can set realistic expectations and look for incremental change, focusing on progress instead of perfection, then you’ll begin to see and get clear on the change you want.

Diane Dempster: I just want to close this up, because I think the other piece of it is that you may not see the change right away. It’s kind of invisible to you in some ways, especially if your child is working with another resource.

Part of this process is that your child needs to recognize that it helps. And we said this earlier—if your child is getting value out of it, enjoying it, and feeling that an adult is helping them, even if they’re not doing the exact thing you hope they would, there’s still real value.

It shows them that someone believes in them. And this gets back to that important skill of fostering a successful helping relationship, which is key for encouraging your child to ask for help in the future.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Yeah, exactly. And there’s a whole body of research on resilience. All kids need is one adult in their life who believes in them, and that can give them the resilience they need to be successful in life.

That’s a whole other topic we could dive into in a future conversation—let’s talk about resilience. But for now, we’ve already hit about 16 minutes, so we need to watch our time.

Diane Dempster: You were saying about when you tried everything like literally meaning I tried it before and it didn't work.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Didn't work.

Diane Dempster: It didn't work. Right.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Right. So, one of the things we teach in Sanity School is the concept of "rinse and repeat." As parents, we often have this idea that we’ll implement a solution, and our kids should just do what we say, and it should work right away.

Diane Dempster: And it should work that way, right? It should work the first time and every time because that's what the experts say.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Right, exactly. And here’s what we really want to emphasize. First of all, expect that it’s not going to work the first time. Any system, solution, or strategy you put in place is going to need some tweaking, some adjustments.

Diane Dempster: Expect that it might work the first time, but don’t bet the farm on it working perfectly every time. One thing we know about kids, especially those with executive function challenges, is that consistency is key.

But inconsistency is often the reality, right? As parents, especially parents of kids with ADHD, it’s like some days it works, some days it doesn’t.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Some days, it doesn’t, right?

Diane Dempster: And some days, they can do it on their own. Other days, you have to drag them kicking and screaming to make it happen. I mean, that’s really what’s going on here, by definition. So, start by expecting that it won’t work the first time—or maybe even the second time.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Maybe all the time, right? And this is what you often say: If it’s starting to work 80% of the time, that’s how you know they’re ready to have some independence with it.

Diane Dempster: Yeah.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: The other thing I want to mention about things not working is that often, it doesn’t work because we’ve created a solution without involving them in the process. They haven’t been part of creating the solution, so they don’t have buy-in, they don’t have ownership. They’re not invested in it.

Diane Dempster: But we think it works for us, so it should work for them, right? There are two issues with this. First, just because it works for us doesn’t mean it works for them. Think about the adults in your own life.

Elaine and I are so different, and the things that work for me, we have to figure out how to have an organizational system that works for both of us.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: It’s hysterical. It works for my brain, it works for your brain, let’s try that.

Diane Dempster: Yeah, no, it’s hilarious. But think about this: just because something works for your brain doesn’t mean it’ll work for theirs. And the other piece of it, which you were alluding to, Elaine, is that if I’m the one giving you the idea, I’m taking away some of your power.

If you have a kid who wants to control more of their life, and mom or dad is constantly telling them what to do, when to do it, and how to do it, there’s going to be some resistance and pushback, or even a big one.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Right, because ownership is key. What we really want is for them to have a sense of agency over their lives. If we’re telling them what to do, when to do it, how to do it, and why to do it—what’s right, what’s wrong—at some point, they’re going to stop trying, because why bother, right?

Diane Dempster: Well, exactly.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: And sometimes, let me just wrap that up.

Diane Dempster: Yeah.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Sometimes, it’s not that it doesn’t work—it’s that the way we started the process isn’t setting us up for success.

Diane Dempster: Yeah, well, and I guess the example kind of there is like a planner. And as school systems do this, and parents do this all the time. It's like this sort of, we want to teach our kids to use a planner and everybody like, I don't know.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Everybody should use a plan.

Diane Dempster: Everybody should use a planner, like at my kids' elementary school, like literally they handed them out like, I don't know, like bubble gum, like get started, right? Okay, you're in third grade. Now, here's your planner, and they...

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Yep.

Diane Dempster: And what you really want the life skill is not using the planner, the life skill is a process for remembering stuff that needs to get done by a certain time or date, right? That's the piece of it. And, as adults, a lot of us don't walk around with planners.

We don't have systems that work the same way. You really want to inspire a kid to come up with something that works for them. And not just follow the rules and use the planner.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Well. And remember, some of us are motivated by novelty. And so even if you get a system that really works, we may get bored with it and want to change it just because we're bored. So and I’m sorry, y'all, but believe me, it happens.

It really happens. So there's something here about, just because you've tried something doesn't mean it's not gonna work. It may take the littlest tweak or adjustment or refinement for it to be the best system you've ever had.

But if you start by saying, "I tried it, it didn't work," then you give up the opportunity to really work with it to figure out how to make it work. And to me, I'm just realizing that means you want to ask the question, are you really clear on what you're trying to... what the problem is you're trying to solve?

Diane Dempster: Well, and I think that there's some foundational things that make it more likely to work, right? And so we talked about collaboration and buy-in.

So if your kid really wants to see a change, if it's a change your kid wants to see and you want to see it, your kid's frustrated that he keeps missing assignments, versus your kid's at a point where he's like, "I don't care anymore."

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Right.

Diane Dempster: And it's gonna be different. So buy-in, and that sort of thing. The other P, what's another piece? Collaboration, like working together?

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Well, so here's, I want to put a pitch for your kid's never too young to collaborate. There was a post on our Lifeline forum for our members. And we have a kind of a private forum that's just for members in our programs and Sanity School group coaching, and somebody was posting about a six-year-old, and I honestly, I don't even remember what the topic was, but it was, "How do I get my kid to whatever?" And it was about Halloween candy.

And there's all this Halloween candy, I'm dreading Halloween candy coming up, what do I do? And my response was: "Have you asked your kid? Like, what if we gave them the benefit of the doubt to think that they might have the capacity to problem-solve with us?"

And said to them, "There's a lot of candy coming in, how do you think we should manage it in a way that's safe and makes sense for you?" Because a six-year-old knows they're not gonna be given free license to eat candy all day, every day for six weeks.

Diane Dempster: Right.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: So most of them are pretty clever about that. But if you bring them into the issue, all of a sudden, it's a shared responsibility, instead of you holding this tight agenda of they can't have food dyes. And then you've got a battle going.

Diane Dempster: Right, so collaboration is... what if you don't have buy-in, you don't have collaboration, those are a couple of things that kind of tend to make things not work. Expecting... this is another piece of it... not taking into consideration the executive function challenges. It's sort of, they said they’d do it.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: They... they know they didn’t.

Diane Dempster: And then they didn’t do it, right? It's the sort of... and well, if they said they did it, and then they’re not doing it, there’s something else going on there. It’s not that they just were lying to you. If we’ve got kids with executive function challenges, chances are...

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: If there’s a reason, there’s an opportunity to then take a model, what part worked? We call it the magic three questions: what worked? What didn’t work? What do you want to do differently?

Diane Dempster: Yeah.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: And so instead of saying, "Well, that didn’t work," there’s the chance with the magic three to say, "Okay, what part of what did work? How can we learn from what was successful? Figure out what didn’t work, and then tweak it and try it again." And that would relate to this bad man.

Diane Dempster: Which takes us back to the bottom line here, is that if you’ve tried it before, and it didn’t work, look at what did, what part of it didn’t work, what part of it did work, maybe start with what did work, because it’ll give you a little bit more energy.

And learn from that, fail forward, instead of just saying, "Okay, that didn’t work. I’m never gonna try it again."

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: So there’s one more thing, because we’re, I know we’re at time. And there’s one more thing I want to say, which is, we often hear from parents who say, "I’ve tried everything, and nothing works. I’ve tried, I’ve been to therapists, I’ve been to this, I’ve been to that." We want to invite you to try a coach approach.

Because what we learned after, at least for me, trying everything and nothing worked, or did nothing work enough for my satisfaction, which is... right, was what really worked was changing my approach, was changing the way that I was approaching the dynamic with my kids and ultimately bringing my husband on board.

That took a couple of years, but he got there. Right? And when I started to pair it with a coach approach, and I know your story is much the same, Diane, that worked so much better, because I was no longer trying to get them to fix something, or to achieve some goal.

I was working with them to learn to understand themselves and manage themselves. And that is the magic of it. That’s really what we want more than anything. So...

Diane Dempster: Yeah.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: If you’re moving them towards independence and autonomy, and taking ownership of themselves. That’s the goal, in my opinion.

Diane Dempster: Yeah.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Opinion.

Diane Dempster: Great conversations. So even if you’ve tried everything, we want to inspire you back into the game.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Yeah.

Diane Dempster: And if you're interested in finding out more about the coach approach.  Join us.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Find out, what should they do?

Diane Dempster: They should. Well, there's always like a little link in the show notes.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: We put a link in the show notes for where you can go to find out more about maybe Sanity School or something like that. And most importantly, if you've tried everything and nothing works, if you hear yourself saying that, chances are it's not really completely true.

So let's see what has worked and start focusing on the progress and the successes you've had and see if you can build on the successes you've had because if you look back to where they were a year ago, chances are there's some progress.

Diane Dempster: Well, that's a thing. So it's almost like it's not what works, but what kind of worked, what moves the needle?

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Yeah.

Diane Dempster: What moves the needle?

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Kinda worked. I like that.

Diane Dempster: Yeah. That's cool.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: All right, everybody. Thanks for listening. Thanks for being here. Thanks for doing what you're doing. Loving yourself, loving your kids, we'll talk to you soon.

Diane Dempster: Bye.