Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Hi, everybody, welcome back to another conversation in the Parenting with Impact podcast. Elaine and Diane here today.

Diane Dempster: Hey, you just got us, which is always fun.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: It's always fun. It's not just us, you get us. So we just finished doing our first ever live three-day event with the ADHD Parents' Palooza. 

Diane Dempster: If any of you joined us, it was really awesome.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: If you joined us maybe you didn't. It was amazing. 

Diane Dempster: It was so much fun being with everybody. And it's so fun because so many of you were there that listened to the podcast, and some of you, we get to talk to you, but we don't get to talk with you.

So it was just nice to be able to talk with many of you that are in our community and listen to us [inaudible] with us live. It was just so much fun.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: It was so fun. And what became really clear to us as we were doing this three-day event was how many times we were saying, "Don't get stuck in information land. Are you stuck in information land?" It's not just about information.

And the funny part was then we went to say, "Well go check out the podcast on that." And we realized that we've done a podcast on it.

Diane Dempster: Yeah, exactly. And so we're sending people to information land. So here's the pattern that I'm feeling when I talk to parents, and I'm sure you see the same thing, which is I know I need support and so I go out to the internet, and I read some article or listen to some amazing podcast, or I listened to some telesummit and I get this great idea.

And I come back and I try the great idea and the great idea doesn't work quite the way that the book or the podcast or the telesummit person says it's going to work. So I go back out to the interwebs or to another book and try to get another idea or a podcast or whatever else and-

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: And then the cycle continues.

Diane Dempster: Right. It's constantly back and forth in idea land. I think the question that we want to talk about is like, what to do instead because it's really tempting to do that and there's lots of great information out there.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: And we're as guilty as anyone, there's so much great information. And we're always putting out great information, like, I don't know our podcast. What we want to make sure we communicate really clearly, and we try to say this a lot, is that information is phenomenal and it's not enough. It is ineffective by itself.

The purpose of it is to inform action. And so if you're gathering information, but you're not integrating that information, and then implementing it, then you're actually only doing it. I never thought about this before this moment, but it's like medication.

The purpose of medication for anxiety, ADHD, all these things, is to reduce the symptoms so that you can modify the behavior so you can change the action. So you don't use the medication by itself. It's a tool to support this larger thing.

Diane Dempster: Oh, that's cool. I like that [overlapping]

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Isn't that nice?

Diane Dempster: Yeah. We flipped around the language we use, but you meant information integration, implementation, and transformation. I add transformation at the end of that.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Don't forget that. 

Diane Dempster: And I think that some of you out there, and I don't know what percentage, but I'm guessing a small percentage of you are okay with I got this great idea. And I go, and I can come in, and I can make it happen.

Statistically, you might be a neurotypical adult that can do that because you have the executive function to do some of this stuff.

And we know that if you've got a complex kid, a lot of times this stuff works once, or it works with one kid, but it doesn't work with another kid or it works for a while and then [overlapping]

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: We get it to work. You have to revise and rinse and repeat before it works well. 

Diane Dempster: Well, even when it works well and this is the thing I want to normalize is the variability in ADHD particularly.

Executive function challenges are like this across the board but the thing that works for a while, I'm going to whisper this, it's probably going to stop working after a while, maybe.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: It might. [overlapping]

Diane Dempster: Probably likely to. It's likely to. So instead of saying, "Okay, I'm going to go get another idea." We want to invite you, you use the word rinse and repeat, which is what we do in coaching which part of that is really looking at what is it that's really going on?

This is the place that I see parents get stuck if they get an idea. It's like, I have a kid with ADHD or I have a kid with autism or I have a kid with anxiety, and here's an idea for kids with anxiety or autism.

And instead of going, what's the specific problem I'm trying to solve and what's really going on underneath it, we end up getting ideas and strategies, rather than really knowing how to put those in the context of what's really going on, for your kid and for you in the family system. Where are you going to go?

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: I want to take a moment to focus on a side conversation about strategies. Here's the other thing we've noticed over the more than a dozen years we've been doing this: parents tend to come to us, attend webinars, go to workshops, and participate in all sorts of things because they want strategies.

In fact, the very first book we wrote was titled Book Strategies because of...

Diane Dempster: It's what people want. 

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Somebody came to us and said, "Would you write us this book on strategies?" And so it's not that the strategies aren't valuable. They're extremely valuable. And we teach tons of strategies, tactics, tools, strategies, concepts, all of it.

But, and I use the word but intentionally here but strategies are supposed to be a tool to get us to a goal. The goal isn't using the strategy. The goal is using the strategy or a series of strategies or tweaking the strategy to achieve a larger goal like remembering your homework following directions when you're asked, getting off the computer whatever the behavior change that you want.

Diane Dempster: Yeah, behavior changes. You might describe it as a problem of solving a problem or having a goal. I use those terms interchangeably, because you may be trying to solve a problem, which is how do I get my kid to hang up their towel, or it could be you're trying to achieve a goal, which is to decrease the number of missing assignments that your kid has every semester. I mean, depending on how you look at it.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: And so what happens very often in space, if you will, is that some expert is going to say, "Well, here's a strategy to try. Here's a tool. Try using a reward chart."

Diane Dempster: Try using a planner.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Try using a planner. Try putting limits on XYZ. They're going to give you a strategy. The challenge that we see is that if the strategy is coming from the outside, it may or may not help that problem.

But when the strategy comes from the inside, when you take the time to slow down, get curious, understand what's causing the challenge in the first place, then you're going to create a strategy that actually addresses the core of the problem, that address what's causing the behavior in the first place instead of just throwing a strategy at something and hoping it works.

It's much more personalized or tailored.

Diane Dempster: Yeah, there's two pieces of it. It's like one is understanding what's really going on and then the two is the tailored part of it.

For a lot of us some of the strategies people have out there are easy, and we have no problems with. Some of the strategies that are out there don't work for some of you.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Some of us. I'm going to say.

Diane Dempster: [overlapping] I'm in that too. My parents came to me the other day, and we use the word consistency in the conversation. And it's like, oh, my gosh, okay, I know, I just need to be consistent.

And I'm like, "Are you naturally a consistent person?" And they're like, "No." And I'm like, "Okay, so let's not use that tool. Let's come up with a solution or a strategy." But what you're describing Elaine and we teach this in Sanity School, is that a system or a structure out of context doesn't often work well.

You want to put the ideas into a context, which is you and your kid and the day of the week and the problem you're really trying to address and what's the executive function...

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: What time or day? 

Diane Dempster: Yeah, and what the executive function strengths are and what the executive function challenges are on everybody's side.

You got to really look at the system and I don't want to overcomplicate this, but what we want to do is plead with one of you.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Simplify it actually.

Diane Dempster: You simplify it. That's one of the things I love about our approach that we teach in our programs is it's about how you look at this problem and not about not starting with the strategy.

You want to start with what's going on. We could go into the overview of the way that we approach it. 

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: So here's what's coming up. So we've got this scenario. I was a parent when my kids were little and they were complex, and I didn't really quite know what that meant yet. I was doing everything the experts told me to do.

I was reading all the books. I was following all the instructions, then they're starting to get diagnoses. And I'm reading all those books, and I'm following, and I'm doing everything the experts were telling me to do, and it wasn't working.

And if you're anything like me, what happened to me was not only did I feel like a complete failure as a parent, which I hear parents say to me all the time, but I was also beginning to worry that something was really wrong with my kids.

If I'm doing everything the experts tell me to do, and it's not working, well, what does that mean? What are the implications of that?

Diane Dempster: And when you catastrophize, because then you feel like this is going to be the end of the world, and I'm never going to be able to fix this, my kid is lost forever.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Is doomed to live on my couch for the rest of my life or their life. So what I want to introduce is what we're talking about here is to get out of that catastrophic thinking, and to begin to pull back enough to look at the big picture of what's going on and understand if we're throwing a solution at a kid and it's not working chances are, it's not the kid it's not the right solution.

And so we want to come back and say, okay, well, if that's not working, let's solve the problem. Let's see what part does work. What part doesn't work? What do we want to do differently? And so this is what we mean, by taking information, you have to integrate it, understand it, and then start to implement it.

You have to start to use it and see what's working and what's not, rather than just throw something at it, and then throw it out if it doesn't work, because chances are, there's something in it that could work if you take a little time and slow down.

Diane Dempster: Because you were inferring the rinse and repeat, we'll say it again, as we said that before maybe we just let's just teach them the magic three questions.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Well, I kind of just did.

Diane Dempster: You kind of just did.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: So the magic three questions whenever you try a strategy or solution or a tactic, and it doesn't work so it doesn't work how you thought it was going to work?

Diane Dempster: Or how they say it should work.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: The magic three questions are first, you start by asking, Well, what did work, because no matter what, you've tried something work, it may have just been that you tried something, well, that worked.

Or maybe your kid agreed to try something with you, maybe that worked, or maybe choose any scenario. You can come up with an example, let's choose one scenario. If it's getting the towel off the floor, maybe your kid agreed to work with you to try to take the towel off the floor.

Or maybe once a week, or once every two weeks, you found the towel hung up. [overlapping]

Diane Dempster: Let's dig in a little bit deeper. If you created a reward for hanging up the towel.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: And you got them buy-in.

Diane Dempster: And you had some buy-in. So it's okay, so the kid really wanted to do this, they wanted to win the prize or to get the reward or to avoid the consequence. And they said, "Yeah. I really want to try to hang up the towel."

But what didn't work, even though they were bought in, even though they really wanted to, they weren't able to do it.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: They couldn't remember. They didn't follow through. They totally forgot. They would hang it up and then it would fall off the floor. After you do first what's working and you really want to start with the positive, it's really important to start with the positive. Then the second question is, well, what didn't work?

And the very matter of fact, the key here is not to be in judgment, not to be in shame, or blame or anything else but just like, okay, well, so what part of this didn't work? It might be him saying, or the kids saying, "Well, that was a lame reward, or I don't really care."

Diane Dempster: Well, hang on a second. Let's be really careful here because a lot of times, if we ask our kids, they don't know why it didn't work and I'm using the example that we talked about a minute ago and we're going to do a whole other episode on motivation.

But a lot of times, we have a motivation in place and then the motivation doesn't work and the kid says. "I don't care." Or we think that it wasn't motivating enough or whatever else but it's motivation and executive function that's going on here.

And so you may have a kid who's really, really, really motivated. But their ability to follow through on the thing that they sign up for. I remember my kids, like, I was one of those moms that would have my kids sign agreements, it's like yes, I will not do this with my computer after 10 pm and blah, blah, blah And then they don't and it's like, they lied.

It's like we jumped to conclusions. And so instead of jumping to conclusions, you want to be factual is what you're describing. It's this, even though we had an agreement, they were not able to follow through on the agreement and they didn't care.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: So let's look at where the breakdowns took place. What's making it so that it wasn't successful? So what didn't work and be very, you can be as specific as you want and you want to do it again, matter of fact. MOF no judgment.

Then you can problem-solve together and say, "Well, what do you want to try next? What would you like to do differently? And now you're coming from a place of creativity and exploration and okay, what do you want to try?"

We've talked a lot during the Palooza about the experimenter's mind, instead of well, how are you going to fix it? What are you going to do? It's like, well, what do you want to try next? How do you want to tweak this to see if we can maybe get it to work?

Diane Dempster: I think that that's the piece of it is that you want to tweak what you're trying and I don't know how many times you tweak, but instead of just throwing the baby out with the bathwater, and going out and finding the other idea, you want to tweak it and say, okay, so joining me to add an accommodation?

Let's say you have a chore chart, you got a reward system, something like that, you might need to add an accommodation. In addition to that, you might need to add a reminder.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: I'll give you an example. I used to use this design with my son about taking out the trash on Tuesday nights and he agreed that it was his job. He knew it was his job, there was no objection to doing it.

He just didn't know what was the difference between Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday. He was totally time blind. So the commendation we made was, I'm willing to tell you when it's time to take out the trash.

Are you willing to stop what you're doing at that moment and do it so that I'm not in a place of nagging reminders? He agreed to it, and we ended up with a system that really worked.

The problem wasn't actually that he didn't care, or that he wasn't intending to do it. The problem was that he really had no concept of time.

Diane Dempster: I think that this is one of the things that happens a lot. As parents, we're trying to get kids to be able to do something independently. It's like, I want my kid to turn in their homework by themselves.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Take a shower at a time-appropriate manner by themselves.

Diane Dempster: There are so many steps. We talked about this all the time, like us being in charge and nagging 17 times, to them being able to do something on their own.

I'm drawing my little stairstep here. We're trying for the solution that's going to get us from step one to step 13 and that may not be realistic. We may need more than one strategy.

Our kids may need a reminder and a reward and I don't want to make it too complicated. The strategy is not going to get you from zero to 100 is the bottom line often. 

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Okay. I'm going to say we wrap. So what we've been talking about here is that the solutions are, are a tool to reach a goal and so we have to understand and problem-solve what that goal is before we start adding a solution to it.

So back to are you getting stuck in information land you want to make sure when you get information and there's amazing information nowadays that you slow down and make sure that you process the information that you're getting you integrate it.

That's why at the end of every single interview we did on palooza, the end of every call, every coaching call, every group call, everything, we asked people to say what are you taking away from this slowdown really thinking about? What's my insight? What am I learning? Can we do that now? What are you taking away from this conversation? What's your insight or your aha and slow down and give yourself permission to think about it for a minute to process it before you move into the next steps. 

Diane Dempster: I think that the other piece after we asked, what's your insights, you do the rinse and repeat. And then we ask what are you going to do to set yourself up for success?

And I think that this is the piece of this is that so many of us in order to do this work need support. You hire somebody to mow your lawn. Nobody says you should hire somebody to help you with your parenting.

Nobody challenged that you might need help with parenting. They say, "Read these books on parenting." Well, you might need some help. You've got a complex kid and it's not easy.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Jeff Cooper likes to say you can read all the books you want on playing the guitar, but you're not really likely to really play the guitar until somebody shows you some strums you need a little bit of support in the process.

So when you're getting the information, give yourself the time to integrate it, process it think about what you're taking away from it, think about what you want to do with it, and then get some plan in place to help you with implementation and whether it's programs with us like Sanity School or working with somebody else or accountability with your best friend.

It doesn't matter what it is. It matters that you set yourself up for success with what you commit to and then make sure to do the magic three questions to rinse and repeat and say, okay, well what did this work? What part didn't work so well? What do I want to change? And stick with it for a minute before you go back out to the internet for more information. Anything else you want to live with today?

Diane Dempster: No. I think that's great. Thank you so much for listening today and for being here and for all you do for yourself and your kids.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: It makes a huge difference y'all. The best feedback we got from palooza was people saying, "I thought I was doing this for my kids and I got so much for myself." And that's really what we want for you is to know that the change you want for them starts with you. See you soon.

 

Helpful Links:

• Parent Expectations: 2 Steps to Success 
• Parenting is Leadership Guide