Elaine Taylor-Klaus
When you begin to take aim on something more tangible and specific, it's easier to get results, and then the successes breed more success. And then you get buy-in because now things are starting to improve. It has this beautiful kind of cascading impact, but it starts by targeting something really small.

Welcome back, everybody, to another conversation in the Parenting wWith Impact podcast. It is amazing to me that we are, like, 200 episodes in, and we have not yet really done a podcast on this topic. 

Diane Dempster
No, but you know what? This is episode 200, Elaine. So, first of all, can we have a moment of celebration? And it's hilarious that we're like, but I think it's hilarious and cool all at the same time because we're going to take you back to the beginning. Right? 

Elaine Taylor-Klaus
Yeah. So, we are going to talk today about taking aim. And taking aim is the very first step in the Impact model. It's the model we've been teaching since 2011. It's the coach approach to parenting complex kids. Actually, the coach approach to managing any kind of complex, challenging issue in life, mental health area, parenting, whatever, chronic medical illness, this method, the impact method really works, and we're going to talk about the first step, right?

Diane Dempster
And the reason that the first step is the first step is that, in the context of this, you know, if you're a parent of a complex kid and you're trying to figure out where do I put my focus? There's 7, 000 things. My kid has all these executive function challenges. My kids have all these school problems. We have all these problems at home. All of this stuff. Do I work on them? Do I work on me? Do I work on my co-parent? Like, this is not usually, "Oh, this is my problem. Let me work on it." sort of situation. And so the idea of taking aim is really designed to help you figure out, "Where do I start? What do I do? Where do I go?" When you particularly if there is a lot of stuff and overwhelm.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus
And so what happens, we found in, in families with complex kids or when you're dealing with any kind of chronic medical condition, frankly, is there's lots that need to be done, right there. And it's in all these different arenas. And, you know, you've seen the reward charts with like 20 million items on them because they're all these things we're worried about. And we want our kids to learn to do and do independently. And we get freaked out and overwhelmed by all of it, right? When you feel like you have to do it all, and you have to do it all now, and it's all important. Like, It can really actually shut us down. 

Diane Dempster
Well, not just us but our kids. I mean, I know I've had this visual of the family chart that you had, and we had, you know, I remember a family meeting where we sat down, and everybody shared what they wanted us to work on as a family and what changes we wanted to see. There are 30 things on the list, and it's okay. Well, where the heck do we start? And I think that this is the piece of it. It's hard to decide, and I think that that's really where I would start is like, you can't get this wrong, and you can't get this right, right? There is no right place to take aim and there's no wrong place to take aim. It's just about figuring out, "Where do I start? Where do I want to take aim?" And to ask this question, to get into the habit, and I was talking to some parents the other day. In our small group and, I was like, they're still stuck on "Where do I take aim?" And what we're really trying to do is to get in the habit of asking the question, "Where am I taking...?"

Elaine Taylor-Klaus
What am I focusing on right now?

Diane Dempster
What am I focusing on right now? 

Elaine Taylor-Klaus
So, a few things for context. So yes, it's about deciding What's? Like the questions we ask might be, what's the change you want to see? What do you want to focus on? There are a couple of things. One, there are a million things that need to be done. So when we talk about taking aim in some way, we're talking about what's the next area, what's the one next area where we want to help our kids become have more agency, be more independent, like begin to manage something on their own a little bit more. 

Diane Dempster
We always say like, What's the change you want to see, right? And I think that that's an important piece of it is this sort of, and it doesn't have to be, okay, I'm gonna work on this until it's done, right? It's just to sort of honestly give yourself some permission to say, okay, I'm going to take aim on this for the next hour or for the next week or for the next month. I mean, you don't have to decide and lock yourself in, but the tool is designed to help you shift your attention to fewer things So that you can figure out what do I want to do or what do I want to explore or what, you know, it, it's to kind of cut through some of the noise because there are so many pieces to this.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus
So, there are a few different layers here. Okay. So first, what we're saying is, you know, when we often talk, when we first started, we used to talk about this more, that there's kind of taking aim on a macro level and taking aim on a micro level. So let's start there first. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, at the macro level, we could be taking aim on emotional regulation, or we could be taking aim on school-related issues or getting ready in the mornings. Macro is like it's the big picture or something. We've had people work with us who have spent the entire year or two years working on improving relationships, right? So macro is not the change you want to see in a very specific way, but it's really looking at "What am I focusing on?" And we often say, if you don't know where to focus on a macro level, look at relationships or self-care. Right? Those are...

Diane Dempster
Let's make sure that we've got people pointing in the right place with self care. We're not talking about spa dates and gym. We're talking about focusing on yourself and what's going on for you in the context of everything else. Right? 

Elaine Taylor-Klaus
So, the macro is choosing what wants your attention, and what area of your family dynamic you want to begin to focus on improving. 

Diane Dempster
And that might be an area that everybody agrees is a problem, right? Or it might be an area that you see as a real challenge. It's a challenge for you, and maybe it's not a challenge for others, which might take you in a different direction in terms of how you handle it. But sometimes I find that the big picture is easier because part of this down the line is you're going to want to get your kids buy-in. If you can find something that your kids are frustrated about, and I think about the story, Elaine, you talk about mornings, and you come home, and you're like, "Oh my gosh, this morning just totally stunk. Did everybody else feel the same way?" Let's do something about this. Right? It's just sort of if you have something that everybody agrees on. This is something... 

Elaine Taylor-Klaus
To change it so much like we really did.

Diane Dempster
Well, maybe it's something where they want you to get off your back about something, right? It's just they really want to be more independent about homework, which is a big bucket guys, just so you know, and that sort of thing, but you want to just kind of start with the big bucket first. 

Elaine Taylor-Klaus
And then the other. So, this is about knowing where you as a parent are focusing, like what are you going to really pay attention to in terms of your family dynamic? Right. Yeah. And, then, you want to begin to look at taking aim on micro levels, like more specifically narrowing in again, the same question. What's the change you want to see? But instead of something big, like making mornings better, then as you collect more information, you get more specific about, like, a little bit more to time and place. I might, instead of mornings, big picture, it might be, we might take aim on everybody getting out of bed or everybody getting downstairs at a particular time. Go ahead, what?

Diane Dempster
Oh, no. And as I think about the model, the second step is to educate, to get curious, right? And a lot of times, that's the best tool to use when you're trying to do the narrowing down that you're just suggesting. So if I say, okay, I'm going to take aim on the mornings. So we ask, "What's going on? Where are the sticky spots? Is it feet on the floor? Is it they're taking a long time in the shower, and it's making us late? Is it that nobody knows what we're supposed to do? And we've got a long list of things to do, and we're having a hard time getting through this stuff." So what's going on for them? What's going on for me? What's going on from an executive function perspective? And then you might say, okay, you know what, what's really going on is that I'm getting impatient, and I'm losing my cool, and it's adding the stress level to the families. So, where I really want to take aim on is my stress around being late to school, or you might find that my kid is taking a long time in the shower. And so you might narrow in and say, "I really want to take aim on the amount of time my kiddo is spending in a shower because it feels like. It's part of what's making us..."

Elaine Taylor-Klaus
Right. So, the thing about taking aim at this micro level is that there's often a little bit of a time and place associated with it, right? There is something specific, and the beautiful thing about it is when you begin to take aim on something more tangible, more specific, you actually, it's easier to get results. And then the successes breed more success, and then you get buy-in because now things are starting to improve, and people are starting to get along better. And so it has this beautiful kind of cascading impact, but it starts by targeting something really small. The other thing I want to say about taking aim is to look at its benefits for a minute. Not only does it benefit you. So that you know, we're focusing on this and I can kind of scaffold the other things or let other things slide because this is the area we're really focusing on. But it helps your kid know what they're really focusing on and what the expectation is to pay attention to. And so instead of going through the day with 20 million corrections because they're being told to use their fork, get out of bed, and turn in the homework, you know, they're directed all day long.

They know that there's kind of one real issue. Maybe it's being nice to your siblings sitting at the table, you know, the breakfast table, that there's one issue that they're really being held accountable to work on, and they can focus, and you can focus, and it's a lot easier to see success. 

Diane Dempster
Well, and Elaine, I'm thinking about all the parents who, when you just said scaffolding or letting it slide. Okay. We're not talking about ignoring unwanted behavior. What we're talking about is tackling behaviors one piece at a time to make it easier for you and your family to actually make change because this is what we see over and over again. It's like there's this going on and that going on in the homework, the grades, the chores, and everything else. And it's like if you're trying to do it all. Nobody's going to be able to, you're not going to do anything well, and nobody's going to see where the successes are. And this is where some of those chore charts and stuff fall down. I remember kids who have like the little chart in school, and it's like, they get, you know, three checks and two minuses. And it's like, we're focused on the minuses instead of the checks. And it's like, this kid feels like they can't win because they spent their entire day trying to do this thing, and they did really great at it, but these other things weren't as successful. And so they got marked down, and we were on an interview with somebody this week, and we were talking about how the brain is conditioned to notice the negative, right?

And so, even if we're trying to celebrate with our kids, every time they have an opportunity for failure, it's going to imprint with them in a more challenging way than the positive stuff. Well, they may not even tell; I can tell you this for a fact: they will not tell you that it's imprinted more significantly. But if you think about yourself as a human being, we remember the negative stuff more than we remember the positive stuff. That's just human nature and the way the brain is wired to work. 

Elaine Taylor-Klaus
So, part of the value of taking aim is it reduces the stress. It allows everybody to know really what helps you create really easy agreements. This is what we're working on. What we learned early on when we started doing this was that we would go back to our community, and we would say, so what are the tools that you're learning from this that are most helpful? And we heard again and again and again that taking aim gave people permission to know what to focus on, and to Diane's point, we're not letting go of everything else; you can do it all, but you can't do it all at the same time. So if you begin to incrementally create progress by taking aim, it reduces everybody's stress, and then you start working together. 

Diane Dempster
Well, it reduces stress, and you said this earlier: success breeds success. And so even if I'm just working on the same thing for every day this week or every day. We have small groups that meet every other week, and so a lot of time, parents will say, "Okay, this is what I'm going to take aim on until the group meets again." 

Elaine Taylor-Klaus
For the next two weeks, right? 

Diane Dempster
For the next two weeks, it's just sort of okay. So at the end of the two weeks, you can decide, okay, yeah, no, you know what? I want to take him on something else, but it's just sort of, you begin to see progress in a very different way cuz you can say, "Okay, where were we four days ago, and what am I noticing is different? Well, wait a second. Instead of yelling five times today, I only yelled three times."

Elaine Taylor-Klaus
Besides, we're just trying to reduce the intensity and the frequency of the unwanted behaviors, right? That's success.

Diane Dempster
It is, and it doesn't feel like it because we're like, that's the reminder, guys. We're looking for progress, not perfection.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus
So, the other thing that I hear a lot from parents is this issue of, "Well, I don't know where to take it. What do I do?" And sometimes what we'll do, and Diane talked a little while ago about getting curious, but sometimes what we'll also do is say, "Okay, what's in it for them?" Like, where is something they want to really be more independent? They want you off their back. They want to see something different. And sometimes instead of taking aim on something you want, like, I really want my kid to, you know, go to bed on time or turn off the screens or whatever. You may start by getting some buy-in from them, getting more buy-in over time by starting with a change that they really want to see happen.

Diane Dempster
Even if it's just, this is what I said before, it's like, even if it's just getting mom off their back about something, right?

Elaine Taylor-Klaus
Valid. Or, like, they may want, like, you took a whole thing on stopping yelling, and you got your kids involved with you stopping yelling. Believe me, there's something in it for them.

Diane Dempster
Well, as you were saying that, the other reminder about taking aim is that we want to take aim on the problem rather than the solution. I mean, it happens to me all the time. Like my kid needs a structure for X, Y, Z, or my kid needs to use their planner. I'm going to take aim on getting my kid to use their planner. There's the example I always like to give. If we do start, this is what we teach in sanity school. It's like, if you try to put a structure outside of the context of the problem. That's a sticky spot, right? It's just sort of, if I'm a planner, my disaster is what you really like. But it's like the change I want to see is that my kid’s having a hard time capturing their assignments. What is it that we want to do to try to improve assignment capture? You may end up with a planner. I want to say that you might end up, but if you're starting with assignment capture, you're going to be more creative. You're going to be more collaborative. You might hit less resistance from your kid because it's like this sort of, okay, you agree that we need to have something that's going to work to capture assignments.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus
Right, and you may come back to it. The piece that's so interesting here is that we have this tendency. Right, to look at the solution and say, "Well, I can see what this kid needs, and so I want them to do this. This behavior that I know is going to help. I want them to put their laundry in the hamper. I want them to brush their teeth in the bathroom instead of in the kitchen. I want them to like whatever it is we see. Right. But when we do that, what Diane is saying underneath is that sometimes we're solving the wrong problem, right? And so we don't want the system, the solution to become the goal. The point of a system is to support us in achieving a goal. So, the point of a planner is to help our kids capture their assignments or their to-dos. Right? So we don't want if we take aim on the planner, we're missing the underlying problem that we're trying to solve. And very often, when we take aim, and we get curious, and you go through the model, we actually realize that you might not have taken aim on exactly the right thing. You may circle back and take aim on something different because now you understand what's really going on. 

Diane Dempster
Well, and the other piece of it is that when we take aim at something, that's a strategy that's ours, we're missing the opportunity to help our kids figure out what works for them. And I tell you, well-meaning parents, the thing that works for you a thousand percent of the time may not work at all for them, right? Even if you're, even if you've got the same flavor of ADHD, you think as your kid does, don't jump to that conclusion that just because it works for you will work for them. And particularly as your kids get older, they're going to resist that. They're going to resist it because it was their, your idea instead of their idea. So there's this great opportunity to go, let's try a bunch of things. I mean, that's part of what the model does. It's like, let's experiment. Let's not just pick one solution, but let's try a couple of different things and see what we learned from it. And then come up with the longer-term strategy that we're gonna put in place.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus
So, taking aim is about getting everybody very clear on what change you're gonna be working on in this moment, in this week, in whatever time frame you identify. And it's about using that as a foundation for evaluating progress and how change is happening. And for helping you find the rewards, right? So, instead of 30 million things on a reward chart, my reward chart ended up being a piece of paper with my kids and three names on it. And every time they did something good, I'd say, "Go give yourself two points." You know, like I was taking aim on encouraging their positive behavior. Right. So if you're saying I want my kid to get off their devices without being irritable, that's not actually one thing. That's more than one thing. So, you might start by getting off the device. Then, you might move on to getting off the device without being irritable. 

Diane Dempster
And if we're really talking about this and we talk about realistic expectations, it might be getting off the device with four reminders and then two reminders. And then without the riping and without that, you know, there's several steps here. Again, we want to look at the progress rather than the endpoint because it's a setup. If you're measuring yourself on the endpoint and you're like, okay, yeah, but they didn't get it done on time versus, okay, they made progress on this. Let's celebrate that. 

Elaine Taylor-Klaus
And so we really encourage everybody to take aim again and again and again. Every time you're in the middle of something, and there's a kerfuffle, it's a good time to ask and say, "Okay, what's the real issue here?, What are we really wanting here?, What are we really focusing on?" It's a really powerful tool to help you begin to manage all the things we have to do in a way that feels manageable and not overwhelming.

Diane Dempster
Well, and we didn't say this. So this will be the last thing I want to say is it can be one thing, and ideally, it's not a lot of things, but make sure you're not taking aim on four things at once if your nervous system can't handle that. But if you can handle taking aim with this, with this kid, that, with this kid, we'll give you permission to take aim on a few, but just watch what happens with your overwhelm when you're not trying to tackle it all.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus
So, what are you taking away from this, folks? What's your insight or your awareness? And how do you want to use it moving forward? What do you want to commit to? What do you want to try this week in terms of taking aim? I also want to offer an invitation. If this sounds like something you want to play with a little bit and experiment with it, if you're not a member of our community and in one of our coaching groups, we take aim at the beginning of every single coaching group, and we guide you and coach you through taking aim. So if this feels like it's a tool that you'd really like some practice with. Let us know because that's what we do in group coaching. There's a lot of ways that we support parents through using this. Anything else we want to add, Di?

Diane Dempster
No, thanks for what you do for yourself and for your kids at the end of the day.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus
You make such a big difference. Take care, everybody.