Hi, I'm Jonas Bromberg, I'm a clinical psychologist and today I'm going to be talking to you a little bit about child behavior management. Managing the behavior of a child ADHD can be somewhat of a challenge, but in many ways it's not that much different than managing the behavior of any child. It may require a little bit more planning, attention, and certainly a lot more patience, but many of the same basic behavioral principles apply. Another really important about managing child behavior is being able to set firm and consistent limits. Don't be afraid to, you know, be tough sometimes. You don't need that. A really important thing that I tell parents is never, never threaten a consequence that you're not 100% willing to follow through with. My dad always used to tell me in my sister that he was going to pull the car over and drop us off if we didn't stop fighting. Me and my sister knew very well that he would never do that and so the fighting continued. So if you find yourself in that type of position where you're telling your child you're going to do something as a response to their behavior and you don't do it, they've won and you're going to need to take two steps just to get back to that place you were before as a credible limit center. One of the basic behavioral principles that you can apply to managing the behavior of a child with ADHD is to pay positive attention or do what I call catch them being good. As a parent of a child with ADHD you're probably familiar with the word no and having to focus and refocus and refocus your child's attention and behavior and that can leave you feeling like it's a negative situation like you're always focusing on what the child's not doing or doing inappropriately and what the parent child can kind of feel that way. So simply by starting to pay attention and comment, reinforce the desired behavior, the positive behavior, what they're doing well, you can really shift that balance quite quickly. Reinforce, reward them every time you catch them being good and you're going to start to feel the child's going to start to feel a whole lot different. You really change the tone of the interaction when you can pay more attention to the positive. Several things you need to keep in mind when giving directions to a child with ADHD so that they're effective. First and probably most important with a child with ADHD is to kind of stop them sort of physically in space so that they're not moving around, ask them to make eye contact while you talk into them and then ask them when the direction is given to repeat that direction back to you so that you're clear that they understood and sort of took in what you asked them. Another way to make sure that the directions you give your child are effective is to be very clear and firm. You're the adult, you're in charge and it doesn't tend to work well when you frame a request in terms of a question or a favor. So, you know, feel comfortable being in charge and sort of giving a direct command. It doesn't have to be harsh or firm but child doesn't need to know that you're in charge. Something else that requires some thought ahead of time and planning is to come up with rewards that are powerful and meaningful to the child. It doesn't do any good to set up a reward system. You know, if the child isn't motivated to work for the rewards, I often recommend that parents use social rewards rather than material rewards like gifts or money. Social rewards are usually things like additional time, special time with a parent playing a game or doing a special activity. They can even be something like staying up a little later at bedtime and reading together. But these type of social rewards where parent and child are spending positive time together can be very powerful and another way to sort of combat against the negative dynamic that can get going between a parent and child when difficult behavior is a problem. It really gives a parent and child a chance to take a break and focus on something fun and positive and build that dynamic into the relationship. An effective way to help set expectations and manage child behavior is through the use of a behavior contract. That's one of many tools that you'll find in the toolkit on the Inside ADHD website. The behavior contact is just what it sounds like. It's a contract between a parent and child that helps define in a clear way what the expected behaviors are. What the intended rewards might be when a child performs those expected behaviors and what the consequences would be when the behavior is not performed. The contract can help a parent and child sort of set some time parameters, a time frame around when the behaviors are going to occur, how frequently they're going to be rewarded. When it's written well, it helps a parent and child share a common language for clearly talking about the behavioral expectations. These are just a few tips at a very basic level about child behavior management. We're going to go into some more detail about many of these things in future segments.