Calm Parenting Podcast - Child Forget to Turn in Homework? Help with Focus.

Episode Date: September 16, 2019

Child Forget to Turn in Homework? Help with Focus.In this surprisingly emotional and hard-hitting podcast, Kirk shows you clearly how to turn a negative that usually brings conflict and frustration into a positive that builds your child’s confidence. Want this insight in your school or church? Take one simple step. Email [e-mail] with the word REPTILES in the subject line. Tell us the name of your school/church and city. We’ll send a one-page proposal you can forward. It’s easy. Take advantage of our 20th Anniversary Sale. You save 80% and get 4 programs that actually work. Click here to learn more: https://www.celebratecalm.com/celebrate-adhd/   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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do their homework after fighting you for hours, but then they forget to turn it in? So this is pretty common and there are a lot of different parts of this. So I really wanted to break this down and I talk to teachers a lot about this when I do a professional development training. And here's what usually happens. There's one of two different ways we can kind of handle this, right? Like the typical way that we handle everything is to just berate the child and give them consequences. Well, if you don't forget, if you don't remember to turn your homework in, then you're going to get a bad grade or you're going to miss recess. Well, it's not going to work for two reasons. One is motivation. Many of your kids don't really care about their grades because they have told you, well, grades don't count until high school. And you're pretty

much stuck with that because if you have a middle schooler, they're absolutely right. It doesn't matter. And so you're going to try to convince them to care about something that they naturally don't care about. And plus they see the futility in it. So that's not going to work. Or you're going to give them another consequence and your kids don't care about consequences. They literally don't care. What are you going to take away? So you're kind of stuck. And that's why when we talk about behavior charts and all of those things,

they don't work because we're looking at it through the wrong prism. And I'll encourage you to listen to the other podcasts because I go through that in more detail. But so I was working with this kid once. And so here's the conversation that I want you to be able to have with your child. Because look, the typical way is there's something wrong with you. Why don't you turn in your test? Why can't you ever do that? And the child just over time hears a barrage of there's something wrong with you. You never live up to our expectations. All the other kids do it. Why can't you? I don't know why you just don't apply yourself more. What is it going to take? And all that negativity gets them to eventually just say, forgive me for this, but eventually say, screw you. Screw you. Screw my teachers. Who cares about

school anymore? You're never happy with me. Nobody's ever happy with me. So why would I even bother anymore? And deeper than that is just this feeling of I'm a failure. I'm stupid. I can't tell you how many young people I've met in their mid to late 20s. And I pretty much spot them. But I know they're ADHD kind of kids. And so first thing I hear from them is, yeah, my whole childhood, I just felt like I was stupid, like there's something wrong with me. And you see the path that these people, these young men and women took. And now they're doing just fine. but the road that it took to get there was unnecessarily painful, and there's still scars there, and some of these people got into drugs, and they got into the wrong crowd. Why? Because nobody else accepted them as they were. So why don't we take a completely

different approach? So I'm working with this kid, and so here was my conversation with him. I'm just going to use the name Jacob. It's my stand in for the strong willed child. So my conversation was, Jacob, of course, you're going to struggle to remember to turn in your homework. That's very natural. I want to let you know that I congratulate you. You actually did your homework. Well done. Now, here's the hard part. You're going to forget to turn it in. Why? Because you struggle with short-term memory. Now, before you think that there's something wrong with you or that you have some kind of disorder because you struggle with short-term memory, let me assure you that there's nothing wrong with your brain. Your brain is just wired in a different way that's actually

more advantageous. So let me explain that to you. So the way your brain is wired, you struggle with short-term memory. But the opposite corollary is this. It means that you also have an advantage because you're better at strategic thinking, at long-term thinking. Your mind works better with context and ideas and thinking. It's why you're so good at arguing with your parents. It's why you're good usually at Legos, building with Legos, because you can see how you want to fit these pieces together. It is why you're good at tinkering with things. By the way, that's what you're doing with your parents and other people when you argue is you're just tinkering with their brains. Because you know when you say X, your mom's going to respond this way and then your dad's going to get upset.

Because you're brilliant in your brain and you're strategic. It's why you're often good at chess and checkers. It's why you can see patterns in things because you can see how stuff fits together. Now, that is a huge advantage in life. So let me give you some context here. Short-term memory is only really necessary when you're going through school because the only time in your life really that you have to memorize information and then recall it for a test is in school. Once you get out of college, you'll never really have to do that again. I worked in the corporate world for 20 years. Did I ever have to memorize information even to this day. It is a waste of my energy. So I have developed a lot of workarounds. I keep note. I put notes everywhere. I have note by my front door. Every day I have an email written to me and it has my top priorities for the day. Why? So I don't have to waste my energy

trying to recall all of this stuff in my busy brain. I can look on a piece of paper or at my email, boom, that's my short-term memory. That allows my brain to be free to think of ideas, to think of strategies, of ways of helping people, right? And to be creative. And so, Jacob, let's tie this up. There's nothing wrong with your brain. You have a fantastic brain. In fact, you have an advantageous brain. It just means in school, things are going to be tougher for you, and you're going to struggle a little little bit and that's normal. It doesn't mean you're dumb or stupid or less than. Not at all. It just means your brain is wired differently. The unique advantage you have is this. After you get out of college and look, most of your life

from age 22 to about 80 is going to be spent in the adult world. Guess what? You've got a better brain for the adult world. You know why? Because companies don't pay people a lot of money to have good short-term memory. They pay people who are good thinkers, who challenge the established way of doing things, who come up with innovative ideas, who are strategic and put together plans, strategic plans, and think through things. You're going to have an amazing future. You're just going to struggle at doing things like remembering to turn your homework in. Well, guess what? You don't have to really turn homework in after you get out of college. Now, you'll have assignments to turn in, but you know why you'll remember? Because you want the paycheck and because you're going to be interested in it,

right? So don't worry about that right now. But I'm not going to let you off the hook because you are in first grade or third grade, eighth grade, 11th grade, you're in college. So here's my challenge for you. You know that you have that weakness. You've got to turn in your homework. So I know that you have this creative strategic brain. So I believe that you're capable of coming up with a creative solution to this, knowing that you have. Now, I love that phrase, I believe you're capable. You're going to hear me say it on probably almost every podcast. Why? Because it's a great phrase and because it imparts confidence and because it means you, mom and dad, aren't supposed to fix everything for your child. It's up to them to come up with some of these things.

You're going to provide context. You're going to provide encouragement. But it's their job to fix stuff and to come up with solutions because they are capable and that communicates you're good. You're smart. You can do this. So when I said, I believe you're capable of coming up with a creative solution. Look, a couple other things here. I'm not letting them off the hook. I didn't say, oh, you have ADHD. So it's just going to be really hard and you're probably going to fail. So don't even try. That's not what I said. I didn't make an excuse for it. I'm just explaining why it is more difficult, but then I'm immediately, my energy goes to problem solving of, but

you've got some advantages here, so not letting you off the hook, come up with a creative solution. So you know what this kid did, and this will resonate with you, I believe. So a couple things I knew about him. He loves money, likes money, likes earning money. And he's a creative kid and he likes to come up. He likes to kind of tinker with things. So you know what he did? He earned some money or he may have actually stolen it from his parents.

I don't know. Either way, he was resourceful. And he bought a scanner. He bought like a $10, $15 scanner. You know what that kid does now? He comes home from school, he does his homework, he scans it into his parents' computer, and then he emails it to his teacher. Boom! He just turned in his homework. That's brilliant. And do you know what every single adult in his life told him from his parents to the teachers? Well, Jacob, you know, that's not the way you're supposed to do it. You're supposed to remember to turn your homework in because one

day when you're 27, you're going to have to remember to turn in your homework. And everything was negative and everybody, everybody put the kid down. And that makes me furious. And you know what? When they're 27 and they don't turn in their work, you know what's going to happen? They're not going to get paid and they're going to starve to death and die. So guess what? They're going to turn in their work. You can't project out what an eight-year-old or 14-year-old is going to be like when they're 24 or 28, right? So you've got to stop that. And so here, look, that's what every adult does to these kids.

And we wonder why they don't have confidence and they want to shut down. What if instead his teachers and parents would have come to him and said, you know what, Jacob? That's brilliant because you have enough self-awareness to know that you struggle in this area. But you didn't make an excuse for it. Instead, you used the other side, the opposite corollary of weakness in that area and used one of your strengths, which is creative thinking, and you came up with a creative idea. And I'm proud of you because that's going to serve you well in life. And I love that. So you know what we're going to do in my class, Jacob? And this is cool because this is eventually what his teacher did because I went in and talked to the parents and teachers

about this and said, if you want to turn your child against you and make sure he has no confidence and is oppositional and defiant all the time and shuts down, keep doing what you're doing with the negativity. But if you want to encourage him to do his homework, here's what you could do. And here's what this teacher, to her credit, did once she understood the brain science and what we were doing. She now, at the end of the day, not every day, but many days, says, Jacob, bet you can't be the first one to turn in your math homework. And you know what happens? He goes home, scans it in, turns it in. You know what's beautiful? The teacher has it because there's a timestamp on it. Guess what happens the next day

when he walks into the class? Guess what he gets? A fist bump from the teacher saying, and this is what I wanted her to do. Teacher says in front of all the other kids so they can hear, hey, nice job with your math assignment last night, your homework. You were the first one to turn it in. And now you've got a kid who's beaming. The kid who is a slow processor, who usually is the last one to do his, turn in his test or assignment because of the way his brain's wired. He processes a little bit more slowly and thinks he's stupid. Now in front of all the other kids, the teacher gets to affirm him and say, yeah, he was the first one to turn in his homework, and he did a great job on it.

You do that to one of our kids, you don't think they're going to start working their butts off for you and trying. And here's the other thing with many of your kids. Every one of you will say this. When things get tough, they just shut down and they can't push through. Of course, because all they've ever gotten is negativity, right? But you start creating successes. You start teaching them how their brain works so that they know how to be successful and they'll push through and they'll work really hard for you.

So listen to the podcast. Listen to and get the Celebrate ADHD program on our website. It's under the products page. I will take you through how their brains work so you can have these conversations with your child. I have a hundred ideas like this on every different topic right so instead of it being a failure we create a success out of it there's a program on there for the brain boosters for teachers so that you can actually share this with teachers it is the best professional development on the planet it is it's so good you can share it with them there's and there's IP resource all of this comes in one package it's our 20th year of doing this. So we put together a special package. It is on sale. It's usually a thousand dollars to do this.

It is a fraction of that right now. Just a fraction. Look, our stuff costs less than a trip or two to a therapist's office, way less than testing. And I'm going to tell you everything about your brain so you don't even have to go through all that stuff and ruin your child's confidence. So do it. Share it with the teachers. Impart this kind of confidence in your child and they'll be a different person. It's really cool. If we can help you, reach out to us. Email my son, Casey, C-A-S-E-Y, at Celebrate Calm, C-A-L-M, CelebrateCalm.com or call us at 888-506-1871. And again, you can find everything at CelebrateADHD.com. Thanks for listening.

Thanks for being a good parent. Hope to hear from you soon. And be sure to share the podcast with parents and teachers who need this insight. Thanks again. Bye-bye.