When ADHD Anger Turns Destructive: Why Punishment Makes It Worse (And What Actually Works)

Destructive anger in ADHD kids is one of the most misunderstood, shame-loaded experiences parents face. The advice most families are given — harsher consequences, bigger punishments, “making it stop” — often makes these episodes happen more often, not less.

In this episode, Apryl and Dr. Brian walk through what’s actually happening in the ADHD brain during these moments — and the system that helps families stop the cycle without becoming permissive or powerless.

Thoughts parents have that this episode answers

• “If I don’t punish this hard, am I raising a future adult who can’t control themselves?”
• “Why does my kid destroy things over something so small?”
• “Nothing works — consequences, lectures, taking things away.”
• “Am I being too soft… or am I missing something?”

You’re not weak for asking those questions. You’re responding to a nervous system problem with tools that were never designed for ADHD brains.

What This Episode Walks You Through

1. Why logic disappears during ADHD anger explosions

• What’s happening in the amygdala vs. the prefrontal cortex
• Why reasoning, lecturing, and threats cannot work in the moment
• The difference between knowing better and being able to do better

2. The system that reduces destructive behavior over time

• How to interrupt explosions before they happen
• Why antecedents matter more than consequences
• The “positive opposite” strategy that teaches replacement behaviors

3. Consequences that teach — without escalating the fire

• Why harsh punishment increases aggression and dysregulation
• What accountability looks like for ADHD kids
• How small, boring, predictable consequences actually stick

4. How this changes for teenagers

• Why dignity, privacy, and agency matter more as kids get older
• How to collaborate instead of control
• What repair sounds like after the storm — without shaming

5. What teachers can do to prevent public blowups

• Simple classroom strategies that protect regulation and self-esteem
• How to intervene quietly before the explosion
• Why predictability lowers threat for ADHD students

Why this approach works when others fail

Most parenting advice treats explosive anger as a behavior problem.
This episode treats it as a nervous system overload — and responds with strategies that work with ADHD brains instead of against them.

This isn’t permissive parenting.
 It isn’t “being soft.”
 It’s strategic, research-aligned, and focused on building skills your child will carry into adulthood.

Want to go deeper?

• Share this episode with a partner, teacher, or caregiver who needs the full picture
• Subscribe so you don’t miss the next episode on repairing after blowups
• Leave a review — it helps other ADHD families find support that actually helps

You’re not failing.
You’re learning a different way to lead — because you have a different kid.

Chapters

• 0:00 Opening Story: The Destructive Meltdown
• 2:40 Why Harsh Punishment Backfires
• 6:55 The ABC Chain: Antecedents First
• 12:10 Transition Cues And Task Shrinking
• 16:45 Teaching The Positive Opposite
• 20:30 Small, Predictable Consequences
• 24:40 Strategies That Respect Teen Agency
• 29:10 Quiet Classroom Supports That Work
• 33:10 Two Quick Wins For Tonight

Transcript

Apryl: 0:00

Every ADHD parent knows this moment. The crash, the door slam, the toy, the lamp, the picture frame being thrown on the floor. Your child is shaking, wild-eyed, standing in the middle of the wreckage. You're standing in the doorway thinking, what just happened? Why again? And somewhere under the anger, there's that other voice. If I don't stop this, what kind of adult will they become? Should I punish this? What should I do? Welcome to Raising ADHD, the podcast for parents and teachers raising ADHD kids. If you've ever felt frustrated, overwhelmed, or just unsure what to do next, you're not alone. I'm April Bradford, a former teacher and ADHD mom, and alongside my husband, Dr. Brian Bradford, a child and adolescent psychiatrist, we're here to give you the clarity, strategies, and support you've been looking for. Every week we break down the misconceptions, answer your biggest questions, and share real tools you can use right away at home and in the classroom. So if you're ready to feel more confident and less overwhelmed, you're in the right place. Hey there. Welcome back to Raising ADHD. If you're new here, I am April. Welcome. And along here with me is my husband, Dr. Brian Bradford.

Brian: 1:23

What's up, Brian? Hi, April.

Apryl: 1:25

Um, we hope you guys had a great holiday, and hopefully the tips from the last the series, the holiday series, were helpful. And today we are diving into a deeper topic that can really wreck homes and can be really intense. So we're talking about the anger and not just typical anger, but the anger that literally destroys homes. Kids punching the walls, kids destroying their rooms. And so it's physical destruction, but it's also emotional destruction too. So that's what we're diving into today. Let's start with the part every parent is afraid to say out loud. When my kid destroys their room, I see red. And I want to punish big enough to make it stop. If that's you, you're not a monster. You're a human whose nervous system has been ambushed a hundred times.

Brian: 2:29

Right. And you're staring at very real damage. There's holes in the walls, there's broken toys, there's shattered truss. This is when when we're doing like evaluations on psychiatric patients, we ask, when you get angry, what actually happens? Because there's a big difference between I'm throwing chairs and I get really upset and go to my room and cool off. With the ADHD brain, we we've kind of talked about these two things, but we have we have the the amygdala and the prefrontal cortex. So the amygdala is that's the alarm center, and that's when it becomes extrasensitive and it's firing fast and it's I'm rejected, I'm misunderstood, I've I've got to like alarms are going off.

Apryl: 3:12

Yeah, this is like the like the fire alarm, but like instead of like the smoke detector going off, it's like someone actually pulled the fire alarm and the sprinklers are going off instead of like, hey, there's something here to be aware of. It's like major alarms when it really isn't a big emergency.

Brian: 3:28

Right. It's chaos. It's it is this place is burning down. And we also have talked about the prefrontal cortex. This is the CEO of the brain. And this is the part that says, Hold up, this isn't worth it. We should think about this and do something else. But this part isn't working right now. We got the alarms going off, we got the smoke, the smoke detector, it's it's chaos. It's like, you know, action movie. But the the part that's gonna think about this of should I take a step back? It's not working right now. It's not gonna work for another few minutes or hours or however long this this event lasts. One thing to know with this is logic is not in the driver's seat with this. This is when you when you try to logically work through this, it's not gonna ever make logical sense.

Apryl: 4:14

Yeah, so that's why saying you know better in that moment is just going to escalate the situation even worse. They probably do know better. But knowing and doing are different skills for the ADHD brain, especially when that amygdala, the that alarm center is just ringing all the alarms. Okay, so let's go right to the question because I know that this is one of those things it's like they've broken things. Literally, we have holes in our walls, or they've broke something, they've you know thrown something in the TV, broke the TV. Like this is a these are big deals. So should there be punishment? What should parents be doing here?

Brian: 4:53

Right. So, I mean, we'll have to talk a lot about a lot about punishment, but in this, in this case, it should be not punishment necessarily, but accountability. They like a traditional punishment, especially these harsh punishments, don't work for kids. And they especially, especially do not work for the ADH shoe brain. So the kid's in meltdown mode, he's in fight or flight. I mean, at this point, he's like, Do I run away? Do I like anything's going? But the last thing that's happening is a logical thought. And so it's not doing this calculation of, by the way, if I do this, if I throw the chair, I'm gonna lose Minecraft for the next three days. Like, that's not the thought at all. It's uh do I run away? Do I burn the house down? Like, like these are much more extreme thoughts than this.

Apryl: 5:43

Like again, going back to the alarm system, they're literally like, how do I get out of this situation? They're not thinking like, oh, if I throw this, it's like, get me out of this situation.

Brian: 5:55

Yep. And since the amygdala, it's not even the prefrontal cortex isn't even active at this point, it's not, it's not ready to come online and just say, you know what, let's logically think through this. And so when we do this harse or this frequent punishment, there's some bad outcomes that come along with this. When you have harse punishment, that's linked to more aggression and more oppositional behavior and more emotional dysregulation, especially with these kids with ADHD. So you're you're now punishing your child for a deficiency that they have. I mean, this is, you know, I'm deaf. Why can't you hear what I'm saying? I'm blind, why can't you see what I'm what I'm showing you? It's the same thing. Why can't you do this? But the kids with ADHD are struggling with this working memory, they're struggling with time. So when you're saying you're grounded for a month, that's that's just abstract. That doesn't even like make sense. That's not like a concrete thing for them at that time, and it's not what their brain is thinking about.

Apryl: 6:56

Yeah. And so for parents, that thing that feels so satisfying in the moment, like you're grounded from iPad for a month, it's like that I'm gonna show you how serious this is by like a really harsh punishment. It often doesn't wire in the lesson we think it does. Like it's not affecting them the way that we hope that it's going to. And then that aggression, those behaviors, we're just seeing more of it. It's really like, I just see it like as a forest fire just getting bigger and bigger as we're both like so escalated.

Brian: 7:30

Right. And also we're using this as a treatment for ourselves to make ourselves feel better, not to actually correct the behavior.

Apryl: 7:37

Yeah.

Brian: 7:38

Or correct future behavior. The behavior's already happened. We're now like trying to figure out how do we wrap future behavior.

Apryl: 7:45

Yeah, that's the key thing here is like, okay, this happened now. What can we be doing to make it so it doesn't happen in the future? That's a very key point. So, Brian, what does work?

Brian: 7:55

So adjusting what does happen before the explosion, aka the antecedent. We're gonna talk about this again in a minute. But what happens before the explosion, and then teaching and practicing the replacement behavior, or this is like the positive opposite of destruction. So what's gonna happen in s instead of this? And then we also have small, boring, consistent consequences that are tied directly to the behavior instead of this big emotional punishment. There's no like you're grounded for a month. That's just that's ridiculous. That doesn't even compute. We're gonna have just a small something that goes, okay, I do have something.

Apryl: 8:38

Let's walk through one of those bedroom destruction moments in slow motion, not the version you see, but the version that's living in the brain. So the trigger shows up. Like you walk in and it's hey, time to shut off the game, or you need to do homework, or no, you can't go to the friend's house. Your child's brain reads, This is unfair. They feel rejection, and it's a threat. So the amygdala slams the alarm. Remember, this is not just a small alarm. This is like all the bells and whistles going off, their heart rate spikes, their muscles tense. And the thought is not, they're not thinking, I'm gonna destroy my room. The thought is this feels unbearable. How do I make this stop? And for some kids, that looks like screaming. For others, that's throwing things, and for some teens, slamming doors, punching holes in the wall, or disappearing behind a screen. Brian, when in this beh bedroom behavior moment, like we walked in, turn off the game, you're seeing, you know what's gonna happen. What can we do before you were talking about the antecedent? What can we do?

Brian: 9:47

Yes. So we call this the ABC chain. We have the antecedent, and this is what is happening beforehand. But you already knew this one. You knew that you were about to go say, let's shut off the game. And you've you've lived with this child. You know exactly what's gonna happen when you say this. And so your ABC is your A's your antecedent, your B is your behavior. That's what's actually gonna happen. That's what the child's gonna react with. And then your C is your consequence or what actually happens afterwards. Now, it's not that case of you're using punishment. We've skipped A and B, first of all, which are the most powerful things. That's actual the prevention. The consequence isn't a prevention, not for that behavior. Maybe for future behaviors, but it's never the the it can't prevent that behavior because it comes after it.

Apryl: 10:35

Yeah, so with every ADHD parent, we see the pattern, right? You know, like you were saying, we know when you say turn off the game. And I see this in parenting groups all the time. It's like, oh, I know when I tell my kid to turn off the game, I don't know how to take away screens because I know they're gonna explode. Well, okay, we know this, right? So going back to that antecedent, the first prevention move is not to make the punishment bigger when this happens. That's not gonna help the next time. It's what are my kids' early warning signs before they trash the room? So maybe their voice gets whiny, or you know that it's going to be you're going to be the trigger by saying the game, turn off the game. Or, you know, like maybe they're like, this is stupid, or the pacing, they get silly and defiant. With teens, they might get sarcastic. There's that, like they go stone cold, or the whatever, I don't care. That's the window, and that's where prevention lies. So when we know we can start to see these uh signs of the meltdown or the aggression, we can do something beforehand. So let's talk about what can when we see these early signs, what can you do today to change that chain of reaction that we know? I mean, it's like I feel like it's groundhog's day. Like we know it's gonna happen, but we don't know what to do. So it's just okay, I'll make the punishment worse. But what can we actually do today?

Brian: 12:03

Right. So when we look at the evidence, it's mostly pushing us towards antecedent strategies. So these are tweaks that are happening before the trigger actually even hits. And so instead of, hey, I need you to turn off the I need you to turn off the games, you're now gonna implement things like a transition cue. Hey, we have 10 more minutes of switch time. I'm just giving you heads up now, and then five minutes, two minutes, one minute. All right, it's time now. And they have this time to to desensitize this amygdala and activate their prefrontal cortex and say, okay, logically, I'm gonna have to turn this off. She's given me the countdown. She was nice, she gave me 10 minutes, and now I can uh I don't have to fight her for this one because she gave me those. Uh, another thing you can do is shrinking the task. When you go tell your child, clean your room, that's that's the McDowell firing going, I'm instantly overwhelmed. There's stuff everywhere, there's no way I can get this all done, it's too much. So if you can shrink this and say, hey, you've got three things that close out, or you just need to get these three things picked up. If you do the shirts, I'll do the socks. And then it's like, oh, okay. I don't need to activate because I'm about to get a reward of my mom's gonna pick up the socks if I'm grabbing the shirts. And and this is again the prefrontal cortex has a chance to actually be active and analyze this. Uh another good one is hard conversations. First of all, don't put them late in the day when when we're depleted. When a kid gets home from school, the last thing he wants to hear is, hey, by the way, did you da da da your teacher called today?

Apryl: 13:44

Your teacher called today. Don't do that.

Brian: 13:45

Yeah, guess what? I don't care. I don't care about anything right now, and now I'm gonna blow up. This is everything's okay, and there's no activation, there's no punishments, there's no risks, and let's have a let's have a discussion. You know what I mean? You're you're on the way home from the baseball game and everything's great, and it's like, hey, just so you know, your teacher said that you missed too many things on your spelling test and you need to review it. Okay. So these aren't so this is another this is another big one. These aren't just parenting soft. These are parenting smart. You're not trying to like be extra soft and coddle your parents or coddle your kids and and hold their hands through everything. What you're doing is just smart parenting so that they're still doing all the same things. They still have to turn off their Nintendo, they still have to clean up their room. You're just being smart about it so that this isn't just instantly overwhelming and they don't end up, you know what I hate? I hate people telling me what to do. Instead, it's you know what? I like a clean room.

Apryl: 14:43

I think that's really, really key here. Um, because so many times it's like you know, the parents hear, well, if you were just harder with them or you weren't so soft with them, like this isn't a soft, soft in quotation marks way of parenting. This is smart and strategic. This is what works for these kids. So don't feel guilty doing this. Like, it's going to take time too to implement these things that we're talking about today. It's not gonna work the very first time. But the more you implement this over and over, you're going to see the progress over time, and your kids are going to start learning these skills, and it will eventually work. So just remember that that this is not soft parenting. This is actually like research-based what works for your kids. Okay, so we talked about the antecedent. Now, step two to this is teaching the positive opposite. And before we dive into this, you're gonna listen to this and go, oh my gosh, big eye roll, especially for teenagers. This is not intended for teenagers. We're gonna talk about teenagers in just a minute. This is more for your little kids. I mean, you can teach them what to do, but this whole practicing thing is gonna be definitely for your littles, not for your teenagers. So you want to not just tell them what to do, you need to teach it and reward the specific thing that you want them to do instead. So, for example, like your little kid goes in and when they're angry, they just destroy their whole room. The positive opposite might be when you're furious, you go to your calm corner and hit the pillow, not the wall, or you know, destroying things. Or you can say, I need a break and leave the room with your hands to yourself. So you come up with the positive opposite with your child, and then this is the part, especially that's for our littles. You practice it when everyone's calm. So it's like, hey, let's practice. Next time it's time to turn off your game, let's practice what that looks like. I'm gonna give you a 10-minute warning, and then um when you get angry and upset instead of yelling and throwing things, you can pretend to say no and then practice stomping, saying, I'm mad, and going to your calm spot and either screaming into the pillow or hitting a pillow. And then as the adult, you immediately label and praise it. So that's exactly what people do when they're mad and keeping things safe. You handled that feeling without breaking anything. I'm so proud of you. Um, these short, silly practices like this, two or three times a week, can change what their brain reaches for under stress. Like you're literally training their brain to respond this way so that they know what to do in that heated moment. So, again, those practices, again, not gonna be the greatest with their teens, but for our littles, they're training the brain. Okay, so that's the we've done the A, B, and now the C the consequences, not punishment, consequences. Brian, do you want to talk about consequences for us?

Brian: 17:51

Right. So this is where the accountability still matters. They they can't get away with things, but instead of this giant, vague punishment of guess what, you're grounded for a month. Guess what, you can no longer play video games ever again. What you want is a small and above all consistent and a clearly linked consequence. So, for example, when when things get broken, we can help fix or replace what we can. So, oh, you broke the you broke the lamp, whatever, we're gonna spend 15 minutes gluing it back together, or we're gonna you have to be the one that comes with us to the to the Goodwill to buy another lamp, whatever it is.

Apryl: 18:35

Or like they punch a hole in the wall, so you're like, okay, on Saturday, we're going to Home Depot and we're buying stuff to repair the wall. And another note on this is not in the heat of the moment.

Brian: 18:45

You're not doing this. Yeah, not in the heat of the moment, but they still have to have to realize like there's consequences to my actions. Yep. Uh also there's privilege that's linked to behaviors. And so, for example, on days when you throw or break things, you lose access to your game for the rest of the day and you earn it back the next day as long as you keep calm for the rest of the day. But this needs to be told to them ahead of time. Can't have giant blow up on guess what? Now I've thought of the consequence. This isn't even how real life works. If you get a speeding ticket, you can look up online how much that speeding ticket's gonna cost you before you even get the speeding ticket. This is the exact same thing. Like the rules are already out there, the rules are made, they're set, and so then your child just has to play the game. It's what gets frustrating is when the rules are just made up on the spot and then it's like I can't win this game because the rules can change. So also with these consequences, deliver them quiet. It's gotta be a quiet, boring, boring tone. You threw the lamp, that means that the games are off for the rest of the day. You can try again tomorrow. This isn't a reward for you. This is not like a guess what, I got revenge for them acting out, whatever. This is just I'm reading the rule book. You're the you're the police. Wouldn't just be like, you know, you broke statute 3917. It's the same exact thing. Remotion goes down, the predictability goes up, and the structure causes or teaches that cause and effect better for ADHD than the shouting and the long lectures. And and like I said, there's all there's a reason that our whole justice system is based on this of the rules are made beforehand and we just you you break the rule, you pay the consequences. End of story.

Apryl: 20:26

Yeah, they're never guessing.

Brian: 20:28

They're never guessing. Guess what? You're grounded for a month because, you know, you are speeding.

Apryl: 20:32

Yeah. Well, and then I mean, sometimes in these heat of the moment moments, when we give those you're grounded for a month, how likely are you to actually hold up to that too? It's very hard. You know, like there's so much to it. So this is a very good way to do this.

Brian: 20:52

Uh also when there's emotion involved, your child automatically looks at, okay, uh, you're the good guy, I'm the bad guy, or vice versa, and and it's me against you. But it should never be me against you. It's me against the rule book, and the rule book was set before this whole thing even happened.

Apryl: 21:07

Yeah, that really helps with the relationship, which we're gonna talk about next week, too, is after these types of blowups, how do we repair the relationship? So okay, let's talk about teens because teens are the best. They're a totally different beast than our littles. Um, they're bigger, they know the rules, they hate feeling out of control, and they hate seeing you see them out of control. Their room destruction might look more like punching walls, slamming doors, or disappearing into scrolling for six hours and not talking to you. So, Brian, tell us how do we deal with our teens? This is the group of people that Brian deals with every single day, all day long.

Brian: 21:50

Right. So, I mean, a lot of the same things still hold up, like that consistency and stuff like that. But there's also a few things that also really matter to teens. So, agency is a big one. They need to have some control over how they regulate. And this is especially important because in just a few years, they're gonna be completely off on their own and you're not gonna be there to inflict these consequences. Uh, another one is privacy or or just dignity. Don't call it out in public. If you if the whole family's there, you don't be like, guess what you did? Guess what, guess what Jimmy did? This is just it's pushing shame and it's just gonna push them deeper into avoidance and it's gonna put that barrier there. Uh another thing is they really like to make the decisions themselves. And so when you can have some collaborative planning and you work with them and not just to them, this will help with buy-in. So, this collaborative planning, how can this look? So ask them. When they're calm, say, hey, just quick question. When you get mad, and I know you're not mad right now, but when you actually do get mad, what helps you to not explode? And they'll probably tell you, be like, you know what? When I get really upset, I five minutes alone would be amazing. If I could just go walk outside, especially where it's a little cooler, that would be that would be amazing. I love when I put on my noise-canceling headphones. That that helps me. And you can kind of build up these simple agreements during the calm times before like we're we're we're like preparing for the antecedent. So you can have your simple agreement and they can leave the situation, they can go to a reset spot, as long as they're not breaking things or hurting people. And then you're gonna have the same rule as you do with these with the with the littler kids. If you do damage, here's your here's your restitution or here's the loss of your privilege, whatever it is. It's not a week-long exile. It's not a guess what, you never get to see your friends again. It's uh you you broke a a chair, you gotta go get 25 bucks out of your bank account, and we're gonna repair the chair.

Apryl: 23:51

One thing that I think is really especially with our littles and our teenagers, but keep repairing after the storm. So keeping it short and straight with them. What happened today wasn't okay. You're not a bad person. We're gonna practice better ways to handle that level of anger, and I'm still on your team.

Brian: 24:10

Right. Yeah, you're not talking repairing the item, you're talking about repairing the relationship.

Apryl: 24:13

Yeah, repairing the relationship. So parents underestimate how much that I'm still on your team sentence lands for teens who already feel like they're a problem child. I mean, we've talked about this in our past episodes of, you know, they just feel like they're the bad kid. And so knowing, like, hey, I've still got your back, I still love you, we we're on a team together. It goes a long way with them. So let's jump to now that we've talked about the three things that we do, A, B, C, kids and teenagers, let's talk about classrooms really quick, because this is the thing that definitely happens in classrooms, the explosion, and it happens in the age range, elementary, middle, high school. The issue with in the classroom though is is not only does you know the teacher see it, but now they have 25, 30 kids who also witness their explosion, and that can really damage self-esteem and things like that. So, what are some things that teachers can do, Brian?

Brian: 25:22

Right. So, this is where you really want to work with those antecedents, because an explosion in the classroom can harm relationships and reputations and everything else. So you can imagine this could be something like uh a quiet proximity instead of just like a public call out. And so you can have just a private little script, and you could even tell this the child beforehand. You can be like, hey, by the way, you know, I know you've had some problems with anger. If you if I see that coming on, I'm just gonna do this real quick. Don't get offended. Let's just, you know, come up with a little plan together so that we can manage it. And they could say something like, Hey, I can see you're getting really frustrated. Let's take 30 seconds together in the hallway and we'll just figure out the next step. And this can lower that amygdala threat response. It's already predictable. They know what's happening next. They don't need to go, you know, five alarm on this. And it preserves the student's dignity. They don't have to, you know, go in and face a classroom who just saw them have a full-on meltdown. It also makes it way more likely that the prefrontal cortex can come back and say, okay, I can fix this, instead of, guess what? I need to blow up to escape this. Because when you're in front of your friends and something goes south, the last thing you want is your friends watching. So escapes like right at the front of your mind.

Apryl: 26:47

And one thing to note here too, with that antecedent, is for the most part, our the school day is very predictable. And if you watch these kids and you start to notice the pattern in the day where these explosions are happening, or if you start to look for their behavior, like we talked about with um, you know, just looking for your kids' behavior beforehand, you know, maybe they put their head down on their desk, maybe they do start uh shouting out more or something like that. Start looking for those antecedents because they're gonna help you prevent the blow ups, blow ups before they even happen in the classroom. And another thing you can do with, you know, these kids that you know struggle with this is start catching them doing the positive opposite of their behavior and start praising that from the get-go. So, okay, maybe they really struggle with starting a task. Start noticing if they started a task. Oh wow, I really, you know, like way to go. You started your task on time or whatever. Because maybe, you know, they're easy to get going on reading because they love reading. But when it comes to math, that's when they have meltdowns. Well, start praising it with reading because then it's going to start teaching their brain these behaviors of, oh, when I get going, I get praise. And remember, especially as the older they get, the less they want to be called out. So, you know, just go over to their desk, hey, great job at getting started. You did great. Um, and you're not coddling these kids. Again, this is not soft parenting. This is not coddling a kid in your class. This is literally shaping behavior using the brain's own rewards system. So there's your quick teacher moment. Let's talk really, really fast quick wins you can do today. Two examples you can do tonight with zero printables, zero charts. You can literally just start doing this. Um, Brian, do you want to give us our first quick win?

Brian: 29:01

So the first quick one is naming the pattern out loud without blame. So after things are calm, you can say, hey, I've noticed when I say it's time to stop with games, you get really mad, and sometimes you throw or slam things, and that's just not safe. We're just gonna practice a different way for your body to handle that feeling. And you're shifting this blame from what's wrong with you to me and you are gonna work on a pattern together. So now you're building something rather than I'm tearing you down.

Apryl: 29:36

Yeah, which is huge. We don't want our kids to have that constant, what's wrong with me, what's wrong with me, what's wrong with me, or what's wrong with you, essentially. Um, so that's huge. And then number two, quick win you can do today is practice one instead behavior or that positive opposite in a two-minute role play, or with your teen, just have that in a calm moment, just sit with them and have that calm conversation of them. Like, hey, I noticed that when this happens, you get really upset. What's something that we could do when you're starting to feel triggered and having that calm moment with them? And then with your youngers, practice the behavior and then label and praise it immediately when you know, in that practice moment when they're mad and they go to their calm spot and squeeze the pillow, practice that. Tell them, you know, praise all the things. So then it's starting to rewire their brain. So these feel tiny and can feel silly, especially the role-playing. But this is how brains with ADHD actually learn, not from that one big punishment, you're grounded for a year, but from these small dozens of small, successful rehearsals just over and over again, is what's gonna make the biggest difference. And like I said, you're not gonna see it immediately today. You're not gonna be like, wow, they did it. Like they're just learn it and boom, they're done. No, it's gonna take time, but you will see improvement. And eventually you're gonna be like, holy smokes, they don't even blow up when I ask them to do this anymore. And you're gonna love it. So if you've been thinking, so I'm just not supposed to punish, that's not what this is. Remember, yours still the grown-ups and boundaries still matter. What changes is the tool you use to protect those boundaries in an ADHD brain.

Brian: 31:24

Right. And I mean, I think one of the big things is you don't want to be the punisher. You can be the, I'm the person who keeps order in the house. And so instead of just swinging a bigger hammer each each time this behavior happens, you're now going to, okay, I'm recognizing or I'm reducing the alarm before it explodes. I'm recognizing the antecedents. I'm teaching and reinforcing the the behaviors that we want instead. And you're using small but very consistent and planned out consequences that actually get remembered and they can be repeated. And you're not being soft, you're just following a game plan that's beforehand. And if this game plan doesn't work and the behaviors worsen, then you're going to change the game plan. This is something to cause a change. This isn't something to make your child feel bad.

Apryl: 32:16

No, and that's, I think, like hit the nail on the head, is we're really trying to help them learn behaviors that are going to go with them through a lifetime into adulthood. We're not trying to, you know, just make them behave today. We want them to learn the behaviors. So when your kid stands in that room that they didn't destroy, or when they stomp out and when they stomp and shout and then head to their calm corner instead of ripping things up and destroying things, you'll know, you'll you'll see it. Like you'll just be like, oh my gosh. But you're like, you now know this isn't magic. Like, what the heck happened? It's a repeatable system. You know the play to run that it's gonna work over and over and over again. You just had to implement these steps, which is so amazing. I promise when this happens, it's so great. Like, we've implemented this with our daughter, and our house is so much calmer. It is so nice. Yeah. So um, in our next episode, we're gonna stay right here in this hard stuff, and we're gonna talk about the repair phase, what to say after the blowup, how to build trust when you've yelled too, because we know you're human, we're all human, and it's it's all of this sounds great in theory, right? But there are the times that you just explode too. And so, how do you help your child move from the I'm the bad kid to I'm learning hard skills? That's what we're gonna be talking about next week. If your parents' teacher needs to hear this, or your child's teacher needs to hear this, send it to them. Send it so they can start seeing what they can do to help your child in these explosive moments. And remember, you're not alone, you're not failing, you're learning a different way to lead because you have a different kid and it's okay. So we will see you next week when we're talking about repairing after the blow ups. So we'll see you next week, same time, same place.

Brian: 34:21

Thanks so much for joining us for today's conversation on raising ADHD. Remember, raising ADHD kids doesn't have to feel overwhelming. Small shifts can make a big difference. If you found this episode helpful, it would mean the world if you would hit subscribe, if you'd leave a review, or if you shared it with another parent or teacher who needs this support. And don't forget to join us next week for more real talk, practical tips, and encouragement. Until then, you've got this, and we've got your back.