Stop Lowering The Bar. Why High Expectations Are The Most Loving Thing For ADHD Kids

Introduction

0:00Hi everyone, welcome. We have a different kind of episode today on the ADHD Parenting Podcast. This episode is going to be based on a message Mike received from a parent that we thought was really important and we should make into an episode. So this episode is called Stop Lowering the Bar, Why High Expectations Are the Most Loving Thing You Can Do for Your Child with ADHD. Welcome to the ADHD Parenting Podcast with Mike McLeod of Grow Now ADHD and Ryan Wetzelblatt of ADHD Dude. Learn about parenting kids with ADHD from a licensed clinical social worker and

0:33speech language pathologist who specializes in ADHD. No fluffy parenting advice, only practical

Episode Context

0:39information that will equip you to help your child with ADHD effectively. To get started, Mike, why don't you talk a little bit about the message you received? Because I think to give people context, it's really important for everyone to kind of hear the whole thing here. Yeah, so Ryan and I obviously love getting messages from our listeners and the people that have really found a lot of value in the podcast and that's really where this message started. This parent wrote in, she has been a long-time listener from the very beginning and she really started by explaining how all of these

1:10episodes, listening to them on the treadmill or in the car, has really helped her and her confidence as a parent. It's really grown and she feels a lot of confidence in her responses to the daily behaviors and the daily occurrences she's having with her child and her teen. And she's really been able to implement a lot of the suggestions and a lot of the evidence-based strategies Ryan and I discuss here on this podcast. So hearing from parents every single day about how this podcast has helped them and improved their parenting and improved not only their quality of life, but their

1:43family's quality of life and their kids' quality of life. That's really what this is all about and exactly why we do it in the first place. And she really expressed how her family is overall more happy. But then of course she wanted to go into sort of what her question was and her main pain point, her frustration. So overall she feels amongst the parenting community at her school, she feels like she's outnumbered. And in terms of following evidence-based practices, in terms of keeping the bar high,

Parenting Community

2:13believing in our ADHD kids and holding them to the same standard as their neurotypical peers. So in her words, for every one parent following the research, there are 10 parents calling the school demanding the opposite, that the bar should be lowered to their ADHD and they should be treated differently because of this medical diagnosis placed on them instead of believing in the child and keeping the bar high. So this parent mentioned that her child's teacher ran a classroom point

2:45system, like many teachers do, where kids earn points for extra effort and lost points for things like disruptive behavior or forgetting to put their name on a paper. And she described it as amazing. She said her own child was doing better as a result of this system and the school administration canceled it. The reason they were given was that it was unfair to kids who weren't able to meet behavior standards through no fault of their own. So here's the part worth pausing on. The parents who complained were not general education parents. They were other parents of children with ADHD. And this pattern also

3:17showed up in her local mom group chat, where parents were furious that their kids are forced to write apology notes after hitting another child. I guess, you know, if you, you know, if you're violent towards another child, you're supposed to be in a protected class if you have ADHD. That's not how the real world works. Um, and parents claiming that, you know, their children were being sent to the principal's being, their children being sent to the principal's office was quote illegal because it costs class time. So when this parent asked them why they think that consequences are harmful, these parents

3:48quoted that, or they said that they cited clinical research showing that ADHD kids need connection, not consequence, which we're going to address. So the really important part to name here is that research as those parents are citing it does not exist. And we'll get into what the actual research shows. Yeah. And this is, this, this is really something that really spoke really directly to Ryan and myself, uh, and really all the great information we're trying to share. You know, a lot of people tend to listen to our messages and think we're too authoritative or

4:18too authoritarian, but really all we're doing is focusing on the science, the data, the research, and everything that we're saying is basically because we believe that ADHD kids are capable. ADHD kids can absolutely achieve their dreams and persevere through the challenges that the ADHD presents. And here we had a parent that with an ADHD child that was doing so well under this classroom point system. The kids were earning points for extra effort and lost points for things like disruptive

4:49behavior or forgetting to put their name on a paper. And then parents that are getting information from parent Facebook groups or Instagram influencers, whatever it may be ended up, uh, you know, calling the school and complaining so much that this effective system had to be removed. And let's mention Mike, that this system has strong evidence supporting it, which we will, you know, get into, but here's the thing we want to frame this conversation around that when we strip the structure and consequences out of ADHD kids environments, we are not protecting them.

Research Overview

5:20We are limiting them. And the research has been clear about this for decades. And today we're going to walk you through it. So let's talk about what the research actually says. The claims circulating in these parent groups that this mom mentioned that there's clinical research showing that ADHD kids need connection, not consequence. Let's talk about what's true and what's being misused there. So there is strong research that warm, attuned relationships matter for kids with ADHD and all kids really for that matter. And there's also strong research that harsh, shame-based punitive discipline does not help and can harm. So when we talk about that, what we're talking about is

5:54authoritarian parenting, which again, the research shows is not helpful. So here's what is being invented here. The leap from connection matters and harshness backfires to ADHD kids should not experience consequences. That message is so pervasive on parenting social media. And we want to be clear that no major ADHD researcher takes that position. There is no clinical literature supporting it. That is a social media narrative. So let's talk about quickly what the actual classroom research

6:24shows. So a researcher named Gastara and colleagues in 2016 reviewed the available solid studies on what helps kids with ADHD and their symptoms in the classroom and ranked the strategies by how well they worked. And the strategies built around clear expectations and immediate predictable consequences came out on top. And by the way, just so everyone knows, there's always links to the research data that we cite in the show notes. The other thing they found is that when teachers set a clear standard and respond consistently to whether the child meets it, ADHD kids do better. So clear expectations,

7:00clear natural consequences supported by research data, what the school or what this teacher was doing, and then had to stop because parents complained about it. So here's what you need to hear. Kids with ADHD need connection and structure. Nobody is debating that at all. All kids need that. Okay. The two are not in competition. However, removing one to honor the other is a misreading of the research literature. And again, the research literature is not designed to make anybody feel good, but emotionally compelling social media narratives like, you know, kids don't need punishment. Kids don't need structure. They just

7:33need connection. You know, that is not meant to help children. That's meant to make parents feel good. And that is such a great point to make that removing one to honor the other is a misreading of the science. You know, in, in our way of packaging parenting to parents, we become incredibly black and white of what's good, what's bad, what works, what doesn't. And, and that's why, you know, the people who reach out to us that have negative comments think we're just so on one side of the spectrum in terms of authoritative and punishment and consequences and all those things. Really,

8:04we're just looking at, at the data and, you know, it's okay to be right in the middle and have a little bit of both. So Dr. Russell Barkley, who of course is the most cited ADHD researcher of the past 40 years, the worldwide leader on ADHD. Every single listener of this podcast should know who he is by now. He describes ADHD as a problem of self-regulation. So the part of the brain that runs the internal, do this now, hold off on that, redirect here, the stop and think and plan,

8:39do internal skills feature of ADHD, that engine does not fire reliably. So overall in real life, other kids can hold a goal in their head and steer towards it on their own. That's independence. ADHD kids need that goal outside of their head. It has to be visible, immediate, consistent until their internal system catches up. And that internal system develops on a delay, sometimes by years.

ADHD Brain Function

9:13So this external structure is actually incredibly important. Point systems, posted expectations, immediate feedback, this isn't punishment. It is a stand-in for the internal compass, that internal GPS I talk about so often is still under construction. So this immediacy matters very importantly to the ADHD brain, which has a documented weakness connecting what I just did to what happens later, that nonverbal

9:49working memory, foresight, future thinking skills. The further the consequence sits from the behavior, the less their brain learns from it. We will talk about this when you get home, that quote that so many parents naturally end up saying, is functionally gone by the time they get home from school. And this is exactly why this parent's teacher's point system was a clinical bullseye, a goldmine for helping these kids. The progress was happening, the kids were liking it, the kids were benefiting,

10:23but it was the parents themselves that sabotaged it. The feedback was immediate, predictable, and applied evenly across the classroom. That is exactly the design these kids need and allowed the ADHD brain to thrive. So let's talk about what happens when we remove that structure that Mike just described that kids need so much. The cost that is missing from the conversation in mom groups is what we really want to convey. So researchers describe a phenomenon, which I talk about constantly called learned

10:54helplessness. So what does that mean really? It's when a person has enough experiences of nothing I do matters, they stop trying. So it's not laziness. It's that the brain has decided that effort is pointless. There's another point to add on here, which we're not going to get into this episode called weaponized incompetence, where many kids with ADHD who lack the resiliency to persevere through non-preferred tasks. They act like they're incompetent because they know that they will be rescued from doing the task. So there's a lot of crossover between that and learned helplessness as well. So here's what we know. Kids with ADHD are at a higher risk of learned helplessness than

11:29almost any other group. This is well established in the literature. And Mike, as you and I both know, we get comments all the time from parents who have ADHD themselves, who also demonstrate their own learned helplessness when it comes to parenting. We're not saying that as a judgment, but we're saying that so you understand that this is not something that necessarily goes away in adulthood. It doesn't magically disappear. So one of the things you have to know, and this might sound counterintuitive, but it's really important, is that lowering expectations does not shield kids from this. It deepens it. When nothing is expected, the kid never feels the win of meeting an expectation.

12:04And without that experience, they stop believing that they can do hard things. And that belief, once it sets in, is one of the hardest things to undo because now they feel incapable. So Mike, as you know, we have seen lots of teenagers. I'm sure you guys see this all the time at Grownow, you know, who are in high school, 15, 16, 17, who have been accommodated in every direction their entire school career. You know, every assignment's been shortened, every demand softened, every consequence removed. And what happens when we get to that age and, you know, that's been the situation is the result is a not very confident, well-regulated kid.

12:40It tends to be a kid, or I should say a teenager with no tolerance for frustration, who falls apart at the first sign of difficulty because that muscle was never built. So again, we're not blaming anybody for this. You know, people do the best they can with the information they have available at the time, but this is why we're sharing this. So you can make a different choice for your child. A second pattern we need to name is another thing that I talk about a lot in my content, which we call prompt dependence. So prompt dependence, as Mike talks about, do you use the term in the book?

13:10Yes, absolutely. Yes. So really that's how you measure progress with ADHD coaching. Parent training is increasing independence, decreasing prompt dependence. Right. So prompt dependence is when an adult is constantly walking the kid through every step the kid can perform, but only with an adult attached. So the adult's brain is doing the executive function work. The kid's brain needs to be practicing. And if you would like to learn how to help your child shift from prompt dependence to independence, please check out Mike's new book. The executive function playbook and the executive function playbook workbook, which you can get

13:44at Amazon and any major book retailer. So here's the hard truth we need to say. When a parent fights to have an expectation removed, the message the kid internalizes is this. The adults in my life don't think I can do this. Therefore, I am incapable or the adults in my life perceive me as being incapable. Yeah. And now let's discuss this whole argument of it's not fair. The argument here is that ADHD is neurological. Kids cannot fully control their behavior in the moment. So holding them to the same standard is unfair. What is true is that ADHD is real. Behavior in the moment is genuinely harder

14:21to regulate. We are not minimizing that. But where it falls apart is that neurology explains behavior. It does not exempt behavior from affecting other people. And that is so important with perspective taking skills. When a kid hits another kid, that kid was still hit. Repair is part of being a person in a community. Skills like writing an apology note, taking a break to regulate, accepting a redirect. Those are social emotional skills that kids need to build. Exempting them from the practice is

14:58exempting them from learning. So the accommodation conversation is about how you hold the standard, not whether you hold it. Holding the standard equals the expectation stays. Accommodate the process and then more time, smaller steps, visual reminders, a calmer location, a clearer queue, and a check-in. So parents, remember, accommodate the process. Do not drop the standard.

15:30You know, Mike, as you were talking about that, one thing that just really makes me sad to think about is that all these parents who are like going against with, you know, this mom who reached out to you was saying is that we are setting so many kids up for what is called non-emerging adulthood, otherwise known as failure to launch. I hate that term because I don't think anybody is a failure, but this is really what this is doing, this lowering of expectations, accommodating, you know, every behavior, excusing kids from thinking that they need to, you know, live within a community where making, you know, repairs in relationships is necessary or holding them to a certain standard of

16:04behavior. It is not setting them up to be a functional, independent adult one day. It is setting them up for failure to launch. And that's really the tragic thing about this. And, you know, Mike, as we've discussed, I think we're going to see really a significant increase in kids who fit this, you know, non-emerging adulthood profile. And the thing is, when this happens, it's going to happen slowly and gradually. So there's not suddenly going to be, you know, some news stories all over, you know, social media one day. It's just going to happen over time. And people aren't going to really talk about it. Why? Because often when kids are in that or young adults are in that failure

16:39to launch, you know, phase, parents feel ashamed of it. They blame themselves and they don't really talk about it with other people, which is really the sad part because it can be very isolating for people. So that's why we're doing this episode, because we want to avoid that happening in other families. Absolutely. And that's exactly what we're seeing right now in our college success program and our young adult independence program. It's becoming some of our most popular programs, helping these kids that are struggling with young adulthood. And it's becoming a very serious

Evidence-Based Solutions

17:06growing problem. So let's quickly go through the research backed classroom policies that we support because they're supported by evidence. So number one, daily behavior report cards. Dr. Barkley talks about this. There's decades of research supporting this. A simple daily card with two to four specific individualized goals scored across the day sent home. Not punitive. It's highly effective. And schools should be using these, not retreating from them. Another one is a classroom wide point or token system. So not just for the student with ADHD, for all students. That's exactly what that parent's

17:37teacher had canceled. However, there is strong research behind it and they work because feedback is immediate, predictable, and tied to specific behaviors with Dr. Barkley sites is exactly what kids with ADHD need, particularly in the classroom. Another thing is clear, specific posted expectations. So fewer rules stated concretely, not be respectful, you know, raise your hand before talking. ADHD brains do better with rules they can actually see in reference. And this is why in my parent behavior training, I teach people, you have to be extremely clear and extremely specific in the language you

18:11use. So things like make good choices. That's what I call fluffy language or abstract language that does not work for the ADHD brain. Another thing that is really supported by research is immediate calm consequences. So nothing harsh, not delayed, you know, five days later, but a redirect, a loss point, a brief reset, a logical repair. Immediacy here is the active ingredient because as we know, for natural consequences, they have to be within the child's time horizon to be meaningful. If they're

18:42outside of that time horizon, meaning their ability to visualize the future, they're not going to mean anything to them. So this is a really big one, Mike, that I teach in, you know, in my courses, because I think, you know, we've seen that a lot of adults with ADHD still struggle this, which is repair based responses to harm. Many of you know, your child can say horrible things to you or, you know, tear the house up and then act as if nothing happened five minutes later and expect you to be over it. So when a child hits, yells or breaks something, the response should teach repair, apology, restitution, and a redo. In my programs, I call

19:17that cleanups. So this is not a punishment. This is a social emotional approach delivered at the moment of greatest learning. And the point of it is to teach reciprocity in relationships and how to make amends when you've said or done something hurtful. Another strategy supported by evidence, brief removal from the classroom for regulation when needed, not, you know, as a punishment, but as a reset. So yes, it can cost them some class time. But, you know, during that time, do you think they're going to be learning anyway if they're dysregulated? No. So the claim that lost class time is illegal is not accurate when removal

19:49is part of a behavior plan or a safety response. Okay. And every school can implement a positive behavior, you know, plan for students when needed. That is something I recommend all the time. When I hear from families who tell me that their child is struggling at school, I say, ask the school to do a functional behavior assessment with the intention of putting a positive behavior support plan in place. The other thing is consistent follow through across all staff because we know that's how skills are generalized. ADHD kids do worst when one adult holds a line and the next one does not. And that's

20:20both at home and school. Consistency is doing more work than many parents realize. That's why it's so important. So we'll talk about really quickly what we don't support and why. Blanket removal of consequences for ADHD kids. So this idea, you know, kids don't need consequences. They just need connection. We don't support that because it strips them of the feedback that their brain depends on to be successful. We also do not support constant one-on-one adult prompting. So adults acting as their executive functioning. And the other thing, of course, is we do not support

20:50holding ADHD kids to a lower behavior standard than their peers because kids notice that peers and peers notice it and it corrodes a sense of belonging. And just so everyone knows, you know, there's some research and Mike, we should definitely do, you know, an episode about this. I just learned this research recently that kids who are brought up in homes with a more permissive, indulgent parenting style tend to be more unliked by their peers than kids raised in a home with an authoritative parenting style. So we'll do an episode about that. Mike, to move on and finish up, why don't we talk

21:22about, you know, what parents can do at home and in IEP meetings? Of course. So in the IEP or 504 meeting, what parents should start to think about is changing the question. It shouldn't be, can we remove this expectation? Instead, what support does my child need to meet this expectation? A total mental reframe there that can lead to a lot of skill acquisition. That single swap reorients the meeting towards tools instead of carve-outs and lowering the bar. Also, think about letting

21:57natural consequences do the teaching. A forgotten assignment, a friendship rupture, a missed deadline. Those are tutors. Those are teaching moments we all learn from. Ask the school for the tools by name, daily behavior report card, classroom point system, posted expectations, immediate feedback. You're not asking for more discipline. You're asking for the evidence-based playbook. Also, pull together as a team with the school, not against it. How many of you parent listeners out there have been

22:33taught on parent Facebook groups to go into IEP meetings, to go into 504 meetings, rolling up your sleeves and get ready for a fight? That's dead. Absolutely. Let's work together with the team. And that's where I, you know, Brian and I have been in hundreds of IEP meetings. When parents go in ready to work together with the teachers, so many more positive outcomes come from it. So, be built on finding that working together has held up across decades of research. ADHD kids do best when parents

23:09and teachers are aligned on the same expectations and the same feedback systems. Working against the school undermines the very alignment that helps your child. And overall, watch your language at home. Replace, school is wrong to expect that from you. With, that was hard, let's figure it out when you are ready. The first sentence teaches your child the world should bend to them. The second teaches them

23:39that they can learn to bend to the world. Overall, another thing to think about out there, parents, is do your very best not to say negative things about the school, about the teachers, in front of your kid. A lot of parents out there get very frustrated with the school, the homework, the teachers, those things, and end up saying very negative things about the school and the teachers in front of their child. We don't want to expose our kids to, you know, saying negative things about other people and blaming others. So, do your very best to not say those things out loud in front of your child. You can

24:11do it privately with your spouse or your partner. And overall, in these group chats, just be very careful. Every kid is a unique individual. One mom's experience with their kid is not representative of yours. You are not going to convince the loudest voice in the group chat. You can model the alternative for the parent reading quietly and not posting. So, to finish up, number one, we want to thank the parent who reached out to Mike with, you know, her concern because that was the focus of this

24:42episode. And it was really important, I think, that we shared that information. And we just want to make the point again that, you know, her child's teacher with the point system was doing something right. The parents who got it canceled were operating from a place of love, but the research is not with them. And keep in mind, ADHD kids need three things in the classroom, structure, clear expectations, and immediate feedback. That is the research in one sentence. Also, confidence is not given. You don't develop confidence by, you know, giving your child, you know, daily affirmations about how

25:14great they are or from sitting in a therapist's office talking about self-esteem. Confidence is earned and it's earned by meeting standards, which means the standards have to exist. So, I always tell parents the way kids develop self-confidence is through recognizing their abilities within themselves, not from anything external that you or anybody else can do. But what we can do is create that scaffolding around them by having those standards, which means the standards have to exist. And the last thing we want to mention, okay, and this is really important, and if you take anything away from this episode, please take away this, high expectations combined with high empathy are not

25:49the opposite of love. They are love. So, keep that in mind. So, in terms of what you can do if you found this information helpful, it probably goes against a lot of the information you found online. But once again, we have shared evidence-based information and we're citing the sources here in the show notes. So, one of the best things you can do is share this with other ADHD parents. It's very easy to do that using Spotify, Apple Podcasts, YouTube. You can easily share the link and get as many ears to this podcast as possible so we can spread real evidence-based information that actually helps kids, teens,

26:27parents, and teachers. So, share this podcast with parents, teachers, school counselors, so we can get the real evidence-based information out there. We hope this episode was helpful. If you would like to see the research citations supporting what we talked about in this episode so you actually have the evidence, please check out the show notes and you can see them there and we will speak to you soon. Take care. Thanks for listening. To learn more about Mike's practice, Grow Now ADHD, please visit his website, grownowadhd.com. To learn about the services Ryan provides, please visit adhddude.com. You can find

27:01Mike on Instagram at grownowadhd and Ryan on the ADHD Dude YouTube channel. We'd love to hear your feedback or questions, so feel free to contact us at the ADHD Parenting Podcast at gmail.com. The ADHD Parenting Podcast and content posted by Grow Now ADHD or ADHD Dude are presented solely for general information and educational purposes. Our goal is to provide valuable insights and knowledge, not to replace professional services. Mike and Ryan cannot provide clinical consultation or free

27:34advice through social media or other forms of communication. The information on this podcast is not a substitute for professional advice. If you or your child have any medical or mental health concerns, please consult your healthcare professionals.