When Behavior Charts & Consequences Don't Work (Help for Teachers)
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- So what do you do when behavior charts and consequences don't work with our strong-willed or neurodivergent kids? That's what we're gonna discuss on today's special episode of the Calm Parenting Podcast. So welcome, this is Kirk Martin, founder of Celebrate Calm. You can find us at celebratecalm.com. So I'm recording this right after I just got off of a Zoom training call with teachers in a school district. And I spent about an hour, 15 minutes

giving them insight into our Strong Will Kids and giving them lots of practical tools in order to help these kids because it's tough. Think about this. We as parents, some of us may have one or two or maybe three Strong Will Kids at home and we just have to get through like an hour or two of homework every night. But some of our teachers have 10 or 15 kids on the spectrum, Strong Will Kids.

And they have a whole day to keep them focused. It's not easy for anyone. And so we all need tools at the end of this Zoom training. I couldn't see everybody. They're in a big auditorium. So I don't know what the reaction is. But the principal said, our teachers all said, we would like to have you back in the middle of the school year so we can do a Q&A and really put this into practice too with individual students.

And so what that told me is they're hungry for tools. Look, I've done this for a long time. I know there are some teachers that are just old and rigid, but most teachers I've worked with, they really want to do a good job. They really want to help your kids. They, like us as parents, just need some tools. So let's talk tools to help these kids. Now, when it comes to behavior, we've talked about this before. There's two ways to handle misbehavior. The typical way is, well,

Child does something wrong, we react to it and then we threaten with a consequence. If you don't do X, here's what's going to happen. If you keep doing X, this happens. And we're basically punishing kids for failing. But what if we took a different approach and said, "Hey, I know this child struggles with A, B or C, and so I'm going to proactively give the child tools to succeed,

Then we can build confidence. We give kids tools and they know how to do it better. We show them because that's what discipline is. It means to teach. So here's some ideas for you to share with teachers. And if you're a teacher listening, thank you. We'll help you however we can. So one of my first ideas, and this works really well at the beginning of the school year,

I'd like you to take in not here's what not to do I don't want you dumping 37 pages of testing that you've had done on your child on a teacher's desk that's unfair to ask them to read all of that so

So here's what I'd like you to do. Create a cheat sheet for your child, for the teacher that they can just put in their desk. And here's what it is. It's a one pager divided into three sections. We used to do, we did this for Casey every single year because Casey was a very difficult kid. So at the top, hey, what are Casey's passions and interests? What does he love doing? What excites and motivates your child?

Put pictures there so you can describe what you see in him. Does your child love a certain sports team? For our son, it was ice hockey. He loved dinosaurs. Are they into Star Wars, collecting rocks? Are they fascinated by history? Great at chess. An amazing inventor. Show pictures of that Lego rocket ship that your child built.

You're giving the teacher ways to immediately connect with your child. And you know this from listening to the podcast, connection changes behavior more than anything else.

So when the teacher asks who your child's favorite Star Wars character is, or in our case, it was a second grade teacher asking, hey, who's your favorite hockey player? Boom, you owned our son. And it will relieve their anxiety. And the teacher now can assign special projects on dinosaurs or history or whatever your child's interested in. Section number two.

What are your child's strengths and great character attributes? Because we want the teacher, look, they're going to find out soon enough that your child has some difficulties, right? And we don't want your child to be identified by his or her label or diagnosis.

Diagnosis we want them to be seen as a person. So here's what I say. Hey Casey asked lots of questions. He's curious He's great at adding numbers in his head. He likes to help adults. He does best when he's given very specific directions He has a great imagination and loves creating stories. I admire my son or you could put my daughter because he's got a tenacious spirit we adopted him and even though he battles and

irritating eczema and allergies every day, he doesn't complain. See, now you're making your child human more than just a student or a number. And then section three, what are your child's struggles and what has helped in the past? And list three specific struggles, not 10, three that your child is going to have in class.

along with specific concrete strategies you and past teachers have used with success. Hey, our son Casey struggles with anxiety, but when teachers give him very specific missions or jobs to do, say right after lunch, it calms him and he loves to help. Oh, you know what? Casey is a slow processor. Last year, Mrs. Henderson allowed him to sit on the floor or under his desk to complete writing assignments, and he was much more successful that way.

Hey, Casey learns best when fidgeting with his hands, so I made these sensory strips that you can tape underneath his desk. It'll help him focus better, and it doesn't make any noise. It'll give him something positive to do with his busy hands. See, what you're doing is you're not just dumping problems on the teacher and saying, hey, good luck.

You're equipping the teacher with practical ways to help and the teacher knows all the ways you were helping your child with tutoring, occupational therapy, whatever you're doing. So now the teacher knows you're engaged and you're coming alongside and helping and you can keep referring to and refining that sheet.

but I really like it because it gives very practical, constructive ways to create successes for your kids. Because once your child experiences negativity in the school year, man, it's hard to rebuild their confidence and that trust between the teacher. And we don't want them internalizing, hey, I'm stupid. I'm a bad kid. So let's try that. I love doing that. One pager. Okay.

Three quick phrases, and I mentioned on this one on previous podcasts, teachers that'll be really helpful to use with kids. Hey, you know what? I'm glad you're here today. Man, that feels really good when you're a kid who struggles with anxiety and doesn't always fit in. Hey, you know what? You're really good at X. I could really use your help with this project. Our kids love helping other adults, just not their parents.

and this one hey of course of course that assignment is difficult

but I know you're really smart and I believe you're capable of doing it really well. I love those three phrases. So here are some tools I shared probably today in an hour and 15 minutes, probably 15 or 17 tools in different situations. So here are a few of these. Let's say you have a child who's blurting out in class. Now, the typical thing that we all do is we tend to react to it. Hey, you need to stop

Stop blurting out. That's rude. And we usually assign some kind of motive to it, which makes people, especially kids, really angry because this child wasn't intentionally being rude. In this case, he's just blurting out. And so if that happens, that child tends to shut down. But what if the teacher came along and maybe during recess or in between classes or at lunchtime said,

You know what I love about you? You've got this really busy brain. You're like a junior Thomas Edison. You're always thinking of ideas. And man, that's going to serve you really well in life. But the other thing I know about you, Jacob, I'll just call him Jacob, is that, you know what, you struggle with short-term memory sometimes. And so you get one of these ideas in your head, but then you're afraid you're going to forget it. So you blurt out in my class.

And I don't want that happening anymore. So watch, stop right here. In the first instance, it was just stop doing that behavior or else that's rude. In the second example, we're actually teaching the child, I know what's going on in your brain. And it's because you have a good imagination and ideas. And that's a great thing to have in life. But I know you have this weakness with short-term memory. So you're afraid you're going to forget. So you blurt out.

And I just said, well, that's not okay. See, I'm not making excuses like, well, just blur it out and do whatever you want. Uh-uh, not at all. So now I come along inside and give the child a tool. So Jacob, here's what we're going to do. I'm going to make up these three tickets, little cardboard tickets, doesn't matter what it is. And here's how this is going to work. Every day, I'm going to allow you to redeem three of your talk tickets, right?

so that you can share your ideas. But here's how it works. When you're about to blurt out, instead I want you to hold up, just hold it up, talk ticket. I will either say, "Hey, I believe you can hold this, wait till after class, right on that little notepad." Because I've had parents take in little notepad with a little light bulb at the top for a little idea guy where the child can jot down his or her idea. And sometimes we'll actually jot down the ideas and put it in a little idea box on the teacher's desk.

and then the teacher pulls the ideas out after lunch and shares your child's 18 different ideas. But in this case, she can say, "No, I believe you're capable." Or she can say, "Go ahead, redeem one of your talk tickets, share your amazing off-topic idea."

Because it's always going to be off topic, right? And so now what's happened? Now the child can share the idea. And what happens is the child will start blurting out, right? Like later in class, Ms. Andrews, Ms. Andrews, I want to... And then your child holds up the talk ticket. Do you know that's an amazing act of self-control? And the teacher can come along later and say, hey, Jacob, back in math class, you wanted to blurt out, you started to blurt out.

You caught yourself, my friend. That's called impulse control. That's self-control. Really proud of you. See how different that is instead of constantly being negative and you do that wrong. And if you do that, you're going to go to the principal's office, all those things. I just created a success and that's what we're after.

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Okay, so I know these ideas they're gonna be I can flush them out a little bit more I'm trying to give you an idea of it right here. We did the idea a few pack Podcasts ago and a child who moves around a lot So I'll do a shortened version where I pull the child aside and say hey, man, you got a lot of energy It's gonna serve you well in life. It just makes it hard to sit still all class period long So I need your help

I need you to do this for me. When I give you this little secret signal, I want you to go to the back of the room, grab that blue backpack. Now, it's filled with heavy books. Do you think you can carry that for me?

Because as soon as you challenge a strong-willed child, they're going to be like, yeah, I can carry anything. And now we're getting a child to carry heavy books, which is good for meeting sensory needs. Hey, do you think you could carry that blue backpack? Take that next door to Ms. Harrison's class. And when you get there, you bring the red backpack back to my class because we need to switch up books and that'll really help me out.

And now what have you done? You just created a success. You gave the child about, I don't know, 70 seconds to move out of his or her seat between classes. Two adults now got to say, "Hey, good job. Thank you for doing that. I met sensory needs. I created a success." I didn't say, "Hey, if you get bored in my class, run around."

It's a simple idea. I use that a lot for refilling a water bottle. Let's say you have a child who is reading in math class, and now the poor teacher is put in this tough position of having to say, "'Put your book away. Don't read.'" Because we want kids to read.

But instead of going negative, because I know how hard it is with these kids. Look, you're parents. You know how hard it is to get them, like just to brush your teeth or put your shoes on and you get frustrated. Imagine a teacher at school who's trying to manage 15, 20, 25 kids and your child is like picking up his or her book in the middle of math class. Like I get it. It's natural for people to get frustrated.

But I'm asking all of us as adults to control ourselves and be patient and not react to things because typically we react. You know what? Put your book away. How many times have I told you not to read in the middle of math class? If you can't follow directions, we do the same thing at home. Constant lecture, lecture, lecture. But what if that teacher had these tools and he was able to say,

hey you know what you know what i'll just use a girl elizabeth you know what i love about you you're curious you love to read and i love that quality hey it's math class so i need you to put away your book right now but after lunch if you want i'd love for you to share with the rest of the class what you're reading in that book because i wish everybody was as curious as you

Again, see what we're doing. It didn't really take any more time. But now, and I got the girl, I got Elizabeth to put her book away so she could focus on math and

But it wasn't snotty. It wasn't negative at all. And I actually affirmed her and said, I love the fact that you read and you're curious. And now I gave her time later to be able to do that and share with the rest of the class. A really cool calming tool for many of our kids, because if you listen to our podcast,

You'll know this. When kids are upset, my first thing isn't to try to get them to calm down. It's to give them something they're in control of because you get upset in life when you feel like things are out of your control. And for many of our kids, that's

School's really hard. One of my favorite parts of our teacher training is helping them understand our strong willed kids and neurodivergent kids, all the things kind of against them from the time they wake up in the morning because most of them haven't slept that well.

and managing the social dynamics of school. Many of our kids have that asynchronous development, right? So get along better with little kids, older kids, animals, but they struggle with their peers, but they go through their whole school career with kids their own age and they struggle to connect with them. And so you feel left out. You feel you sit by yourself in the cafeteria. I wouldn't wanna go to school every day.

short-term memory is difficult for me. So now it's hard to memorize information for tests and getting all these thoughts out of my head onto paper. The writing process, even though I'm very bright, the writing process is hard for me as a kid. And I have a defensive nature because I've been in trouble because I'm a stove toucher, you know, since I've been born. And so when they get to school, it's like, man, this is

hard to navigate and many of your kids are very sensory and so they need sensory exercises and they're very they get overwhelmed with all the noise and chaos of school so helping teachers and you as parents understand what's really going on man it's really really helpful

So when kids start getting upset, my first go-to is let me give them something they're in control of. And a very simple thing to have in a classroom is to have a little box of paper clips of different colors. And I'd encourage you as a parent,

take in some tools, help the teacher out and say, hey, I've got a couple of things if you could put in the back of your classroom. And when my son or daughter is getting upset and just, or maybe they're shut down a little bit, if they could go to the back of the room for like just one minute or two minutes and do this, it would really help them. So you ask the child, oh, you know what? I really need your help. Could you sort all those different paper clips by color for me? You

You know how calming that is because you're doing this repetitive activity and it's not asking anything emotionally of you and you're in complete control of it and there's order and structure. It's a beautiful thing to do. So one more idea for you. And by the way,

For those of you who have purchased our programs, especially the Get Everything package, in there is the ADHD University program. Your kids don't have to have ADHD. It's just a quick, easy way to summarize kids who have these kind of brains.

you have purchased that package email us and we emails with your teachers email address and we'll send that program directly to the teacher who can listen to the programs on his or her free time and I think they'll find it very very helpful now you'll be on the same page using the same language but that's a huge benefit and I always throw this out there

If that teacher has some questions, that teacher can email me directly and I'll be glad to help. So here's one more idea. So this helps with social skills, building confidence. So many of your kids, they're not all that great at recess because many of your kids aren't always that great with ball sports and doing stuff outside. So they also change the rules of the game. They cheat, they button line, all those things.

with other kids. So it's like just saying like, "Hey, go out and play with your friends." It's like, well, one, I don't have a ton of friends. Two, I'm not that great at playing with things. And they'd rather be like working on electromagnetic currents coming into the school or fixing something in the back of the classroom.

So I pull that child aside and say, "Hey, I could really use your help. Next week we're doing a new unit on reptiles and I've noticed, man, you're really good at drawing because you're doodling during class and I know that's keeping your brain awake, so that's awesome. And I've seen your graffiti in the boys bathroom. It's highly inappropriate, but actually very good." I'm kidding.

But I'm recognizing one of their skills. You're very good at drawing. And I know that Jimmy over here is really good at drawing too. So if I brought some poster board outside or in the back of the room during recess, could you two draw and color in some reptiles for me? Because then I'll hang it up on the whiteboard next week and it'll really help me with teaching.

And you know what that does? Now you're pairing your child with another child. They have similar interests. Maybe they both love dinosaurs and they're both good at drawing. And now they're doing a little project together. It helps with building a friendship. You're creating a success. You're also preventing more bad behavior and fights and them not getting along with kids at recess. But you're creating successes here.

you're using their gifts so next week when you put their their the work their poster up on the wall the other kids also get to see hey yeah that kid sometimes is a little otter he gets in trouble but man it's can that kid draw man he is really really gifted at that and it's just a cool way to do it so here's the process

You're noticing the kids different gifts, talents, and passions and that's where that cheat sheet comes in. "Hey, my child is good at doing these three things. Can you use them in class?" And now the teacher has some ideas of how to use that in class and you're giving kids tools to succeed. "That's what I want to do for the whole school year."

Look, if we can help reach out to us, we can do that Zoom training. It's right on the website at CelebrateCalm.com under live training. If you get the programs, definitely share with the teacher the ADHD University program. I'll share all the programs with them. I don't care. I do that one, the Strong Willed Child program. Those both are super foundational. While you're working on 30 Days to Calm, moms and dads,

But let us know if we can help you. If you need help financially, reach out to us and Casey will help you with anybody who's struggling financially. We help everybody. We want you to have, we all want to have tools. Hey, thank you for listening to this. Thank you for sharing it with your child's teachers, with school, with everybody else. If we can help you, let us know. Thanks for being awesome parents and teachers. Love you all and we'll talk to you soon. Bye-bye.