Stop Using Timeouts and Lecturing with Neurodivergent Kids: Do this Instead!

 Hey, friend. Today’s episode is brought to you by Executive Functioning Week. This is a brand new virtual event with five days of bite sized lessons that will teach you key strategies to support your kids executive functioning skills, right in the moment that they’re having that struggle. Whether that’s a meltdown, whether they’re struggling with getting off a screen, a transition to bedtime, or they’re struggling with self-control.

Whatever executive functioning skills your child is struggling with this week is going to give you clear strategies to help them also build and strengthen these skills that is possible for your child, whether they have no diagnosis or whether they have ADHD, autism or sensory needs. The link is in the show notes below, but you can also head to yourkidstable.com/efweek to get a seat inside.

Alright, hear me out? Okay. I am going to get into why we need to stop using timeouts and or lecturing when we’re trying to discipline neurodivergent kids and what to start doing. Instead, listen, truth be told, this is important, I believe, for neurotypical kids too, but we’re gonna get into why it’s particularly important for neurodivergent kids.

And just a quick reminder, when I’m using the word neurodivergent, or sometimes I say uniquely wired, those pretty much mean the same thing for me. What we’re talking about are definitely kids that have ADHD that have autism. That have sensory processing disorder, maybe even dyslexia. There’s quite an umbrella there.

But we’re also talking about kids that don’t have diagnoses that we sometimes see, well, there’s some attention problems there, or they seem to be a little, uh, wired a little different than their sibling or their peers. Then that’s really what we’re talking about here. Okay. And again, I think that there are all kinds of strengths.

That come with that unique wiring, but we also really need to be aware of the fact that it means that the way that we help our kids understand how to follow directions, how to follow the rules that keep them safe or that help grow them into the adults that we, that we are hoping that they are going to be, that that might look a little bit different.

So if it’s your first time here, I am a pediatric OT for more than two decades that I have spent working with children from zero to 21. I am also a mom that has a neurodivergent kid. And so I know what it’s like living this in daily life, and I’m gonna be super transparent right at the beginning of this episode and let you know that I really struggle, struggle with the lecturing with, in particular my neurodivergent kid.

And it has probably been one of the hardest things I quite frankly, am still struggling with. It is my default. We’re gonna get into kind of why that is and why I am not really alone in that. I don’t think. I don’t think, you know, we all kind of have our things that that kind of challenge us, but I think it’s really hard, especially as our kids start to get older, to not lecture.

And I think when they’re younger we tend to think of time out because it’s such a black and white. Clear approach to kind of handling when kids mess up or there’s a behavior challenge. Now, what I’m, I’m leaning into these two things in particular. There are other behavioral strategies that would fall under what we’re talking about today, but we’re really gonna lean into timeouts and lecturing because I think that there, there are two big ones that we tend to default to.

It’s important that you know that these approaches are leveraging behavioral psychology. It’s all about cause and effect, black and white, and the goal is behavior modification. So what that means is you are looking to shape and change the way that your child acts. That is not necessarily a bad thing.

Behavioral psychology is not bad. I think the challenge with it is, especially with our neurodivergent kids, is that it is so black and white and nothing about our neurodivergent kids really is now these strategies appear to be effective. And if you’re, if you’re on the defense right now, listen, I hear you.

Just stick with me. If you’re like, what? I feel like this works. Well, that’s probably because. Number one, it gives us a sense of control. It’s a very clear way to handle what can sometimes feel like a situation that’s totally out of control. We’re gonna talk, we’re gonna walk through a couple examples later and how we’re gonna, what we’re gonna do instead, what I’m recommending that we do, instead of what I’m working on in my own home is doing instead.

Okay? What comes naturally to me in an OT setting. And is super hard for me in a, in a daily personal life, mom to child setting. But when things are getting out of control, whether your kid is getting aggressive, they’re hitting or they’re throwing things, they’re not listening, they’re having a flip out or a tantrum because you won’t buy them a toy or you’ve put some boundary or limit up.

Maybe for an older kid there’s a screen time limit or a curfew or a time they have to be home and stop doing something that they really wanna do. Then we see a rush of kind of, uh, yelling or, or behaviors or our kid has broken a role, something we have told them not to do. It’s disorienting to us, but it’s also very concerning.

I think it, it triggers many of us because we worry even from a very young age, even when we’re dealing with a two or a 3-year-old. As a parent, we often have a vision, which is good, of how we want to raise our children, the kind of people that we hope that they’re going to become. The values that are important to us, we are hoping to instill in them.

And so when we see not listening, when we see aggression, when we see not following directions or staying within boundaries or rules. It can be triggering. Triggering. We are worried that we are failing them as a parent, and so it’s a timeout or a lecture, which in my case is never really a planned thing.

It just starts coming out of my mouth. And to be quite honest, even a timeout doesn’t have to be in our, in our anxiety, in our anger, in our fear as a result. Of, of our kids’, quote unquote behaviors. The things that we’re seeing them do in front of us that are so concerning to us, we may react very quickly because this gives us a sense of control.

It’s very black and white. It’s like, yep, you did this. This is what’s happening now, and our parents likely use these strategies. Okay. That’s certainly the case with, with my parenting and the parenting I received as a child, and I would say if you’re a millennial or a Gen Xer, you most likely were receiving this type of parenting.

And so then there starts to be this tension of, well, if my parent did it, why is this not working? Why should I not use it now? Okay, so we’re gonna talk, we’re gonna talk about all that. The other element is if you have other kids in your life, either other, your own children or you’re, you know, around other families with kids, and you see parents do this or it works for one of your other child to put them in timeout or to lecture them, and then the behavior stops.

Ooh. Now it’s really like, whoa, why am I, why am I not doing this? I do wanna speak to this. A little bit. First of all, neurotypical children that don’t kind of have sensory processing needs, that don’t have executive functioning challenges very well. Might not all of them, but very well, may respond to timeouts and stop that behavior.

They very well may respond to lectures. But, but, and as we’re gonna get into why this is kind of problematic for our neurodivergent kids in particular, it doesn’t always mean that it is the healthiest solution for that neurotypical child’s emotional regulation. Okay, so for instance, I am, I like to call myself a recovering type a personality, something I really work to let go of.

But, as a child I was extremely responsible. I was the kid that always followed directions. If I got put in timeout or I got punished in any way, or there was a lecture. I felt a pressing need to make sure I followed it. So yes, it modified my behavior. However, it did come at a cost because it didn’t build skills for me, which we’re gonna get into because what we’re we’re actually talking about here are executive functioning skills.

Again, remember that. Those are all in the, the frontal lobe of our brain, and they are the, that is the area of the brain that is responsible for all of our higher level thinking, our self-control, our problem solving, our following directions. Okay? That’s, that’s what we’re talking about here. Our emotional regulation.

That’s a really big one. And so. For me, what ended up happening as a kind of type a kid, arguably I, you know, I don’t know if we can even say neuro neurotypical to be quite honest. But even for me as a child that responded to those things, the reason I was often responding was because when my parent was upset with me, I felt dysregulation.

I felt a lack of safety. I wanted to restore that connection. So for me to do that, I became very compliant. So it was actually, you know, in my adult life, had a lot of untangling to do you, you know, people pleasing, all this kinds of stuff that can happen to us as a result of just this behavior modification piece and not actually teaching me these executive functioning skills.

To have self-control, to follow directions, to manage my emotional regulation in a healthy way, instead of it being dependent on the emotional wellbeing of those around me. Okay? So I think it’s important for us to be aware of that. Now, let’s talk about why these don’t work, especially for our neurodivergent kids.

It’s because they don’t teach skills. To be quite honest, for our neurodivergent kids, the things that we are lecturing about, the things that we are putting them in timeout for, which by the way are likely to happen at a way higher frequent frequency than for neurotypical kids. If we are putting our kids in timeout or lecturing them all the time.

We are not teaching them any skills. This is basically saying like, this pattern of problems is frequently coming up, like right now. Think about kind of what is the, your biggest challenge with your kid. Maybe it’s something from the path that you’re like, oh my gosh. When we went through that season when they were hitting their sibling all the time, that was so hard.

Maybe it’s something right now. Okay. They’re refusing to do their homework. They, they are struggling to pay attention to care about school maybe. They are, their room is a total mess. Everything is disorganized. They can’t stay focused, whatever that thing is. Think about that right now. And how often is it coming up?

How often do you feel like you’re having to deal with it? If it’s a high frequency that this is a daily basis or even multiple times a week? It is definitely linked to those executive functioning skills. There are gaps in them that are making it look like, oh, this is just a behavior problem. Okay. So when we are thinking about that, like we’re thinking about the child that cannot get off a screen.

If we look at it from just a behavioral approach, we’re saying, well, they’re not, they’re not listening. If they’re not following the rules, this is a bad behavior that I need to fix, shape, and deal with. A more nuanced and appropriate way of viewing that is, whoa, my kids’ wiring in their brain has a gap in these self-control skills.

They have ADHD. They’re really struggling with a lot of these executive functioning skills. It’s hard for them to stop doing something that’s enjoyable. It’s hard for them to start doing the next thing that they, that they need to be doing. They have a lower level of dopamine, so they wanna stay on that screen longer.

So instead of an outright punishment. How can I look at building those skills and supporting the skills where they are right now? We’re gonna get into that more later, but this is, this is the, the framework that we’re working within. This is not about being a permissive parent versus a traditional authoritarian parent.

It’s about understanding that teaching kids to follow directions, to follow the rules, which is pretty much what everything falls under every punishment. Is nuanced. So I wanna talk just a little bit more before we get into what we’re gonna do, these approach, why these approaches in particular backfire for neurodivergent kids.

Okay. So first, when we’re looking at timeouts, I. We really have to think, especially when kids are kind of in the age of using timeouts and depending on your personal parenting style, this is tends to be a toddler preschooler, maybe early elementary years sort of punishment. But if our kids are neurodivergent, they are likely experiencing.

At least part of the time challenges with having their nervous system regulated, meaning they’re in a state of dysregulation. So that means the brain feels out of balance. It doesn’t feel grounded. It doesn’t feel secure. That can be because of a child’s sensory processing, right? So the way their brain is wired, they’re either getting way too much input, their brain is paying attention to way too much of the senses in their environment.

Those are sensory sensitivities or they aren’t getting enough. Their brain isn’t really registering it. So these kids are seekers and they are trying to regulate their body by moving. By getting more of the input. This looks like hyperactivity. This looks like not sitting still. This looks like I told you three times to pick up your shoes and go brush your teeth and you have not done them once.

It can look like bad behavior when a child’s nervous system is literally dysregulated. Now, sensory needs is just one reason that us, that a nervous system can be dysregulated. Emotions are another one. If a child is engaged in a difficult interaction with a sibling or a peer, they’re getting frustrated, which by the way, frustration tolerance, like how much your child can get taught, frustrated before they explode, is linked to executive functioning skills.

Okay. That’s a, that’s a level of self-control that’s related to our emotional regulation. So if your child gets frustrated and quickly escalates to anger, this is related to their executive functioning skills, not your parenting style. Not that they are a bad kid, not that you are failing. And so if we see a kid doing this on a regular basis, we have to recognize, oh my gosh, this is a sign of dysregulation.

Yes, this behavior is concerning. Yes, this behavior is not okay. No, they cannot hit their sister or their friend. Or kick the wall and put a hole in it or punch you. None of those things are okay, but if we handle it from only a behavioral approach, they are not going to be able to learn how to improve their self-control.

And here’s the other thing, okay, like this is so important, so please hear me on this. If your kid is dysregulated and many, many neurodivergent kids are spending significant portions of their waking hours in a state of dysregulation. For some kids, it is their total baseline like they are. They are dysregulated more often than they are regulated.

If that is the case, then their rational brain in any executive functioning skills that they have are offline. They are not working. So when you try to teach them a consequence by putting them in timeout or by lecturing them, they are not going to be able to make the connection. This, the capacity is not possible because that part of the brain is turned off and the survival mode of their brain is turned on.

All the brain is thinking about is surviving AKA, getting their brain back to a place of regulation. One last note, because another huge area that dysregulation can be affected by besides sensory needs, besides our emotions, is basic needs being depleted. So that is our sleep, our hydration, our food intake.

You guys all know this. Your kid gets tired, things get worse. Your kid is hungry, things get worse. Right? Or we feel that in our own lives, right? Our nervous system is like, Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey. I have a need. You need to meet it. Everything else starts to fall apart because the brain is saying, pay attention to this.

I’m thirsty, I’m tired. I need you to address this, and I am not going to use the brain capacity to do problem solving and emotional regulation until you deal with this. That is the same for sensory needs. That is the same for emotions.

So it’s important to understand when we’re using timeout, there is not going to be a correlation between, oh, I didn’t clean up my toys. My mom gave me three more wor mornings. Now I’m sitting in timeout. Okay? Two days from now when I’m being asked to clean up the toys again, I am not going to think about, hey.

I might be in timeout because I’m dysregulated. I can’t even think of that. I can’t make that connection when I’m sitting in timeout because I’m dysregulated. And when we’re looking at lectures, like when we start lecturing our kids about why we’re, why we’re concerned, why we’re upset, why they shouldn’t do X, Y, or z.

If they are dysregulated, they do not have the ability to sustain attention and track that conversation. It’s almost a guarantee that they are not listening and that they have tuned you out and not even on purpose. And again, when we’re looking at Neurodivergence, especially a child with ADHD, they are likely not going to have the sustained attention, even if they are regulated to listen to a long lecture.

And one more and very important point because these behaviors happen so often for neurodivergent kids, and we are often trying to use timeouts or lectures on a daily basis. They are constantly being told, Hey, you just messed up again. There is a very significant risk of low self-esteem. And that can really spiral into anxiety and depression, even at young ages because they’re always falling short.

It, if a child is dysregulated or has these gaps in their executive functioning skills that are making it truly hard, if not impossible for them to follow the directions or rules, they’re going to start to feel like there’s something wrong with them. There is something broken. So with all of that in mind, what can we do instead?

’cause it is important that our kids are safe with their bodies. It is important that they are able to follow directions, to follow boundaries and rules. We have rules everywhere, in every environment. They’re designed primarily to keep kids safe or to develop the values in them that we believe are so beneficial to them in just being a human being.

Whether that’s being honest or kind or helpful, right? And so we’re often trying to instill those things, which are all really good things. So I want you to hear me before we get into this. What can we do if you are listening to this right now and you are feeling a weight, if you are feeling guilty over how you have handled the challenges in your neurodivergent kids’ life, I want you to take a deep breath.

It says so much about the type of parent you are that you are here listening to this right now. And I want you to know that change is always possible, and when you know more, you do better. I know that there are gonna be changes. Now, we also tend to be so much harder on ourselves than the reality usually is through connection, through starting to build these executive functioning skills in their brain, which is very possible.

This is not a life sentence. Okay. We do need to understand and accept where our kids are at with their executive functioning skills, with their sensory processing. We need to support them right where they are. And help them do those things so that maybe they do have a checklist. Maybe they do have a visual schedule when you are giving them a couple of tasks that they have to do, or you’re trying to get through a transition, you’re trying to get them out the door where there are these trouble spots that is supporting those executive functioning skills.

But there is also so many simple things that you can do to actually strengthen and build these skills in kids with ADHD, autism and sensory needs. It is not a life sentence. Okay? But right now, today, there is something so powerful that you can start doing and it’s not too late. No matter how old your kid is, they will notice it.

They will see it. If they are already in a place where they have low self-esteem, it is going to start to build. Okay? So what we can do when we see this, how do I. How do I stop this behavior? That’s the question we typically ask. How do I stop this? How do I get control of this? We are going to instead say, what does my child need right now, this shift and how we think changes everything.

I wanna say that again. But we tend to think as parents, myself included, I believe me, I’m thinking of my own things right now with my kid. Okay? There are, there are real struggles that we are dealing with today that I slip into lecturing him about. Every time, every time my anxiety prone brain, my type A prone brain starts to think, how do I stop this behavior?

What we need to think about instead is, what does my child’s brain need right now? What do they need? This behavior is communicating something to me. What is it? Okay. It’s a really small shift, but a powerful one. Before you correct the behavior that you see doing. Pause and ask, what does my child need right now?

Okay. Maybe that’s a movement break. Maybe that’s a break period from the situation, which is very different than a timeout guiding your child to a safe spot. Is very different so that everybody is safe, including themselves, than saying, Hey, you have to sit here in timeout. The buzzer’s gonna go off because you weren’t doing X.

Rather than, Hey, I think we need a break right now. Let’s head over here. Okay.

Let’s walk through three examples of what this looks like, because what your child needs might be a sensory response. What your child needs might be an executive functioning support, what your child needs might be an emotional support. They might need co-regulation from you. They might need a safe space from you.

So let’s, let’s think about the preschooler. You have a three or a 4-year-old. And they have hit their sister again. They’re angry. They’re playing a game. Something didn’t go his way, and now he has hit his sister again. She’s crying on the floor. This is upsetting as a parent, okay? You have one child that’s upset and hurt, and another child that has caused it, both of your children.

Or even if this is a peer, gosh, that’s a hard situation to be in too. You’re on a play date or a kid has been invited over your, your house and your kid. Just hit them and hard. That’s tough. So the first thing that we need to think about is what is going on? Not how do I stop this behavior? What is going on in my kid’s brain?

How, what do they need right now in that moment? It’s a break. It’s a break for sure. Making sure they’re safe and going back to that other child to make sure they’re safe, to make sure they’re okay to not shame the child that had the aggression because we can, we can move past aggression. Aggression is almost always a huge spike in dysregulation and the, the brain has moved into fight or flight.

Okay, so you’re seeing the fight, you’re seeing the fight. When that happens, and then we need to think about, it’s the emotional regulation right now. Sometimes that can be linked to sensory. Sometimes if a kid’s sensory needs aren’t being met, it will look totally random. I have seen this so many times with kids, their dysregulation is building, especially if they don’t have a lot of language, and then all of a sudden they seems like they snap.

They reach out and hit or bite somebody.

They have escalated into fight or flight. We can teach kids other ways of coping with this. Okay? Just a few months ago, we had a mom in the connection hive, shared this. We had talked about it on a q and a, and gosh, it was, you know, you could feel the pain. It was this, it was this dynamic of two siblings.

We talked about, whoa, okay, this is fight or flight. This is emotional regulation. What do we do now to help start building this emotional regulation skill? So we started working on specific executive functioning skills like self-awareness, like. Self-talk as a strategy to start learning other ways to cope when the brain gets triggered that high into fight or flight because of anger and frustration.

Let’s talk about another example. Let’s say a second grader who won’t put away their toys or maybe their room is a disaster. You’ve given them a hundred warnings. You’ve asked them so many times, you’ve said you can’t have this till you do this. And so now we’re at another place where there’s a lecture or maybe even a timeout at this age,

but what’s, but if we stop and say, I need, I need my kid to be able to clean up their stuff, right? That’s like a real life skill. They’re gonna need to apply to a bunch of different situations. Whew. We start to worry. We’re really failing them. So we wanna make sure that we don’t say, how do I stop this behavior?

And instead we wanna ask, what does my kid’s brain need? Remember that one executive functioning skill, there are many, is task initiation. This is really a, this can be really, really hard for neurodivergent kids to start doing something that’s hard to know the steps of what to do when a kid is looking at a messy pile.

In their bedroom or their toys, they literally can’t figure out the first step because of their executive functioning. Or it feels so hard that their system gets overwhelmed and you may see them shut down, check out, wander away, get angry as a result. So when we think about what does my child’s brain need, maybe they need me to tell them one step at a time.

Maybe they need a checklist. Maybe I need to ask them. Maybe they need a movement break first. Okay. It depends on which of these, these things are causing the struggle. So it does take some detective work from us, or let’s say there’s a 14-year-old that won’t get off their gamer phone. It’s a constant battle.

Okay. That is totally related to self-control. That is totally related to task initiation. Starting something that’s hard, getting off the game is so hard. That’s task initiation again. Okay, so we have to start working on activities that build that skill. We need to give supports when that’s happening. We need to use a timer.

We need to use the schedule. We need to give reminders. We need to have the next item in their list, give them a little dopamine hit. Not be something else that’s super hard, like, Hey, you need to get off that and do your homework. We need to put a little buffer in there. These executive functioning skills are so important.

Underneath them, yes, are the sensory and emotional pieces. If you are wanting to learn how to support your child to build these executive function skills, to give those supports. We have a free five days to building these executive functioning skills to decrease meltdowns, to help with transitions called Executive Functioning Week.

It starts April 13th. I have never done anything like this before. We are gonna be giving away real strategies every day in bite-sized lessons. They’re gonna be right to the point and hone in on these skills. I hope you join me and grab a seat. This is so important. If your kid has ADHD, if they have autism, if they have sensory needs, if you feel like they’re uniquely wired, but they have no diagnosis, but they’re struggling with these things, you are struggling with how to help support them outside of lecturing and timeouts because it feels out of control.

This special week is for you. If you can get the link in the show notes or go to your kids table.com/. EF weak, all one word. I really hope to see you there. It has been such a privilege to be with you today. If you know anybody else that is struggling with these behaviors, there are so many people out there that are, because there are just a lot of kids that have sensory needs and ADHD and autism, please send this their way.

It could be a lifeline. All right, friends, that’s it for today. I see you next time.