How Should I Respond to My Teen’s Impulsive & Disruptive Behavior? (Listener Question)

Debbie: 

Hey, everybody. I am here today with my dear friend, my wise colleague, Seth Perler for this apparently in an episode. Seth has been on the show a bunch of times before. You should go back and listen to some of those episodes. There’s gold in the archives. But if you’re new to him, he’s an executive function coach and a consultant. He has a ton of experience addressing extraordinarily diverse learning needs. He’s passionate about meeting the unique needs of students and he is really focused on addressing social, emotional, lifestyle, and executive function issues in order to help students experience success. You can get a lot of great resources from Seth’s website, sethperler.com. And if you wanna work more closely with Seth, definitely check out his new executive function lab, which is where he coaches people on how to get big results for their struggling students. He’s got a ton of tools on there. It’s a great community. and you can learn more about that. Seth, what’s the URL for that?

Seth Perler: 

executivefunctionlab.com.

Debbie:

Okay, easy peasy. So that’s in the show notes. Check that out. But Seth, welcome to the podcast.

Seth Perler:

What’s up, Debbie? Let’s dive in.

Debbie:

Let us dive in. Okay, so this question was submitted by a listener. I’m not sure the age of the child, I’ll say that upfront, but here’s the question. What do you do when your son’s adolescent impulsivity leads him to continually cross the line causing disturbances in class, jumping over walls and fences of private property, stealing money, et cetera? When confronted, he thinks it’s hilarious. Unless we get really angry, he doesn’t seem to think it’s serious. But if we get really angry, we end up with blowups. With trying to be calm and supportive, it feels he’s getting away with things and rapidly heading in the wrong direction. What do you advise? So what do you advise, Seth? I’d love you to start us off.

Seth Perler:

Okay, let’s start here. It’s scary. This is really scary. This reminds me of myself as a teen and I was getting in a lot of trouble and doing a lot of things that I am not proud of and turning it around and turning the corner with this. Uh, you know, my parents didn’t know what’s going on, so it’s good. It’s good. At least that you seem to know what’s going on, but, um, it’s scary reading this. So the first thing that I want to say is that I would quote advice to get help. This is real life. This is real. Get help. Um, don’t wait. And there are two different types of help. One, there’s parents get help, meaning that we all, and Debbie and I talk a lot about our own deep inner work, but we all have dysfunction and maladaptive behaviors and things that we’ve learned from where any, any context that we’ve grown up in. And so we’ve all have that and the more aware we are of that stuff, the more we can address it, the more we can learn our own emotional regulation and things like that, the better off our kids are going to be. The more we are modeling self -care, modeling tools that our kids can use to regulate things like that. And then in terms of getting help for our child, you know, medication comes to mind. If there’s that much impulsivity, and I know a lot of people are anti -meds and a lot are not, but meds are not a black and white thing. The fact is, medications can be absolute game changers for a lot of families. And sometimes some meds for executive function or for ADHD, sometimes the day people start, they can see a tremendous change. So when it comes to impulsivity like this, these are impulsive decisions and executive function has everything to do with a lot of things, but decision -making. It does have to do with impulsivity and it has to do with emotional regulation, which I hear in this, um, email. It has to do with future thinking and our ability to think through consequences, good and bad. So executive function has everything to do with that and medication can help, um, sleep obviously. So anyhow, that’s the first thing that comes to my mind is, don’t wait … get help. 

And then when they’re talking about confronting their child with it, I’m thinking what it feels like for us, the people listening to be confronted, the word confronted, how, what the implication of that is. It usually feels, if you think about Polyvagal Theory and, or Julia Caldwell is like Above and Below the line. It feels pretty trapped, like a caged animal, like being confronted is very uncomfortable. And it gets us into a fight, flight or freeze state where we can feel pretty stuck. And what we want to do is not necessarily be honest and work through a problem, but is to get free of feeling stuck and scared and trapped. So if we’re confronting it, just the, you know, thinking about how we are communicating about these things. Now you also said trying to be calm. Um, so that’s different, the different tone than the confronting. So, either way, I just be very, be aware of the communication and things like, I think punishments are very misunderstood. Um, rewards are very misunderstood. Consequences are very misunderstood. Like them getting away with things does send a message. Absolutely that you can get away with things so that they’re there. But in terms of how we deal with that, and I don’t know enough about the situation to give advice on that right now, but in terms of how we deal with that so that they’re not quote, getting away with it. That requires time, real conversations, like we were talking about in a different episode, and really planning and thinking through how to approach our child, stepping back and because yeah, things can really get worse here. And I guess my last thought, Debbie, is when they said, unless we get really angry, he doesn’t think it’s serious. Once we’re angry then we’re dysregulated and then our nervous system is telling their nervous system to become dysregulated or to avoid becoming dysregulated. What’s one way to avoid becoming dysregulated? Don’t take any of it seriously, act like it’s hilarious. That’s a great way to do that. And then I have one other thought that I’ll get to at the end, but what are your thoughts? What does this bring up for you Debbie?

Debbie:

Yeah, first of all, I really appreciate everything you shared. So one thing I just wanna share as a resource, again, we don’t know the age of this child, but as you were talking, Seth, I was thinking of Dr. Dan Siegel’s book, Brainstorm, which is about the teenage brain. I learned so much about what is typical and what our kids’ brain is supposed to be doing. And part of that is like taking risks, not thinking through the consequences of our actions, being very impulsive. And so if you have a neurodivergent student who already is impulsive, it can be a very challenging time. So I’ll put a link to that in the show notes. It’s just a great resource if that is the age that we’re talking about. Yeah, a couple of things that came up for me. One is I just want to throw out collaborative and proactive solutions from Dr. Ross Greene, because as I’m reading this, I’m thinking that there’s gotta be some payoff, whether it’s dopamine, whether it’s getting a reaction, whether it’s positive or negative attention, whether it is getting some need met. There’s something, there’s a payoff, and there’s a reason this is happening. So I would get really curious, and if you can do this in collaboration with your child, not when the stakes are high, like at a time that’s very removed from the situation, try to see if you can identify what is that unmet need? What is that lagging skill? There’s probably multiple skills, but trying to hone in on something and then doing that collaborative and proactive solutions, you know, process together with your child to see if you can address it. That’s one way to go. I don’t know if that depending on the dynamic if that works, but I wanted to put that out there. Another thing that came out, another thing that jumped out at me and you touched upon this too, I think we can both agree that getting angry and escalating is not like a great plan. And I’ve done it before for sure with my kiddo and it is like pouring fuel on the fire. And so I want to acknowledge that. And also you said that, with trying to be calm and supportive, it feels like he’s getting away with things. So when I read that, what I was thinking about what you’re making it mean that you’re not getting angry. What are you making it mean? So you might be making it mean that he’s getting away with something. Well, that doesn’t feel good. My kids’ getting away with all this stuff and I’m just standing by and watching it happen. And so then we start shaming ourselves and we start judging ourselves. So that’s something I would reframe. And here are a couple ideas. I was thinking if I were in your situation, I’d be reframing. I’m staying calm. so that I can co-regulate and that the window for learning our growth is more available. So I’m not letting my kid get away with something, this is what I’m doing. I’m staying calm because I know that my child isn’t doing this to upset us or to be bad, he’s communicating something to us. I’m staying calm because that makes it more likely that we can have productive interactions centered around helping my child learn these skills and get those needs met in more adaptive ways.

Seth Perler:

I like that.

Debbie:

So even kind of that internal dialogue about, what does it mean if I don’t react, you’re not letting your kid get away with something. There is a very good reason to react more calmly. And so that can take some of the pressure off of yourself, which can allow you to respond more thoughtfully, which makes your kind of calm brain more available to think more effectively about how to navigate this. Whether it’s in the moment or at another time when you’re trying to problem -solve with your kids. So just putting that out there.

Seth Perler:

So good. Yeah. For those of you who like to take notes, rewind what Debbie just said and type all that out and keep it handy because those were brilliant. Those are fantastic. Yeah. The last thought that I kind of had with this Debbie is, um, just sort of on the other side of it, like this child, there’s a need that’s not being met. And what I, what I was thinking about is what are some, I wasn’t thinking about it in that context at the time, but basically what are some needs that could be met? And the two things that I came up with is service and enrichment. So one is getting your kid involved in service, whether it’s service to animals that your kid likes or service to younger kids or, um, some type of people who need service, some way to serve some way to do something for others, to be helpful to others, something that, that is purposeful. We all want the same thing. We all want to feel like we matter. We all need to feel like we matter. We all need to matter. And of course our kids matter to us. That does not mean that we feel like we matter. So he needs to feel he matters. And so what, what opportunities are there for service, uh, where he might feel like he matters and then, um, what opportunities are there for enrichment? So from the gift and talented world, there’s this idea of enrichment and that’s really getting involved with things that are related to your kid’s strengths or talents or interests or passions or things that matter to them or things that they’ve never tried before. 

But what kinds of things can they get involved in? Like, I want to see this kid get involved in service and crazy enrichment programs or crazy groups or, you know, like cool opportunities in the community. There’s so many things to get your kid involved in. And really think creatively and outside the box of things you wouldn’t normally think about that your kid can get involved in that they can try out and that they can really, again, similar to service with, with the enrichment, they can feel like it matters. Like they matter, like there’s purpose, like there’s meaning. Cause this is a child who’s really looking, uh, to have experiences that are fun, that are thrilling, that are – we talked about risk and risk aversion earlier, but that you know, this kid is not very risk averse. They really like adrenaline and these sorts of things. And like, what are safe, cool, interesting ways that they can do things like that in healthy ways. There are tons of them. So really think outside the box, and try out a bunch of things. That’s my final thought.

Debbie:

I love that I got nothing to add. I think that’s a great note to end this on. Just stack up some wins and some positive experiences and use this as a strength. What a great reminder. Thank you, Seth for sharing your wisdom today, I want to thank the listener for sending in this question. If you have a question that you’d like us to address in a future episode, you can share that with us at tiltparenting.com/leanin. So that’s all for now. Thanks again, Seth, and we’ll see you all later. Bye.

Seth Perler:

Thanks, Debbie.