How do you discipline a child w/ ADHD/Bipolar? Nothing I do works. I know I've read positive reinforcemnt.. but.. like the other night, my son pulled the blinds off the window and tried to open the window, the next night he broke the light cover over his light bulb? He gets timeout, grounding. What about the constant yelling and backtalking?

Thanks.

I wish I had some decent advice for you, but as you said, reinforcement is the ONLY thing I know. It has to be consistent and continual. My daughter is ADHD and has tourettes, and we are constantly back and forth. She seems to do alot of things that she doesnt realize cause chain reactions. You can tell her something and correct her and 10 mins later she will turn around and do the same thing again. Why? Just cuz she's ADHD. When medicated she is alittle easier to deal with, and most of the impulse stuff subsides but when off meds she just doesnt get it. I hope things get better for you and if nothing else you found the right place for others to hopefully pass on some really good wisdom.

I can only relate our experience with the yelling and backtalking. The impulsiveness has not been bad enough that safety is involved (except when our daughter has gone into a rage). We have been going down this road with our daughter for about 6 months, mostly over homework. She would get angry and start yelling at my husband (he is at home after school). When I would get home from work, she would be fuming in her room and my husband would be fuming in the family room and no homework would be done. My oldest would be trying to stay out of thier way by staying in her bedroom. We set up a behavior plan with token economy (bribes) to change the worst behavoirs and get het to do her homework. We also did not add extra consequenses when she would blow up because this seemed to escalate things. She just had to stay in her room until she calmed down and was ready to interact with us. Our presence generally made things worse at these times and we had to keep calm voices and not escalate the situation (so she had no one to fight back). When she calmed down, we would praise her for getting herself calm and would move on with the evening and completion of what she had to do (no extra punishment for the anger, just apologies, hugs and praise when it was over). This was really hard at first (we had been warned by the psychologist that things usually got worse before they got better). She has been able to calm herself down faster now and generally doesn't even need to go to her room. She can get frustrated and within seconds, calm down and get back to her work or further discuss what made her angry. She completes her work (even though she struggles due to LD and ADHD) as part of her expected behaviors and gets rewards that have meaning to her.

We started this while going through the diagnostic process and have just started her on medication. Though the behavior modification has helped, her frustration at failing school needs to be addressed.
I know this is long, but I hope it helps a little,
vickie

Thanks to both of you. I think I'm going to try what you do and see what happens. It will be very hard though, considering how he talks to me, but if it works, woohoo. lol.

The only hing that worked on my was physical discipline.

You mean as in spankings? Been there. Doesn't work. If anything it makes it worse.

Take a look at Barkley's book Taking Charge of ADHD -- he maps out a good plan to help with discipline. It will never be easy with ADHD kids, because it just doesn't stick in the same way. But eventually it does -- my parents through much trial and effort did manage to socialize me over the long haul -- so hang in there! He also does a great job of explaining why it takes so long to stick -- not having the self talk developed like a non ADDer and having a kind of time blindness. His books aren't always in the bookstores and can be ordered from www.addwarehouse.com (http://www.addwarehouse.com) or www.specialneeds.com (http://www.specialneeds.com).

Scattered

Great! Thanks. Going to check it out now.