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Impulse Control


fourhills
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Hello All,

I am hoping for some advice on a book or a website I can get to help me with my 7 year old son. He is an accelerated learner who is amazing bright, but has a very hard time with controlling his impulses. I noticed this when he was 2 and now it is getting much worse. He cannot seem to stop his impulses he will tell everyone in the family that he hates us all - but the next moment he loves us all. He will be real angry at his younger brother and hit him but once again he will alright a few moments later. Also he is very sensitive. He was in public school from K-1st but that was not good for him so I started homeschooling in Sept. It is going well. He and I are loving the Classical Education. I am thinking maybe it is part of his giftedness, but would like some advice on how to help him. Thank you for reading this -

 

Kathy.

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A possible book for you to read is The Edison Trait. (http://www.amazon.com/Dreamers-Discoverers-Dynamos-Problems-Formerly/dp/0345405730/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1203171362&sr=1-1)

 

My boys do things first and then think about them. I usually let natural consequences happen to help them learn to think first, and my oldest is finally getting better at it. However, you probably need to address the anger issue. I think that's a separate issue. (http://www.amazon.com/Goodbye-Whining-Complaining-Attitudes-Your/dp/0877883548/ref=pd_bbs_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1203171531&sr=1-2)

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Hello All,

I am hoping for some advice on a book or a website I can get to help me with my 7 year old son. He is an accelerated learner who is amazing bright, but has a very hard time with controlling his impulses. I noticed this when he was 2 and now it is getting much worse. He cannot seem to stop his impulses he will tell everyone in the family that he hates us all - but the next moment he loves us all. He will be real angry at his younger brother and hit him but once again he will alright a few moments later. Also he is very sensitive. He was in public school from K-1st but that was not good for him so I started homeschooling in Sept. It is going well. He and I are loving the Classical Education. I am thinking maybe it is part of his giftedness, but would like some advice on how to help him. Thank you for reading this -

 

Kathy.

 

Make sure he is getting enough exercise. I have a friend who has her children run laps around the yard.

 

I realize that it sounds a little like the dog whisperer, but I do know that my son focuses better after execise. If you have a trampoline, let him jump daily to work those large muscle groups. My friend has hers to swim several days each week.

 

Also, discuss your sons outbursts with him, while your ds is not angry. Let him know that it is alright to be angry, but it is NOT alright to vomit those emotions (verbally or physically) on others in the house. Be diligent about instructing him to leave a situation when you see him becoming frustrated. Send him to run or jump on the trampoline. Sending him to his room or time out will NOT work out the adrenaline that his body has already released. The goal is to teach him to remove himself from a situation and release that energy somewhere acceptable before he does something that his future employer or family would find unforgiveable.

 

I realize that this is not a book or website, but I hope it helps.

Mandy

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  • 4 weeks later...

The disipline/reward program Accountable Kids worked wonders for our very impulsive son. http://www.accountablekids.com/fotm1007.aspx . That coupled with a radical diet change (no artificial colors, flavors, preservatives, corn syrup and a lot of healthy foods) and a good martial arts class 3 days a week solved 95% of our difficulties. Our son is now happy and focused and thinks (most of the time) before he acts . A great book to read on the relationship of diet to moods, impulsivity, etc is http://www.amazon.com/D-D-Nutrition-Solution-Zimmerman-Books/dp/B0007DGMC0/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=hpc&qid=1205339840&sr=8-2 Our son has never been diagnosed with any disorder, but this book still helped us immensely.

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Just wanted to add in my thanks. We've not dealt with impulse control issues here but recently Huck is starting to show some disturbing (to me) reactions. We're having tantrums again. While some of this might just be the age, I like to be well informed.

So, thanks, everyone!

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I'm going to look at 2 books mentioned here. I do want to say that this can take lots of time and patience to work with. Also, some dc with this might start exercising some control, but not enough, so they think they have. So you have to teach, teach, teach. Diet, exericise and being willing to parent outside the box helps. By outside the box, I mean you may have to think of unusual consequences. eg, with my girls, the only way to teach them to be quiet after they went to bed was to take away their pillows for a certain number of minutes, adding on for each infraction. That wasn't impulse control, but it's the easiest example. My girls didn't even get pillows until my oldest was 4 or 5, so this was a big deal to them as we started this when my eldest was 5 and they had to start sharing a room.

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My DS6.5 is in a public Montessori class and has had impulse control issues (likely ADHD but not seeking an official diagnosis right now) since he was a toddler. Last year in a regular kindergarten class, I think he spent half his time on the "quiet carpet" for talking out of turn and the other half of his time being bored to tears with coloring. This year is so much better and part of it is that his teacher is sooooo great with accomodations for him and intervening before he gets "past the point of no return". Some of the things we've tried that work - Brain Gym exercises (google "Brain Gym" or talk to an Occupational Therapist), scratching his back and giving him a back scratcher when he seems to be getting tense (when most of the impulse control that he DOES have tends to go out the window) having him do heavy lifting or things that exercise his proprioceptive sense - tightening and releasing muscles. His teacher has him go tighten screws on all of the stools in the classroom with a wrench and this works out tension for him. She is also really good (much better than me, I must admit) with keeping a calm tone with him and not reacting when he gets like that. This seems to calm him down.

 

Now the kid still runs in the halls every chance he gets and occasionally gets sucked into a dispute that he should stay out of with his friends but I have to emphasize that the difference between his behavior this year and last with all of these interventions is like night and day.

 

One more thing that calms him down and seems to help impulse control, although I don't quite know the exact connection yet (probably part of the gifted thing) is that he does EPGY math at an accellerated level. 20 minutes working on challenging math for him seems to have an overall relaxing effect on him. Sometimes when he gets tense or tired of waiting he asks me to give him math problems to do. I guess when things seem all discombobulated for the little guy, he like the order of math.

 

Melisa

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I found that what I was doing with Hobbes was worsening this problem. When he did something wrong (hitting his brother, etc.) I would put him on time out or impose a punishment based on a logical consequence. This seemed to do the opposite of normalising his responses - instead of bringing him into the family norm, it was pushing him away.

 

I recommend Hold On To Your Kids for an alternative method that has improved Hobbes' impulse control enormously. The book concentrates on older kids, but lays out a plan for all family interactions. You can read the first chapter on line before deciding to buy it.

 

Hold on to your kids

 

Best wishes

 

Laura

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They do better when they are exhausted GRIN. They've done it since elementary school at least several times a week (now 5 gulp!) and it is very calming. It is hard to make the time to do serious amounts of excersize, but it is well worth it for certain types of children.

 

My other two bits of advice are probably extremely non-helpful. One is to keep them happy. I don't mean to spoil them by giving them whatever they want or making sure they never do anything hard or that they never have to endure bad situations, but that at bottom their needs are met and they feel loved by you and everyone else in their family. For my youngest, for example, this means lots of hugs, lots of conversations, being in the middle of reading a good book, having almost everything he does for school be things where he feels like he is learning, our animals are safe, and being in the middle of some sort of building project (programming his laptop to play astroids, building a D+D model, converting his kayak to a sailboat, hitching a chainsaw motor to an old bike, etc.). For my oldest, it involved a predictable daily schedule, among other things, never not having anything to do and someone to do it with, and not get too hungry. My middle one needs to know that everyone else in the family is happy, especially me, have plenty of comic books to escape into when the world gets to him, to have nobody speak sharply to him ever, and to travel on his own for part of every year. Those are the sort of things I'm talking about. They've all been seasick for days on end, cold and wet for hours, had to do scary things on their own, had to endure days of boring tasks, and all the more ordinary unpleasantness of life. Those aren't the sort of things I'm talking about. It is amazingly easy to let children get unhappy as they grow and change. You have to watch and be willing to make the changes they need as they grow.

 

My last bit of advice is to never, never let them hit anyone. When they outweigh you and their younger brothers and are having to relearn all their anger management as hormonal teenagers, you have to be able to rely on their ability to keep from laying hands on anyone. I will be forever thankful to my oldest for managing to do this. I know it was very hard for him. I think it was only our complete horror when he hurt anyone when he was very little that let him keep himself under control. It wasn't that we punished them; we only did little silly punishments, like making someone run up and down the driveway a few times or put their hands over their head and say "I will ...." (The rest of the time we just talked to them.) It was that we managed to convery by our tone of voice and expression that you absolutely couldn't do this. I'm not sure how well punishing works. It didn't seem to work very well for our children, anyway. By the time they were being punished, they didn't remember what it was for anymore and were just mad at us. That is why doing something quick and not very unpleasant and silly worked better.

 

That is just our chidlren, though. They are high strung, really sensitive, and bright enough that they need help learning to manage themselves and their needs, but they aren't dealing with other problems.

 

As I said, I'm not sure this is any help. Sorry.

-Nan

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Some of the things we've tried that work - Brain Gym exercises (google "Brain Gym"

 

Melisa

 

I like Brain Gym. But the one who needed it for impulse control HATED it. My younger two got very silly, although it helped ds learn to count in 2 days (maybe a coincidence, but I'm not so sure--we used specific exercises.) I've tried it again with ds by himself now that he's older and it's been better--I need to get back to it. But not for impulse control, more to help him with b and d reversal, although he's still 7 so it could just be age.

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I've just started doing some research into how diet affects moods and impulses and you might want to try to limit dairy consumption and see if it helps. Dairy allergy (not lactose intolerance, but the actual allergy) can cause mood swings and impulse issues. I've noticed that with my dd, when I curb her dairy consumption, her moods are more stable and she's more in control of her impulses. Just thought I'd mention it.

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We had similar issues here with my 6 yo. I agree with PP that punishment does not help. What has made a difference with us - samw a PPs as well are exercise and dietary changes. We found out that along with artificial colors/sweeteners/HFCS, the biggest trigger was wheat. Once we eliminated wheat the difference was astounding. That combined with lots of positive comments, encouragement when he handled himself well and flexibility to shift gears when necessary has transformed our home. I also recommend Dealing with Disappointment by Elizabeth Crary. It has great ideas for helping you as well well as your dc handle the situation when things aren't going as you would like them to.

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