Tips from an ADHD Coach: Past punishment for ADHD traits

ADHD traits such as forgetfulness and impulsivity are often viewed as ‘bad behavior’ while growing up. Kids with ADHD might get punished for these things that are actually due to their brains working differently. So what happens when these kids grow up into adults with ADHD? Some might continue to punish themselves.

This week on Tips from an ADHD Coach, Jaye breaks down why the threat of punishment is not the most effective motivator for people with ADHD, and gives some tips that can help end the cycle. 

Have a challenge you’d like Jaye to talk about in an episode? Email or send a voice memo to us at adhdcoachtips@understood.org.

Related resources

• Masking ADHD symptoms to go above and beyond (René Brooks’ story)

• Behavior: What is it and how can parents affect it? 

• 7 discipline tips when your child has ADHD

Timestamps

(00:41) René’s quote

(02:18) ADHD is not defiance

(05:01) Ways we punish ourselves

(06:28) How can we motivate ourselves without punishment?

(11:05) Recap

Episode transcript

Jaye: Are there certain tasks that you have a hard time getting yourself to do, even though they seem pretty easy to other people? Were you punished for not doing these tasks in the past? Are you still punishing yourself for not doing them?

This is "Tips from an ADHD Coach," and I'm your coach, Jaye Lin. Today we're talking about how the threat of punishment is not the most effective motivator for those of us with ADHD. We're going to hear from René, who is on another Understood.org podcast, "ADHD Aha!," about how a tactic her parents took to motivate her actually did the opposite.

(00:41) René's quote

René: So, like basic chores, you know, dishes and like, dishes are a sensory nightmare for me. I hate them to this day. So, it was like, you know, I go to do the dishes, the water is too hot, then it's too cold and there's icky stuff on it. And it was just, it was a war our entire lives together. And it created a lot of misery where it didn't need to. And if we had known that the issue was a sensory one, my family, even though they may not have understood neurodivergence, they certainly understand giving someone the tools they need to do their thing.

At that point and moving forward, kind of the tone that it took, that push-pull civil war kind of feeling in the household because now René is a person who's being given the tools that she needs in the form of more responsibility. But she's still not, we're not getting the performance out of her. So, now I'm doing what the doctor said: "Do we now have a child with a need or do we have a defiant child at this point?" Defiant children get grounded and things taken away.

And then you've got the stress of that at school where you've got teachers who fall anywhere on the spectrum of agreeing with ADHD or not thinking that it exists. And so, you've got various levels of frustration coming at me from various different places where you want to do well as a child. Children want to do well. They don't want to displease the adults around them. It makes them feel unsafe. So, there wasn't a lot of safety there.

(02:18) ADHD is not defiance

Jaye: So, René's mom was told by a pediatrician who did not have an understanding of ADHD to give her daughter more responsibility. But chores like doing the dishes were hard for her to do because of the sensory aspect of dishes. Rene's avoidance of the dishes was then seen as defiance and punishment was given when those dishes weren't done.

A lot of adults with ADHD can recognize that it's ineffective, this parenting tactic of giving more and more punishment to children who avoid doing unpleasant tasks. Piling punishment onto a task that a child already has negative feelings toward, only amplifies the unpleasantness for them.

As René mentions in the clip, she wasn't trying to be defiant. She just wasn't able to get herself to do the dishes on cue. And the shame and punishment she received from her parents created an environment of psychological danger. And it sounds like that created a frustrating environment of feeling misunderstood by her parents, likely affecting her trust in them and in herself.

The twist you probably didn't see coming is that this isn't just an ineffective parenting tactic for children with ADHD. It's actually an ineffective and extremely common tactic many of us use on ourselves as ADHD adults.

There are tasks that are going to be less pleasant for us to do because we have ADHD. Like René mentioned, tasks that create a sensory disturbance tend to be unpleasant for us. If a task requires us to be in an environment that is too loud, too smelly, too bright, too cold, etc., we can find the task unpleasant because ADHD makes it harder to regulate how we experience our senses. This could explain why many of us hate doing the dishes or doing yard work in hot weather.

If the task requires multiple steps of planning with competing priorities and complexity, we can find it unpleasant because our lower executive function can make that planning process feel overwhelming. This could explain why many of us are overwhelmed with organizing and cleaning our homes or job hunting. Tasks that are extremely tedious and boring can be harder for us to do because dopamine gives us motivating energy to start and continue doing things. And we don't get much dopamine with tasks that aren't exciting or challenging.

This could explain why many of us don't like folding laundry or doing repetitive, monotonous jobs. There's a lot more, but you get the picture. There are many reasons why certain tasks are not enticing for us to do when we have ADHD and why we tend to avoid doing them. The most common tactic I see ADHDers use to try to motivate themselves is very similar to the threats of punishment René received from her mom. But we do it to ourselves.

(05:01) Ways we punish ourselves

Punishments include scolding, like telling ourselves the task is so tiny and if we don't do it, we are lazy and awful. Punishments include taking away things we love, like saying if we don't do this task, we can't go out with our friends tonight. We're grounding ourselves. While it's true that the threat of punishment and shame can push us over the finish line occasionally, when this becomes a habit, it can really work against us.

Every time we do it, our negative emotions toward the task grow bigger and bigger. The task started out as unpleasant, but now thinking about doing the task fills us with dread and makes us feel terrible about ourselves. The task is now connected to negative self-talk that we are unreliable, we are lazy, we are combative, we are gross. Negative self-talk like "Everyone else can do it and we can't because we suck." And for many of us, the negative self-talk can expand to be even more devastating. Like we are garbage humans.

"We will never be able to function and we are unworthy of being loved." All of that is not true, by the way. Your inner critic is a mean girl who lies. But yeah, how able am I to jump up and clean my house if even the idea of cleaning my house makes me feel like I'm unworthy of being loved? Not very able.

(06:28) How can we motivate ourselves without punishment?

So, what can we do if we're used to punishing ourselves and we've turned these tasks we used to just find unpleasant into emotionally heavy aversions? What can we do to motivate ourselves instead? I think the first step is to acknowledge that punishing and shaming ourselves is not productive and make another choice. This takes a lot more effort than it sounds. Taking a pause to see how we're responding to ourselves and deciding to be more self-compassionate goes a long way. But it is not a small thing to do.

If we've spent an entire lifetime punishing ourselves, it can be an autopilot response and pivoting away from it will take a fair amount of intention, repetition, and probably many slip-ups. It's worth all the effort to keep trying. I promise.

I already mentioned the second step, which is self-compassion. Acknowledge what makes these tasks unpleasant from an ADHD lens and also acknowledge that the task may carry a heavier weight due to the negative associations we've piled onto it.

Instead of taking the opportunity to feel bad about ourselves for having a bad track record, for avoiding it, for even making the task harder to do with our emotions, we can acknowledge that we are human. We had good intentions for using punishment to motivate ourselves, and now that we're better informed, we can make another choice.

The next thing I suggest is to shift the self-talk. Instead of using the threat of punishment, use the challenge of opportunity. Think about the stuff we tend to hyperfocus on that we can get started on without any hesitation. What do those things have in common? Dopamine. The adrenaline and dopamine boost of an impending deadline. A new hobby. We think we could really like, a skill that we're trying to master. I call dopamine the "Will it or won't it? Can I or can't I? neurotransmitter."

We tend to get the most dopamine when we are confident, though not 100% sure that we can succeed at a challenge. So, here's the new challenge. Can I get myself to do the dishes without hating it? And yes, I can. Like René, I've always hated doing the dishes. All my life, I avoided them. And then they would pile up until I'd have to rush to do them before my parents or roommates got back from a trip.

Then doing the dishes would be really awful. The sensory experience would be even more unpleasant because the plates were now covered in rotting food and slimy water, and it would take an entire hour to get through all of them. Being able to regularly do the dishes felt impossible, which definitely contributed to me feeling like a failure in life. And yes, unworthy of love.

After I got my ADHD diagnosis, I tried to see myself with a more compassionate lens. The sensory experience makes it unpleasant, and doing the dishes is hard for me. If I wanted that to change, I had to change. So, I leaned into my people-pleasing tendencies and started trying to please a person: myself. I started approaching dishes with my sensory challenges in mind. I wore gloves when doing the dishes. I started wiping my dishes with napkins after meals and then leaving them on the counter so they wouldn't get slimy in the sink.

I started cheering myself on. When I got to the sink, I said, "Yay, Jaye! Getting started on the dishes!" Yeah, out loud, in that voice. And after I was done, I capped it off with "Great job, Jaye. You did the dishes." I know it sounds like it wouldn't work, but cheering myself on in a silly voice took away the sting of what I considered past failures. It was a brand new challenge on a brand new day, and I could feel good about doing the dishes that day, regardless of my history with them.

And gradually, over time, doing the dishes didn't feel terrible anymore. I started associating the dishes with something I could feel good about because I was able to overcome something that was hard for me. It's been over four years now and I still see the dishes as a chore that needs to be done, but something I can feel good about. We can do that.

We can take a task we've associated with punishment, failure, and frustration and turn it into a task we associate with victory, perseverance, and growth. We are capable of doing hard things. It gets easier to do them when we aren't so hard on ourselves.

(11:05) Recap

It tends not to be effective when parents punish their children for avoiding tasks that are more unpleasant to do with ADHD. Yet many of us ADHD adults apply the same threat of punishment and shame in an attempt to motivate ourselves. While punishing and shaming ourselves could temporarily work in pushing us over the finish line occasionally, when we make this a habit, it creates the opposite effect in the long run.

We can start associating the task with what our mean inner critics says to us like we're lazy or even awful and false things like we're unworthy of love, which can make tackling the task even more impossible. But we can make a point to pause and pivot when we find ourselves in the process of punishment and shame. And we can view the situation more self compassionately. Then we can replace the threat of punishment with the opportunity for a challenge. We can start cheering ourselves on and hyping ourselves up, feeling good that we're working on something that is hard for us.

Over time, this can make the task easier for us to do. We can take a task we've long associated with punishment and failure and turn it into a task we associate with empowerment and victory.

You've been listening to "Tips from an ADHD Coach" on the Understood Podcast Network. If you have a challenge you'd like me to talk about or would just like to say hi, you can email us at ADHDCoachTips@understood.org. You can also check out the show notes to find links to anything mentioned in the show and more resources.

This show is brought to you by Understood.org. Understood is a nonprofit organization dedicated to empowering people with learning and thinking differences like ADHD and dyslexia. If you want to help us continue this work, donate at Understood.org/give. Make sure to subscribe to our channel for more content like this, and I hope to see you next time.

"Tips for an ADHD Coach" is produced and edited by Jessamine Molli and Margie DeSantis. Video is produced by Calvin Knie. Our theme music was written by Justin D. Wright, who also mixes the show. Ash Beecher is our supervising producer. Briana Berry is our production director, and Neil Drumming is our editorial director. For Understood.org, our executive directors are Laura Key, Scott Cocchiere, and Seth Melnick. And I'm your host, Jaye Lin. Thanks for listening.