and now these three things remain . . . faith, hope and love
and the greatest of these is love.  1Co13:13

Step 8. Re“cuse”

Change Your Battles
to help an Alphabet Soup Child
add...fasd...odd...ebd...adhd...pea...si...fas...fae...capd

By Jodee Kulp     www.betterendings.org

Pick your battles. Shrink your battleground. Choose only one or two areas you are willing to work hard in cooperation with other adults and the child. Disqualify yourself from participation in a conflict on the grounds of  prejudice or personal involvement. Think out of the box. Challenge yourself to find ways to let the conflict remain something the child handles with your support as a teacher, not as the judge.

• Consider a "consequence bag". Have the child help you write consequences on papers to put in the bag -- bring three piles of clothes upstairs, fill the dog dish, 2 minutes of strong sitting, empty the cat litter box, take out all the trash in the whole house, 10 jumping jacks, 10 leg hops. You can offer one nice consequence like a dish of ice cream and ask them what their worst consequence would be. Write it on a paper and determine if you keep it in. It’s ok to pull it out so long as the child doesn’t know. Let the child pull out their own consequence. You can now be the supportive adult and cheerleader for them to complete it, instead of the judge. “Oh bummer, you got the cat liter, I’ll have some hot chocolate ready when you finish. At least you didn’t get …

• Change the conflict opportunity. I gave up on refrigerator raiding....I wouldn't eat a raw pizza frozen. We quit buying fun food. Everything in our refrigerator and storage became healthy. Oh well. I shrunk the battleground.