© 2003-06 by Tom Daly Free 5-part report Lesson No. 2: How To Mud Wrestle A Pig Let’s talk about the No. 1 reason any child succeeds in school and then later in life. As I’ve already pointed out, there are plenty of things that DON’T work. Yelling doesn’t work Bribes eventually fail Rewards aren’t enough Punishments don’t cut it Caring isn’t enough And if mere hope really worked, wouldn’t you have long ago won the lottery and already have the perfect classroom? (Yeah — you and me both!) Would you like to know the No. 1 reason many teachers go home tired and frustrated every day? It's because they're choosing to stand in front of a runaway train. It's because they're trying to stop the incoming tide with a sand castle. It's because they're trying to stop an erupting volcano by frantically waving their hands and saying, "Stop! Stop!" You get the idea. Silly, isn't it? And yet every day, in countless classrooms across the country, well-meaning teachers are trying to control their ADHD children and highly disruptive students by doing one of the following: taking the "tough approach," saying, "Joey, please stop" all day long, raising their voices and making threats, doling out punishments that only make the problem worse. Believe me, I don't blame these teachers. I was one of them myself! My thinking was, "I'm the teacher, and he's the student. I need to establish control, and the student needs to follow my directions and do what he's told." Gee, is that too much to ask? Answer: No, it's not --- not for most students, anyway. Most "regular" students respond quite well to traditional disciplinary methods. But we all know that students with ADD or ADHD are a whole different ballgame! That's why I decided to find a different way. I discovered that traditional methods simply didn't work for kids who had ADHD. What was my proof? I found it in the following question:  If traditional methods and "getting tough" worked so well, then how come these kids were arriving in new classrooms year after year still acting up and still causing problems? Good question, isn't it? The fact is that getting tough with ADHD kids isn't the answer. It simply doesn't work. I tried blaming their home environment.  But guess what? That didn't work either. The bottom line was, my little theories about the "cause" of their behavior did nothing to change it! After banging my head against the wall and going home frustrated too many times, I eventually found methods that worked so well that I now teach them to educators all over the world. More importantly, I began to see how ADHD students could be transformed (seemingly overnight in some cases) by taking this entirely different approach. What do I mean by a different approach? I'm talking about making a paradigm shift in our mental approach with these students.  I'm going to explain you this new approach in two steps right now. The first critical step is simple: Don't think in terms of "confronting" or "controlling" behavior from ADHD students. Think about managing their behavior instead. The solution is changing our way of thinking from a controlling, adversarial mode to something more like coaching. Begin thinking and acting like a personal trainer for these kids. Consider the molten lava I mentioned a minute ago.  We'd be crazy to stand in front of that flow and try to stop it, or even control it. There's no force that can stop that. However, if we develop a way to divert that energy or redirect it, then we are well on our way toward reducing classroom problems --- and even create a situation in our favor. So how come the tough approach doesn't work with these kids? Traditional methods fail with these students because they're coming from a different mindset than our "A" students. Our "A" kids see their grades and teacher approval as their "paycheck." That's why they'll work hard for praise and good grades. They can see and feel the future payoff of "being good." But students with attention deficit or hyperactivity disorder don't see the payoff for getting good grades. They don't feel a payoff for being good. However, they DO know there is a payoff in acting out or creating a distraction. The negative attention they receive is their payoff. Trying to control a student with ADHD is like trying to mud wrestle a pig: You both get muddy, and the pig enjoys it. The trick is to never step into that wrestling ring. The key is to not let the runaway train pick up momentum in the first place. Instead, realize that annoying little behaviors such as pencil-tapping and blurting out means the train is already picking up speed and heading downhill. Most teachers, when they see this happening, just want that kid O-U-T of their classroom as soon as possible. They don't want anything to do with them. But that's exactly when we need to move closer to that student. And I mean that both literally and figuratively. Before I tell you exactly how to do that, let me give you the second step to making the new approach that will absolutely spell the difference between success and failure with ADHD students. In fact, it involves such a fundamentally crucial truth that it actually works for ALL kids, not just ADHD children. Believe it or not, it might be the single biggest missing piece that escapes frustrated teachers everywhere.  The only problem is, it's so profoundly simple, that some teachers reading this right now might not "get" it.  Will you?  I don't know.  But if the answer is yes, it will make all the difference in your classroom . . . and even in your life. To find out what this missing piece is, go to Part 3. Take me to Part 3