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Discipline for defiant (suspected) ADHD 9 year old

6 replies

Fitzcarraldo353 · 06/02/2026 09:29

I'm really struggling with our 9 year old DS at the moment. He has such huge reactions to the smallest perceived slight and I'm at a loss as to how to stamp out the awful behaviour.

He's on waiting list for ADHD - less on the hyperactive side but definitely AD and struggles with focus and especially writing/spelling tasks.

So this morning, we're doing spellings with him and he's struggling a lot - largely because he's flat-out refused to do them most days this week so didn't know them at all. I KNOW he's feeling frustrated and upset at this (and DH, who has a very authoritarian style of parenting) wasn't helping by pointing out that he didn't know them because he hadn't done them. This just wound DS up a bit more, while I just wanted him to try and focus on doing them rather than a post-mortem about why he didn't know them.

Anyway, I didn't fight with DS at all. He goes upstairs to get something and I was sorting washing from laundry hamper and told him it was time to get his shoes and coat on. He was sniffling so I asked how his cold is and he started exaggeratingly snorting snot in and out of his nose, while pretending he didn't know what I'd asked. When I asked him to stop doing it he shouted at me that it wasn't on purpose and I was being rude to him. He then shoulder barged me while he passed and gave me the finger! He told his dad to 'shut up' a minute later.

This type of massive reaction to someone being 'rude' to him isn't unusual and I'm SO sick of it. He's supposed to be going to a really cool birthday party tomorrow and we told him he can't go now. He's already on a screen/games ban (a long one). Imposing 'immediate' consequences is so hard because we're simultaneously trying to get him out the door to school and there's nothing to impose.

I wouldn't normally go to something as big as taking away a birthday party - especially one which is a good friend and will be a great event - but this bad language (we've been told to 'fuck off' this week too) and awful behaviour has GOT to stop so consequence has to be a big one to actually mean something.

Or are we going about this all wrong given his ADHD?? Please help!

I know, in an ideal world, we could have acknowledged his frustration with the spellings etc. but he's been so bloody defiant all week and not done them!

I'm at a loss...

OP posts:
Fitzcarraldo353 · 06/02/2026 09:41

That was long. I think what I'm asking is , how do we manage disciplining the behaviour - which is NOT okay - while recognising his brain is struggling and the situation wasn't ideal?

OP posts:
ExistingonCoffee · 06/02/2026 09:44

Have a look at rejection sensitive dysphoria.

Some people find the books The Explosive Child and the Out of Sync Child helpful. Others find non-violent resistance resources useful.

Preventing DS going to a birthday party tomorrow isn’t the right way, IMO. It is too far away and not related.

If homework is an issue, what support with spellings/writing is DS receiving?

Fitzcarraldo353 · 06/02/2026 09:53

My instinct is that the party is too far away and not related too. But nothing was available in the moment!

Over the course of a week he'll usually get homework done - so if he doesn't do spelling every day he'll usually do it enough times to do okay in the tests. Every week he normally does fine in the tests but when it comes to spelling while doing his classwork, it falls apart.

The school have recognised the issues with his writing but i'm not sure he's getting much support as such. He's said he finds it hard to focus on handwriting, spellings and the learning outcome/the task itself at the same time. In general the school are happy if he focuses on the learning outcome (ie creative or formal writing, or some grammar point etc.) and don't worry if his spelling isn't great. And that's it!

We've wondered about dyslexia too (DH is dyslexic) but he's a fantastic reader so the school keep dismissing it.

I've looked at RSD before too and definitely feel it's a factor. Part of my struggle is getting DH on board with any of this. He's of that typical perspective of thinking I'm saying RSD or ADHD is an 'excuse' for bad behaviour. And even acknowledging what DS is dealing with doesn't really help me know what to do when he's literally giving me the finger and telling me to fuck off. I can't allow that!

OP posts:
BertieBotts · 06/02/2026 11:11

You have fallen into a classic trap of wanting the punishment to "hurt" so you have made it so long that it has ended up extending so far into the future it is now meaningless and you have run out of things to remove so are having to remove things at random.

This is not helpful - punishment is not especially helpful as a strategy anyway, but this is one of the less effective ways to use it. Particularly with ADHD, the impact will be lost fairly quickly because the child just gets used to not having the thing which has been taken away from them and adapts to living without it.

Then losing things totally at random because it is the next thing your parents can think of to reach for is likely to feel unfair and he will take it personally, it also won't help him to change his behaviour. In fact it will likely entrench in him a feeling that he is right and you are against him, which will probably make him more combative in the future.

IME using punishment with ADHD works best if you target a specific, usually a single issue (possibly 2-3 but I would honestly just start with one). If he is using swear words that would be the thing to target, but crucially, that means you ignore absolutely everything else. So ignore the nose snorting thing, ignore him ranting and raving. Walk away and say "I don't like being spoken to like that. I'll be here if you want any help."

Identify in your own head/with DH, what the banned behaviour is and what you are looking for in its place. Make sure this is realistic - so for example, if you're targeting swearing, then an improvement might be him using a rude/agitated tone and maybe insulting but not actually swearing. Or if the swearing is infrequent then you could probably target insulting but include swearing in it. It needs to be really clear where the line is otherwise he's likely to not understand what you are looking for, and you won't make any progess.

If he does the thing you have banned, then you inform him (either right then or later, when he is calmer) that he has lost e.g. 10 mins screen time. Now you will probably laugh and say don't be ridiculous, he won't care about losing 10 minutes at a time. This is true, and it's because this is a bit of a mindset shift. The point of the punishment is not to hurt him and make him suffer for his behaviour. It's to draw a line under it and make it clear which bits are completely unacceptable. The amount of time you remove has to be small enough that even on a bad day, you do not run out of time to remove. A good rule of thumb is consider how often the behaviour happens on an average day, double this, divide normal daily screen time allowance by this number, round it off, there's your amount to remove per infraction.

The aim is that he doesn't run out of things to lose, because this allows him to actually perceive the loss - he can tell that some days he gets 30 mins and some days an hour and some days maybe only 10 mins. This also helps (all of you) to see progress or not. It resets every day. That means that every day he has a fresh chance and a new slate to try to stick to the accepted guidelines. You have to also meet him where he is at. If he is consistently failing to meet your expectation, don't increase the punishment, lower the bar (temporarily). So if you target "rude tone" and he is constantly losing time and nothing is improving, change it to be more specific. Target specific language, gestures, or e.g. name calling. Once you have successfully eliminated a behaviour (like swearing) you can move on to the next (like volume or tone). However, the expected behaviour needs to be realistic, and you can't have double standards. So if you don't want him shouting at you that you are being rude, don't shout at him that he is being rude (even if he absolutely is!) Find a way to communicate that you don't like how he is speaking, which you would find acceptable if he said it to you. Children with ADHD often don't understand why there are different standards for adults and children, and TBF they have a point. He might also struggle to recognise his own tone or volume - this is a genuine difficulty for people with ADHD. You can't always fix everything with behaviour management because sometimes it's something the person struggles to even control.

I said right at the start that punishment is not hugely effective- you have to also balance this by recognising when he is doing well and/or working on the skills which you want him to replace the unwanted behaviour with. Often praising in the moment will not go well but you could reflect later in the day maybe at bedtime saying hey I noticed today, you were angry about X and you were shouting but you didn't call us any names. That's brilliant - I'm so proud of you, well done. Or on a day which has gone badly you might be able to reflect later on and say OK - let's make a plan for tomorrow so you can keep more of your screen time, what happened today, what could you do differently?

The other thing which would be helpful to understand based on your post is the idea that children with ADHD often have a very sensitive meter for escalation. We all (humans) tend to match the energy of those we are interacting with, it's a very widespread thing. With ADHD, the unconscious "meter" which registers everyone else's energy level is a bit too springy and will exaggerate, so they register the slightest bit of irritation or frustration and will zoink! up from 0-60 really fast and respond at that level (whereas you might have been at about level 25). Then your meter registers their level 60 and will want to respond in kind. This is not helpful because that will continue to escalate him up which will escalate you up and so on. So the key to this is to recognise that he is the one with the faulty meter and you need to be the calibrator, so to speak, and be much much calmer and present this calm, rational, de-escalating front no matter what you feel inside, to try and bring him back down to a lower level, OR, you can disengage - this models that when you are starting to feel yourself riled up, you take a break rather than engage at that wound up level, which is exactly what you want him to do eventually (you will likely need to work up to this - it's too much of a jump to expect him to do it in one go.)

Medication helps enormously with their meter being so springy, but I appreciate you're not at that stage of the process yet, so you'll have to manage it manually until that happens.

ADHD Dude might be really helpful especially for your husband. Or possibly the book "How Not To Murder your ADHD Kid" depending on his sense of humour.

Fitzcarraldo353 · 06/02/2026 11:37

@BertieBotts Thank you. Really, thanks so much.
I'm not going to properly reply because I think I need to go away and re-read your post several times and really think about it because there's a lot packed in but suffice it to say it's really useful and I appreciate it so much. You've definitely summed up the trap we're in and we need a serious rethink. Thinking about DS in terms of ADHD is pretty new to us so we're having to rethink a lot.

And thanks for the book recommendations. DH's sense of humour would appreciate that one (just have to make sure we hide it from DS!!) - although the bigger barrier to reading it is his dyslexia. I'm currently listening to a good podcast episode on the ADDitude website which I'll share with him.

Thanks again for the info (and lack of judgement).

OP posts:
BertieBotts · 06/02/2026 19:58

The book is written in very short sections - I think it's fairly accessible even for someone who is not keen on much reading. It's also divided into sections like "When your child is doing XYZ" so you don't have to even read the whole thing, just dip into the section which is the current issue. It is a bit surface level and simple, but that doesn't really matter because actually it gets straight to the point and it is very relateable with the examples given, IMO anyway. I think you can read a bit of it on the amazon website to get an idea of it.

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