88 - How Can Curiosity Questions Help Your ADHD and Autistic Child?

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Transcript:

Samantha Foote: [00:00:00] Welcome to the Every Brain is Different podcast. It is me, Samantha Foote, here with your Friday Five, and today we are going to talk about curiosity questions. Curiosity questions is a positive discipline tool that helps kids think for themselves, problem solve, and feel empowered. What are curiosity questions?

Instead of telling kids what to do, curiosity questions encourage them to think critically and engage in problem solving behavior. For example, instead of put your shoes on now, you can ask, what do we need to do before we go outside? This helps neurodivergent kids, who often resist direct instructions, feel more in control and less defensive.

It encourages independent thinking rather than just compliance, because that's what we want. We don't want our kids just to comply with us all the time. It would feel good if they did that. It would be good. But we don't want them to comply just for compliance sake. We want them to have critical thinking skills, problem solving skills, and all those things that go into helping them be more independent.

So how do we [00:01:00] use curiosity questions effectively? You can ask open ended questions, not yes or no questions. For example, what's your plan for finishing your homework? Instead of, did you do your homework? And then if you ask, did you do your homework? And they say no, you can say, what's your plan for finishing your homework?

And then stay neutral and non judgmental. So avoid sarcasm or leading questions like, why can't you ever clean up? You can just say, what's your plan for cleaning this up? What's your plan for getting your room cleaned? When are you planning on getting your room cleaned? Things like that. And then use a calm tone.

Keep curiosity genuine. It's about guiding, not testing. So we're not looking for a right answer. We don't want our kids to feel like, ooh, there's the right answer to this question, and I'm afraid I'm not going to get it right. No, we want them to just say what they're going to do, and we want to be curious and guide them to the answer instead of just expecting them to know the right answer, because there's not really a right [00:02:00] answer for, like, when do you plan on getting your homework done?

The only right answer is that they come up with a plan to do it. It doesn't matter when they do it as long as it gets done before the deadline. And then practice in low stress moments. So start when your child is calm so they get used to the process before it's in a high stress environment. For example, these are some questions that you can ask.

What do you need to feel ready for school? Where is a good place to put your backpack so you don't forget it tomorrow? What can you do if your sister takes your toy instead of hitting? Those are all curiosity questions. None of them necessarily have a right answer, but they have an answer that your child can answer.

So why does it work for neurodivergent kids? So curiosity questions, engage executive functioning skills like problem solving, planning, flexibility, all those things. And if your child answers in a way that you didn't expect, You can model that flexibility for them and say, Oh, I didn't [00:03:00] expect you to say that, but that's a good plan.

And then it reduces power struggles because kids feel like they're part of the decision making process. They don't feel like they're being told what to do there. They feel like they're part of the process and that they have control over what they're doing. And the third thing is it helps them connect actions to consequences without shame or punishment.

If they come up with a plan and it has a natural consequence, and they're going to learn that actions have consequences. And the fourth thing is that it builds self confidence because they learn that they have the ability to solve problems. So this week, I challenge you to try one curiosity question and see how your child responds.

Maybe you're having a hard time in the morning where they're not doing all the things on their morning routine, and you can say, hey, what's your plan for finishing your morning routine? Or different things like that. And if you want more support, you can join our Parenting Power Hour. It's the second Thursday of every month from 12:45 to [00:04:00] 1:45 p.m. Mountain Time, and this is where you can come and ask all your questions. So if you try the curiosity questions and it didn't quite pan out the way you thought it would, come to the Parenting Power Hour, let me know, or just send me a message. And I hope you all have a great day. We'll see you next week.