Dear Brooke,
I’d like to begin with a heartfelt thank you for creating the model and teaching it to us. I’ve been in Scholars since day one and I can not tell you the amount of times I have felt a sense of disorder swirling around in my brain, about life in general or a specific situation with my family or work. Instead of ruminating, I am able to pull out the model and create order from disorder. Simply having this framework to bring order to chaos has had a huge impact on my life. I’ve lost weight, improved my relationship with my husband (currently rock solid), and realized many of my thoughts are shared by so many others. The feeling of knowing I am not alone in my thoughts is invaluable.

And it’s interesting that even with this tool, there are still situations that I can’t make sense of and one I’d like your coaching on. It is my relationship with my 16 year old daughter with ADD, who of course I love deeply, but we have a very challenging relationship (my thought, I know). I’ve used many of the tools I’ve learned with you – running models on my relationships or specific situations with her, I’ve tried to reduce my manual for expected behavior and I try to always remember your words “come from a place of love.” Despite that, I feel like “here I am again.”

Last week I also read some of your Entrepreneur Q&A about how you are now looking at employee’s mistakes and thinking about how you can take full responsibility for every mistake an employee makes.
“when I own the mistake, I can give feedback from a loving place AND set a clear expectation for what is required.” I tried to apply that in this situation as well. How am I responsible for her actions/behaviors? “I gave her too much freedom before she was ready for it. I allowed her to access technology when I wasn’t home and she wasn’t ready. I wasn’t clear enough for her about expectations.”

Rather than listing off exactly what she said in the models, I put it as a circumstance so I can keep the models simplified and clean, but provided some context below in case it’s helpful.

Could you please help me with these?
My current models:
Unintentional
c. She lied to me repeatedly
t. She is deceptive and will never mature into a responsible, trustworthy person
f. heartbroken
a. calmly, but firmly list off her recent lies. Tell her she will not go on her school overnight trip this winter if her behavior continues
r. I’m sad

intentional
c. she lied to me repeatedly
t. Teenagers make mistakes. She’s finding her way, she’s learning how to be a responsible/trustworthy person.
f. empathy, love
a. Explain calmly to her that her behavior is not acceptable, but she is at heart a good person and ask her what type of person she wants to be
r. I help her find her way to being a responsible, trustworthy person

context:
recent lies/issues include – she went on social media, when she was not allowed; she posted inappropriate posts on social media; she told me she was doing homework on the computer when she was watching Netflix or going on social media; she told me she was in one place with friends, when she went somewhere else; I took away her phone because of some of these violations and she found it and lied to me about it.

I decided to include the comment that she has ADD, because it is “accepted medical knowledge” that people with ADD’s brains work differently. She is on medication to help but it’s not completely effective. She has a compulsive, dopamine-seeking personality – through flour, sugar, social media, and risk-taking behavior. I don’t want to use her ADD to excuse her behavior, but I do want to include it in my thoughts because I find I’m more empathetic when I realize there is a physiological reason that she acts the way she does.
Thank you for your help.

Some notes from my research:
“dopamine-increasing behaviors are even more gratifying to ADHD brains. ADHD brains search for stimulation that can increase dopamine more quickly and intensely. Ultimately, the pursuit of pleasurable rewards may become a potent form of self-medication. In fact, addicted brains exhibit similar dysregulation of the dopamine reward system. Understanding what ADHD brains want makes it clear that the struggle for self-regulation is neurological, and has nothing to do with character deficiencies.”