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Quick backstory: My step-daughter is freakishly intelligent, bi-polar and has ADHD. A while back, she stole her mom's debit card, tied it to a PayPal account, and spent $500+. I tried normal punishments, but all that would do is lead to hysterics and a complete emotional shutdown thanks to her bi-polar disorder and her medication not being at the correct dosage. So I started thinking about how to work with more positive reinforcements rather than simply continuing to punish.

I stumbled upon the idea a few weeks ago, after she came into the garage and started asking questions about the Space Marines I was putting the final touches on. Apparently my Black Reach miniatures caught her eye, and she wanted to know more about the game. So I went through a game with her (playing as Orks) and was rather quickly destroyed. She had a good time with it and wanted to know more.

LIGHT BULB!

I told her that if she get her chores done for the week, I'd take her to the local Games Workshop store for a more in-depth game (as I'm still learning the rules myself). Lo and behold, her work was completed (at the last minute, but hey, progress is progress) by the time we had to head out.

At the game store, she proceeded to table her opponent (a Grey Knights player using the Black Reach Orks) within three turns, only losing three Space Marines and two Terminators. Her opponent's friends promptly assured us they wouldn't let him forget losing to a 10-year old girl, as well. To celebrate her victory, I bought her a copy of the Space Marines codex to go over and help her plan out her eventual army, both in composition and color scheme.

I told her that every week, her mother and I would be giving her a list of chores to complete. If she does, then I'll be taking her down to the game store to get some more Space Marines and help her paint them up. I also told her that if she improves her grades by the end of the year (ADHD + math = bored kid and no homework done), I'd strip the paint from my Black Reach Marines and give them to her, so she'd have a full force ready to play.

This seems to have worked quite well (along with an adjustment of her medication), which has brought me and her mother no end of relief. She's also taken a healthy interest in her mother's D&D books as well, which will only help her improve her math and reading skills even more.

I'm guessing this is a fairly common occurrence (using gaming to help a troubled kid improve in needed areas), and if not perhaps it should be, as its proven to be rather effective thus far.

this is very interesting, good job!

Gaming is a great way to help troubled kids - it worked for me. I won't go into the details, but I was abused my entire childhood. Fantasy was more than an escape - it was a way for me to find a moral and ethical center amidst the chaos that surrounded me. It was more than a way to avoid the negatives, it included active positives. As my wife likes to say, I was abandoned in the woods and raised by Captain Kirk and Frodo Baggins.

It sounds like your step-daughter has a lot of great support in you and your wife, and this is wonderful. It doesn't seem like she needs help developing a moral center - she'll get that from you guys. However, the world of fantasy hobbies can be a great place to find friends and develop social skills - and it can be a great motivator. Right now I'm putting 50¢ in the Tiny Plastic Spacemen (or Tiny Plastic Lizard, or Tiny Metal Giant Monster, or Tiny Metal Giant Robot, or Tiny Metal Spy - I haven't decided yet) jar for every day I stay on my diet! So far, it's actually helped.

Yeah, carrots are almost always better than sticks. This plan seems ingenious, and I'm glad it's successful.

Plus, 40k is good for people with various mental illnesses, I've found. It lets depressive people work towards goals and be self-expressive in the hobby. It lets obsessive people spend hours reading codices and making army lists. Etc.

While working on treatment of the problems is obviously the prime concern, having something in the meantime that allows you to channel your craziness into something that is safe and constructive (unlike, say, drugs, vandalism, or self-harm) is really important while you wait for that to sort itself out. One of the reasons I've stayed with 40k over the years undoubtedly has been because no matter what form any given round of acute autism-related problems has flared up for me, there has almost always been some sort of 40k-related solution.

Better she spends her time compulsively reading codices and plotting lists than using her bored, overactive brain to figure out exciting and complicated new forms of wire fraud...

40k is definitely better then letting a kid loose on XBL, urgh those kids / teens / adults that just fell into a pit of cursing and profanity.

I suppose that's another important point. If you're always going to the gaming store with her, that means that she is going to be supervised. Odds are probably good that your daughter doesn't have the best of social skills due to her conditions, and odds are also pretty good that she's going to be playing a lot of games against other people who also don't have great social skills, likewise probably due to various conditions. Unlike other mediums, you can keep an eye on her, which means that you gain crucial information for helping her in social scenes.

In an unmonitored environment (like XBL), who knows what social skills are doing, or if they're doing anything to improve.

On a similar note, you might want to gently encourage her to get into other monitorable social situations surrounding 40k. For example, she could start posting on Dakka. That way she'd get further into the game (and thus more willing to do things like chores if it means rewards), and she'd also have social interactions (of somewhat poor quality, being the internet, but still...), and you'd be able to see her posts, so you could keep tabs on what's going on and what she might need further help with.

I dont have kids so I cant really talk about how to raise them but I do find that positive reinforcement is alot better then negitive reinforcement.

For intelligent kids with time on their hands, get them doing Anything.
Gaming is a good hobby for that, as it is so diverse, but they'll need someone to play against. That's worth checking out before getting them hooked.

After all, playing with compressors for airbrushing, or making a model from molds or scratch, is going to keep them happy for some time.
Gaming is just a sideline, almost.
Often the journey is worth more than arriving. If they win every time, they'll probably lose interest.

Ailaros wrote:I suppose that's another important point. If you're always going to the gaming store with her, that means that she is going to be supervised. Odds are probably good that your daughter doesn't have the best of social skills due to her conditions, and odds are also pretty good that she's going to be playing a lot of games against other people who also don't have great social skills, likewise probably due to various conditions. Unlike other mediums, you can keep an eye on her, which means that you gain crucial information for helping her in social scenes.

In an unmonitored environment (like XBL), who knows what social skills are doing, or if they're doing anything to improve.

On a similar note, you might want to gently encourage her to get into other monitorable social situations surrounding 40k. For example, she could start posting on Dakka. That way she'd get further into the game (and thus more willing to do things like chores if it means rewards), and she'd also have social interactions (of somewhat poor quality, being the internet, but still...), and you'd be able to see her posts, so you could keep tabs on what's going on and what she might need further help with.

I agree that the social situations are one of the best things about this world for kids. There are very few better ways to get a kid to work on his/her social skills than opening up a new realm in which they can interact.

Incidentally, if this takes off for her, you could consider looking for fantasy/mythology/play-themed therapy groups for her. This kind of therapy is called "Drama Therapy" or "Expressive Arts Therapy." It works well for everyone, but really well with kids. Some of these therapists can do really good work by playing around with the themes and motifs that people (again, especially kids) already find compelling.

I have a similar situation with my 11 year old sister. A hobby is always a good thing to have.

Dang, are you sure you didn't give birth to the female Roboute Guilliman?

Commander Jimbob wrote:Dang, are you sure you didn't give birth to the female Roboute Guilliman?

Well, seeing as how

1) I'm a guy
2) she's my step-daughter

I'm gonna go with "no".

Good jobb. I willbe awating news

Bravo sir! As a father myself I approve this message!

Ok, so, something else - riffing off some things I've learned being married to a shrink.

You should be willing to help your daughter "totemize" elements of the setting. Don't push it on her, because that will guarantee that it will never happen, but if it happens, support it. If she suddenly decides that Vulkan Hes'tan is the coolest dude in the entire setting of 40k, support this. Buy her a Vulkan. Help her paint it. Let her carry it to school every day. Kids will often look for mythology - and sci-fi and fantasy, like 40k, is our modern-day mythology - to be something they need in their lives. It won't be clear exactly why she might choose what she might choose. It could be a hero, a villain, or even a random imaginary character that she paints up... but it will be important to her. And, if you honor it and let her do whatever silly things she needs to, it could have a real positive impact on her life.

When my wife gets home, I'll see if she has any online resources to suggest.

My parents did the same thing to me. (Though I have no medical issues to put the blame on) in 7th grade my GPA one quarter was 0.4. I was grounded for an entire quarter. No T.V. no gaming, tons of chores. Apparently (I honestly don't remember 13 years ago that well) I would just come home, still not do any homework and was perfectly content going to my room and falling asleep or playing with the dog.

Next quarter instead of punishing bad behavior, they tried encouraging good behavior. I think Yu gi oh cards were really big back then and I just started playing warhammer. So every week they would check my grades and if I had all Bs or higher they would buy me a pack of cards and if I kept them up long enough they would take me to buy an item from the hobby shop. (Sometimes it was an 8$ figure other times it was a 20$ box.)

It obviously worked a lot better because I was an honors society student ever since then including into college. So good job with your new found method. I just hope for your sake you can keep her trained into her teenage years

Playing 40K really helped my grades, not even as a reward. Within less than a quarter of picking up the hobby, I am getting high B's and A's in all classes and have been accepted into the national technical honors society. The quarter before I picked up the hobby, I was struggling to pass 3 out of my 8 classes and only managed 2 A's...

IcedAnimals wrote:My parents did the same thing to me. (Though I have no medical issues to put the blame on) in 7th grade my GPA one quarter was 0.4. I was grounded for an entire quarter. No T.V. no gaming, tons of chores. Apparently (I honestly don't remember 13 years ago that well) I would just come home, still not do any homework and was perfectly content going to my room and falling asleep or playing with the dog.

Next quarter instead of punishing bad behavior, they tried encouraging good behavior. I think Yu gi oh cards were really big back then and I just started playing warhammer. So every week they would check my grades and if I had all Bs or higher they would buy me a pack of cards and if I kept them up long enough they would take me to buy an item from the hobby shop. (Sometimes it was an 8$ figure other times it was a 20$ box.)

It obviously worked a lot better because I was an honors society student ever since then including into college. So good job with your new found method. I just hope for your sake you can keep her trained into her teenage years

Hey man, you can train large beetles. They're totally easier to train than a ten-year-olds smart enough to hack her mom.

Kung Fu Hamster wrote:

Commander Jimbob wrote:Dang, are you sure you didn't give birth to the female Roboute Guilliman?

Well, seeing as how

1) I'm a guy
2) she's my step-daughter

I'm gonna go with "no".

I meant raise up, sorry.

Faith in Humanity = Restored

IcedAnimals wrote:(Though I have no medical issues to put the blame on) in 7th grade my GPA one quarter was 0.4.

It is okay, I feel what you felt. I graduated highschool with a 2.2 GPA, my senior year GPA was like 1.5. Thank the lord for the ACT.

My after school club has a few of these same sort of sucess stories.

How often in highschool will you see the ADHD freshman playing a board game with the captain of soccer team (our big sport)? Of the 14 or so members of my club every year, across the last 5 years (how long its existed), we've probably had a half dozen kids with either learing disabilities or some serious social issues. I can easily say that have all improved, and many have seen significant improvement.

@OP Bravo, step dad! Well Done! You should keep us posted on her adventures in table top gaming (maybe start a Dakka blog?).