Sorry it has been so long since I updated this topic of Impulsive Children. I purchased the Stop and Think Workbook by Phillip Kendall and was pretty unimpressed with the appearance - but we shouldn't judge a workbook by its cover. It was a spiral bound photocopied Kinko's style workbook that I bought off of Amazon. It did have some interesting lessons inside it though. The nice thing is that it gave my son and I some time to work through some exercises 3-4 times per week... some good together time.
The basis of the exercises is to put the child into situations where they will fail or come close to failing at which time you help them learn to STOP and THINK. Essentially, the workbook contains a number of games the two of you can play together (or you can pay a therapist big bucks - no need to do that!). During these games you ask your child to walk you through their thought process when approaching a difficult or challenging part of the game. You try to get them to come up with alternative options, hopefully helping them to logically decide the best course of action before their impulses kick in. Your child verbally iterates his thought process and soon, after much repetition, this become the type of inner dialogue your child will have when faced with difficult situations in the future.
The workbook also contains a nice little reward system for doing a good job. In each session your child starts with 5 "bucks"... each time they act on impulse you take a buck away... (of course the first few times you do this it gives you the opportunity to take another buck away because they explode again, but they get it pretty quickly). Any bucks left at the end of the session go into the child's buck bank... those bucks can be used later for picking out a prize.
Another good lesson... When your child does a good job and makes a wise choice they need to audibly tell themselves, "I did a good job". If they blow it, they need to audibly tell themselves, "Oops, I made a mistake, I'll do better next time." Again, this audible dialog becomes part of the child's inner dialog over time.
I spent 30 sessions with my (now 7 year old) son. The sessions were fun... doing things like playing checkers, or solving puzzles. I did see some improvement and it has given us something to talk about when we have episodes in day-to-day life. I tell him when he is doing a good job and ask him many more questions about his thought process.
He still has some issues, but I think some of these strategies, coupled with just getting older are having a positive effect. Getting the workbook, cheap as it is, probably would not be a bad idea... the main lessons of which were described above. I can only imagine some therapist charging you $100 per session to go through the same book - which I am sure you would be plenty competent to handle yourself (and it teaches you some important things too!).
