Coaching practices for What to Do with an Adult Child with a Mental Illness and Drug Taking

Describe almost anything you are working through and IX Coach finds the practices whose real-world fit is closest. For What to Do with an Adult Child with a Mental Illness and Drug Taking, these are the strongest matches in the current practice library.

Does this sound like the set of challenges you might be facing?

• I keep trying to reason with my kid right in the middle of the meltdown
• My kid blows up over the same things again and again, and I keep calling it defiance or attitude
• When my kid is melting down I feel trapped between two bad options
• My kid is mid-meltdown and I’m kneeling there explaining why they can’t have it, getting more reasonable while they get more wild, and none of my logic is landing
• Every conversation with my kid about their behavior turns into me laying down the law and them digging in, and I want a way to actually talk it through together

Practices that may help

1. Hold Plan B conversations proactively, not reactively
   Solve the problem before the next explosion, when everyone is calm.
   Collaborative Problem Solving (Ross Greene)
2. Identify the lagging skill behind the behavior
   Name the cognitive skill the child is missing, not the behavior you want to stop.
   Collaborative Problem Solving (Ross Greene)
3. Use empathy to de-escalate, not to capitulate
   Name the child’s emotional state without agreeing with every demand — empathy and limits can coexist.
   Collaborative Problem Solving (Ross Greene)
4. Connect emotionally before you redirect or teach
   The downstairs brain has to be acknowledged before the upstairs brain can hear anything.
   The Whole-Brain Child (Siegel & Bryson)
5. Use Plan B: the three-step collaborative conversation
   Empathize with the child’s concern, share yours, and invite them to solve it together.
   Collaborative Problem Solving (Ross Greene)
6. Recognize when Plan A (unilateral imposition) makes things worse
   Adult-imposed solutions can win the battle and lose the war — notice when enforcement is escalating rather than solving.
   Collaborative Problem Solving (Ross Greene)
7. Problem-solve together once the child is calm
   After the emotional storm passes, invite the child to find a solution with you.
   Emotion Coaching (John Gottman)
8. Refuse to energize negative behavior
   Give consequences briefly and blandly — no energy, no lecture, no drama.
   The Nurtured Heart Approach (Howard Glasser)
9. Recognize and recover from spoon debt
   When you’ve spent more than you had, treat recovery as a genuine obligation, not as laziness — debt must be repaid before the next draw.
   Spoon Theory, Made Practical
10. T — Take a Step Back: Create Physical and Mental Space
    Step back from the situation — physically if possible, mentally always — to interrupt the reactive loop.
    The STOP Skill: A DBT Technique for Crisis Moments

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